“Very good, Molly,” said the Armourer, beaming. “Gold star on your report card, and extra honey for tea. We acquired this Door from the same place we got the Merlin Glass. From the same benefactor.”
“What?” I said. “Merlin made this Door? Merlin knew about Mars?”
“Merlin knew about everything,” said the Armourer. “That’s what made him so dangerous.”
“He gave us the Glass, and he gave us this Door?” I said. “Come on, Merlin Satanspawn was never known for his generosity. This doesn’t feel like gifts, or even tribute; it smells a lot more like payment for services rendered. So what exactly did the family do for him, all those centuries ago? That he felt obliged to craft us such matchless gifts? What did we do, or what did we promise him, in return?”
“Excellent questions,” said the Armourer. “If you ever find out, do let us know. I’d love to have one less thing to worry about. There’s always the chance he might turn up in person one day, to present us with the bill.”
“Merlin’s dead,” said Molly.
“That never stopped him before,” said the Armourer, darkly. “So, everybody ready? Time to go to Mars, before the others get there.”
“Why?” I asked bluntly.
“We can survive the Martian conditions in our armour, so we get to open up the Martian Tombs and turn on the machines,” said the Armourer. “The old energy generators are still working, and can supply air and heat and gravity to Earth normal conditions, for the length of the Summit. And, we go first because it’s traditional. Doesn’t do any harm to remind the others that Droods always go first.”
“Of course,” I said. “The family runs on tradition. Don’t smile, Uncle Jack. I didn’t say that was a good thing.”
“The Droods are always the hosts of the Summit,” said the Armourer.
“Okay, my turn,” said Molly. “Why?”
“Because we found the Tombs,” said the Armourer. “And because we are best placed to keep the peace, if certain others start getting out of hand. Discussions have been known to get a bit . . . heated, in the past.”
“So, everyone else goes along because they’re afraid of us,” I said.
“Isn’t that what I just said?” said the Armourer. “I’d prefer to be admired and respected, but I’ll settle for everyone else being shit-scared of us, if that means we can get the job done. Decisions have to be agreed on, one way or another. Now, ready yourselves, my children. Because once I open that Door, the red planet is waiting.” He looked dubiously at Molly. “Eddie and I have our armour; are you sure you’ll be all right . . . ?”
“I go to worse places than Mars for my tea-break,” Molly said briskly. “I regularly visit clubs where you have to evolve into a more dangerous being just to use the toilets.”
“It’s true,” I said solemnly. “She has. You wouldn’t believe the things she brings home as party favours.”
The Armourer surprised me then by laughing, and fixing Molly with a twinkling gaze. “Always knew Eddie would bring home someone . . . interesting.”
Uncle Jack and I subvocalised our activating Words, and armoured up. Two gleaming golden figures stood facing each other in the chapel, and the confined space seemed suddenly that much smaller, and more shabby. Interestingly, the Door felt more real, more solid. There were differences between the Armourer’s armour and mine. His was traditional, smooth, functional. Mine was more streamlined, detailed, personalised. There was a time all Drood armour looked the same, but since Ethel gifted us with her strange matter, we can shape our armour to fit our own needs and personalities. Uncle Jack was just a traditionalist.
We both looked to Molly, to see what she would do, and then we both stepped back quickly as a great leafy tree burst up through the flag-stones of the chapel floor. The tree surged upwards, and stopped only when its leafy head slammed against the stone ceiling. The tree toppled forward over Molly, and engulfed her in a brown and green embrace, until it was gone and only Molly stood before us. Wrapped from head to toe in skintight living tree bark, decorated here and there with strings of mistletoe. She looked like a wood nymph, or a dryad of old, with an elemental Druidic feel. The hole in the floor was gone, as though it had never been there, and possibly it hadn’t. Molly turned to face Uncle Jack and me, and smiled. The gleaming bark stretched easily across her face, without cracking.
“I got the idea from you, Eddie,” she said. “This way, I carry the strength and protection of the wild woods with me, wherever I go.”
“You look amazing,” I said.
“Treemendous,” said the Armourer.
“Leaf it out,” I said.
Molly shook her head sadly. “You don’t deserve me; you really don’t.”
The Armourer turned to face the Door. “Mars!” he said loudly. The Door swung open, falling back before us, and a great red glare spilled through the Doorway and into the chapel. A whole new shade of red, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Warm, almost organic . . .
“That’s it?” Molly said to the Armourer. “You just shout where you want to go?”
“They liked to keep things simple, in Arthurian times,” said the Armourer. “Now stay close, and don’t go wandering off.”
He led the way through the Door, and just like that . . .
We went to Mars.
Everything changed.
The light slammed down like a brick-red waterfall, and everywhere I looked, red planet Mars looked back. Even through my armour’s protection I could tell I’d come to a whole new place, a whole other world. I stood very still, just looking around me. The bleak and dusty surface of the Martian plateau stretched away in every direction. A huge red plain, interrupted here and there with rocks and pebbles, but nothing else. No sign of life at all. The surface of Mars looked like the bottom of the ocean: a sea bed with all the water gone, long gone. A scene not just dead and lifeless, but lacking in any quality to suggest there might ever have been life here. Except for the city. Straight ahead of us rose a huge cliff face. Brick red, rising high as a mountain range, dominating the horizon. And there, cut deep into the cliff face itself, Someone or Something had carved a great city.
Not as we would understand such a thing, of course, but the shapes and structures, the entrances and windows, the long lines and the deep-etched details, all added up to something recognisable as a city. I couldn’t even grasp the scale. I had to tilt my head right back, just to take in the jagged-towered top. There was nothing like it on Earth, in all of human history. The sense of . . . sheer scale, was utterly inhuman. I didn’t know why I was so excited, why my heart was hammering so madly in my chest. I’d been to other worlds, other dimensions, other realities . . . but this was Mars. And Mars has always had a special place in the human heart. It had honestly never even occurred to me that I would ever get to walk on the Martian plains. Behind my golden mask, I was grinning so hard it hurt my face.
So, this was it. The Martian Tombs. All that remained to mark the presence of a race that was over, finished. A race gone to dust and less than dust before Humanity ever appeared on Earth. Our closest neighbour, our older brother. It felt like walking through a graveyard.
Molly moved in close beside me. “A rose red city, half as old as Time . . .”
“That’s what most people say, the first time they see it,” said the Armourer.
I glanced behind me and realised for the first time that the Door was gone. Not a mark left on the red ground, nothing to show the Door had ever been there. We were alone, on Mars.
“Don’t worry, lad,” said the Armourer. “It’ll return, when it’s called. It’s a good Door.”
Molly couldn’t tear her eyes away from the deep red cliff face. “Look at it . . . it’s magnificent! That’s not even a human aesthetic, but it’s obvious what it is. A Martian city . . .”