“No matter how many times I see it, it still takes my breath away,” the Armourer admitted.
I turned to look at him. “You’ve been here before? You never said. How many Summit Meetings have you attended?”
“Three,” said the Armourer. “Neutral ground like this is important. When important decisions have to be made.”
“What sort of agreements are we talking about here?” I said. “I never heard anything about any of this, and I used to run the family! Or at least I thought I did . . .”
“We would have got around to telling you about things like this,” the Armourer said vaguely, “if you’d stayed in charge a bit longer. . . . Do I ask you about all your secrets?”
“Yes!” I said. “All the time!”
“I’m allowed,” said the Armourer. “I’m your uncle. I worry about you. When are you two going to get properly married, and make me a great-uncle? I’m not getting any younger, you know.”
“No,” I said. “But I bet you’re working on it.”
The Armourer shrugged easily. “Ask me something else.”
“How are we hearing each other talk?” I said. “There’s no atmosphere here.”
“Armour speaks to armour,” said the Armourer. “Though how Molly’s joining in is frankly beyond me.”
“Why did the Door drop us all the way out here, on the Martian plain?” said Molly. “It’s a good half-hour’s walk to that cliff. Why not deliver us safely inside the Martian Tombs?”
“Because the Tombs won’t let it,” said the Armourer. “This . . . is as close as the Tombs will allow.”
“Who built the city?” I said. “And when?”
“We don’t know,” said the Armourer. “We just found it. The family, I mean.”
“When?” said Molly.
“More centuries ago than I am comfortable considering,” said the Armourer. “Our family does get around. . . . You must always remember that the Droods are very old and hold many secrets. All I can tell you is that our family’s age is nothing compared to that city. The Tombs are really old. Millennia old. You’re about to ask me how we came here and discovered the Tombs, aren’t you, Eddie? Well, not even I know everything. Loath though I am to admit it. There’s supposed to be a full report on the original discovery somewhere in the Old Library. But William hasn’t found it yet. He says it’s hiding.”
I looked at Molly. “Are you all right, in your . . . bark? Breathing okay?”
“I’m fine, Eddie. Don’t fuss. I’ve probably got more air inside my woods than you have in your armour.” She stopped to look at the Armourer. “Should we be hurrying? Didn’t occur to me to wonder about your air supply.”
“We have more than enough,” the Armourer said comfortably. “But you’re right; we should get a move on. The others will be here soon.”
He started forward, across the great red plain, and Molly and I hurried after him.
My armour quickly adjusted to the different, lighter gravity, compensating for my every movement so I could walk almost normally, instead of just bouncing along. Molly quickly gave up trying, tucked her legs under her to sit cross-legged in mid-air, and floated along between me and the Armourer. There was no sound anywhere around us, just the faint thudding of our feet on the unyielding surface. No shadows, either. I looked up into the swirling dusty skies, where Martian sunlight fell through in fitful streams. It was hard to make out the sun at all, and the two moons were so small I couldn’t see them anywhere.
Molly stopped suddenly and grabbed me by the arm, bringing me to an abrupt halt. “Eddie! Did you see that?”
The Armourer stopped too, and we all looked where Molly was pointing, at the base of the great red cliff. I zoomed in through my mask for all it was worth, but I couldn’t see anything. Nothing moving at all . . .
“What?” said the Armourer, urgently. “What did you see, Molly?”
“I don’t know.” Molly’s voice was small, doubtful. “I thought I saw . . . something moving. But there’s nothing there now. Nothing at all.”
We all stood and looked, for a while.
“Nothing there now,” I said.
“It moved . . . strangely,” said Molly. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And I’ve been around.”
“It’s true,” I said. “She has.”
“Probably just a shadow,” said the Armourer. “Nothing’s lived on Mars for millions of years.”
“You sure about that?” I said.
“Absolutely,” said the Armourer. “Let’s get inside. We’ll be safer there.”
“Safe from what?” said Molly.
“From jumping at shadows,” said the Armourer, firmly.
“We will be safe, inside the Martian Tombs?” I said.
“Well . . . yes and no,” said the Armourer. “We can’t go far inside. The Tombs’ hospitality is strictly limited. But we’ll be safe enough in the entrance lobby. The only thing we really have to worry about are the other people coming to the Summit. Powerful organisations tend to send powerful representatives. Discussions can become heated, and it’s not unheard-of for there to be a certain amount of . . . physical jockeying for position. A butting of heads, if you like, to determine seniority. And all that.”
“Alpha males,” said Molly, scathingly. “Evolution—I’m looking forward to it.”
We moved on again, the Armourer leading the way. Slow plumes of crimson dust rose up with our footprints, settling gradually back again. I moved in close beside Molly.
“Did you really see something?” I said quietly. “Or were you just yanking the Armourer’s chain?”
“I don’t know,” said Molly. “I saw something . . . but maybe it was just a shadow. In case you hadn’t noticed, the shadows don’t move here like they move on Earth. Even the light is weird. This whole place gives me the creeps. Don’t you feel like there’s something watching us?”
“All the time,” I said. “Comes with being a Drood.”
The closer we got to the cliff face, the more details I could make out in the crimson city. The whole cliff face was one enormous facade, all the pieces endlessly interlocking and connecting, and all of it made up of remorselessly straight lines. Not a curve, or a dome, or a circle anywhere. Every single detail was almost unbearably sharp and clear, after unknown millennia standing alone and forgotten. Standing firm, in the face of Time and the Martian elements. Any Earth city would have been ground to dust by now . . . I slowly realised that there were patterns in the face of the city, meaningful shapes within shapes . . . but none of them made any sense to me. The face of the city was an alien mask, inscrutable and unreadable to human eyes.
We came to a halt, finally, standing at the foot of the massive cliff face. Up close, I could make out lines of . . . markings, images. Might have been writing, or language. Though whether they were names, or instructions, or warnings . . . was beyond me. Each symbol was almost insanely intricate. Just running my eyes along them was enough to make my head ache, as though I was trying to assimilate concepts the human mind couldn’t cope with. I pointed them out to the Armourer and he just shrugged.
“Don’t ask me, lad. Haven’t a clue. Don’t know anyone who has. There’s no one left to tell us what they might have meant. No Rosetta Stone, to help us translate them. The words of a lost race . . . their meaning lost, in Time.”
I deliberately didn’t look up the cliff face. The sheer size and scale of it seemed to hang over me, as though it may come crashing down at any moment. Usually, when I’m wearing my armour I feel like I’m ready to take on anything in the world, but I didn’t feel like that here, on this world. My exuberance at making it to Mars was gone; I felt alone, in a strange place, beyond my understanding.