After the incident, the conflict sharply died down, as if a bucket of water was dumped on brawling cats. I did not know whether it was the role my words had played, or Mrs. Clements had managed to cool down her subordinates’ souls, but common sense unexpectedly prevailed over magic. They began treating each other in a formal manner (“Mr. Ferro”, “Mr. Smith”), speaking in a jaw-twisting literary style. I sighed furtively; other members of the expedition stayed quiet. Yes, that’s what happens when the number of dark magicians per square meter goes overboard. Will I grow up the same? How sad that would be.
Chapter 5
After a week of digging in the dump, we found a variety of items, but they were all related to the period of the prison’s construction and didn’t have any historical value. Talk started that there were no sand gnats on the island or they were apparently not associated with Capetower. Mrs. Clements categorically disagreed with that view.
“We need to expand the boundaries of the excavation,” her eyes burned with fanaticism. “The commission’s report talks about ruins five kilometers to the south. There we will surely find something!”
More ruins and uninhabited at that. Magnificent! Intuition told me that we might find something there that we did not expect.
Mr. Smith took Pierre as an assistant for the initial examination of the new place, and the fool was terribly proud of it. Strangely enough, they both returned safe and sound. Mr. Smith was carrying a chest, the contents of which he did not show to anyone but Mrs. Clements. There was something important in it, no doubt, because all discussions had come to an end, and our redeployment was scheduled for the next day.
Uncle Gordon and I, and Pierre and one of the guards, Gerick, volunteered. I noticed that the base camp remained without any dark mages, but I thought that Mr. Smith knew better where we were needed most.
“What, they didn’t take your bootlicker?” Uncle remarked venomously.
It took me some time to realize who he had in mind.
“I never thought that you would have such a thirst for power, nephew! I would never be tempted to lord over that pale worm.”
Was he talking about Alex? I hadn’t noticed any ass-kissing in the white—it was just his admiring nature. Of course, I was flattered that the guy only a year older than me recognized my authority. The point was not in lording over him, but rather in my Big Brother complex, an attitude that awoke in me after visiting home. I hadn’t previously known how much I would like the feeling of being in charge of the family. But why was Uncle sticking his nose into my business?
“Jealous?” I asked innocently.
Ha! He was jealous and even blushed! Yes, Uncle, you used to be the first guy in the village, but it won’t stay that way forever: young people are nipping at your heels. Call me wicked, but to be an object of envy is an awesome feeling! Uncle, realizing his mistake, did not touch this subject any longer, but harm had been done already: for the first time I clearly realized that we were the dark too, which meant that a time would come to sort things out between us. Not yet; right now my Source of Power, threats of the King’s Island, and the ever-present money shortage problem were on the agenda. No time for rearranging our hierarchy! I needed to figure out how to divert Uncle from thinking about it. Maybe I should confront him with Mr. Smith again?
As it turned out, I worried for nothing—the King’s Island found a way to distract us.
The new excavation site was located in the most inaccessible part of the shore. How the notorious commission had managed to discover it remained a mystery. Nevertheless, it had been found, identified on maps, and even given a name: Cape Solitude. We landed there almost as a real military unit, on a dinghy from the main ship, literally squeezing through the coastal cliffs. I was a little worried that we would have to commit such a feat every day. Behind the rocks there wasn’t even a bay, but just a shallow lagoon, where remnants of an ancient road began. Nobody could guess when, why, and by whom it was built; it would have been impossible for a cargo ship to access that place. Our goal was located well above sea level, on top of a mountain with a cut-off summit where geometrically proportional heaps of sand and gravel signified the remains of three or four large buildings. By size they resembled Capetower, the steel fortress; apparently, that was the reason why Mrs. Clements liked them. For about twenty minutes we clambered up to the top like beasts of burden and quietly swore. After I dumped my first cargo load on the ground, I allowed myself to breathe and wander through the ruins.
Close up, the ruins looked rather chaotic. The landscape was typical for the King’s Island: rocks, rocks, and more rocks. Not a speck of green, not even moss. The walls of the ancient houses had settled and collapsed unevenly; in some places there was only debris lying in big heaps, while in others you could guess the contours of the first floor. There were no steel plates, but we came across broken glass, thin and opaque, and once I spotted something resembling a weathered bone. Everything else… did not look like people ever lived here. The place lacked many small details, traces of human hands; it had almost returned to the silence of the primeval wilderness, became dissolved in time.
I was overcome by a feeling of something unnatural, but I could not quite pin down its cause. After a walk around the ruins, the strange feeling hadn’t left me but rather increased in intensity, as if I had seen something odd but could not place when or where. Drawn by the hard-to-explain concern, I entered the remnants of the ancient edifice and looked around: a mountain of rubble towered to the right, presumably the former top floors of the structure; to the left small stones ran down the stairs to the entrance of the basement. Darkness glowered at me through the basement’s doorway slit. The silence was soft and promising. At night it was probably quite ugly here; if anything happened, there would be nowhere to run. I cautiously peered down and began actively disliking the place.
The stones cracked behind my back—Pierre stepped into the ruins after me.
“What, are you scared?” he snorted and pretended to push me into the basement. My elbow in his stomach was quite reaclass="underline" some things you just don’t play around with. “What the..? It was a joke!”
“You’re an idiot!” I was furious. “There’s something… someone over there! I feel it!”
Uncle came close at the sound of our quarrel, looked down into the basement, and turned very gloomy: “Call Smith over here! There is something otherworldly in there, but I can’t make out what; I am only the sixth level.”
At Redstone, you couldn’t get higher than a lab techie with the sixth level. Why in hell did Uncle pick a fight with a combat magician then?
Our overseer was unhappy that we distracted him from the unloading, but when he looked into the hole, he didn’t just turn pale—he became downright green.
“Get out of here immediately!”
Pushing puzzled Pierre aside, I ran head over heels to the shore; when a dark magician orders you to take off, you obey quickly. And cowardice has nothing to do with this.
“Into the boat, into the boat!” Mr. Smith must have torn his lungs up screaming. “Abandon equipment, leave now!”
I got there first, charging up the slope in a record-breaking six minutes; Uncle was not far behind me, and Mr. Smith bravely walked last, almost backwards, though the day was bright, and the supernatural wasn’t supposed to haunt us just yet. What had we discovered there?
“If we’re lucky, that was Rustle,” Uncle growled, answering the unasked question. “If not…”
It was difficult to imagine something worse than Rustle, except for a gang of ghouls: the latter could chase you even in the day time. Had Pierre entered the basement, Rustle would have marked him and, perhaps, let him go the first time. But after a few days the victim would have experienced an unbearable urge to come back and, preferably, not alone. Children were particularly susceptible: there were times when the first victim of the monster’s hug came back accompanied by ten to fifteen people—friends, acquaintances, parents. In contrast to the predatory echo, Rustle was a mobile creature, which meant that it could try to catch us in the darkness.