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chapter-7-licketyspit

The Fowl Estate, Several Feet Belowground

Artemis tumbled down and down, striking knees and elbows against the crooks of roots and sharp limestone corners that protruded from the earth like half-buried books. Clumps of dirt crumbled around him, and stones rattled down his shirt and up his pant legs. His view was obstructed by the twirl of tumble and layers of earth, but there was a glowing above. And below too? Was that possible?

Artemis was confused by the thump of wood behind one ear and the luminous glow from below. It was below, wasn’t it?

I feel like Alice falling into Wonderland.

A line came to him:

It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.

No fall can last forever when gravity is involved, and Artemis’s descent was mercifully gradual as the crater funneled to a bottleneck, which Butler and Holly had the decency to block with their tangled frames and limbs before they plopped through the hole. Rough hands grabbed at Artemis, tugging him through to a tunnel beneath.

Artemis landed on the body heap and blinked the mud from his eyes. Someone, or something, stood naked before him, an ethereal figure glowing with divine light from head to foot. It reached out a shining hand and spoke in a deep movie promo voice: “Pull my finger.”

Artemis relaxed neck muscles that he hadn’t realized were tensed. “Mulch.” “The one and only. Saving your brainiac butt once more. Remind me, who’s supposed to be the genius around here?” “Mulch,” said Artemis again.

Mulch pointed his proffered finger like a gun. “Aha. You’re repeating yourself. You once told me that repeating yourself is an exercise in redundancy. Well, who’s redundant now, Mud Boy? What good did your genius do you with those freaks up there?” “None,” admitted Artemis. “Can we argue later?”

“’Cause you’re losing the argument,” scoffed Mulch.

“No, because those freaks are on our tail. We need to retreat and regroup.” “Don’t worry about that,” said Mulch, reaching a forearm into a hole in the tunnel wall and yanking out a thick root. “Nobody’s following us anywhere once I collapse the tunnel mouth. But you might want to scoot forward a yard or two.” The earth above them rumbled like thunderclouds cresting a low mountain, and Artemis was gripped with a sudden certainty that they were all about to be crushed. He scurried forward and flattened himself against the cold dark mud wall, as if that could possibly make any difference.

But Mulch’s tunnel held its integrity, and only the spot where Artemis had been was completely blocked.

Mulch wrapped his fingers around Butler’s ankle and, with some effort, hauled the unconscious bodyguard along the tunnel floor.

“You carry Holly. Gently now. By the looks of your hand, she drove those spirits away and saved your life. Before I saved it. Probably just after Butler saved it. You seeing a pattern emerging, Artemis? You starting to realize who the liability is here?” Artemis looked at his hand. He was branded with a spiral rune where Holly had blasted him. The last globs of Berserker ectoplasm slicking his hair caused him to shudder at the sight.

A protection rune.

Holly had branded them to save them. And to think he had doubted her.

Artemis scooped up Holly and followed the glowing dwarf, tentatively feeling his way with tapping toes.

“Slow down,” he called. “It’s dark in here.”

Mulch’s voice echoed along the tunnel. “Follow the globes, Arty. I gave ‘em an extra coating of dwarf spit, the magical solution that can do it all, from glow in the dark to repel ghostly boarders. I should bottle this stuff. Follow the globes.” Artemis squinted at the retreating glow and could indeed distinguish two wobbling globes that shone a little brighter than the rest.

Once he realized what the globes were, Artemis decided not to follow too closely. He had seen those globes in action and still had the occasional nightmare.

The tunnel undulated and curved until Artemis’s internal compass surrendered what little sense of direction it had. He traipsed behind Mulch’s glowing rear end, glancing down at his unconscious friend in his arms. She seemed so small and frail, though Artemis had seen her take on a horde of trolls in his defense.

“The odds are against us, as they have been so often, my friend,” he whispered, as much to himself as to Holly. He ran a rough calculation, factoring in the desperate situations they had endured over the past few years, the relative IQ of Opal Koboi, and the approximate number of opponents he had glimpsed aboveground. “I would estimate our chances of survival to be less than fifteen percent. But, on the plus side, we have survived, indeed been victorious, against greater odds. Once.” Obviously Artemis’s whispers carried down the tunnel, for Mulch’s voice drifted back to him.

“You need to stop thinking with your head, Mud Boy, and start thinking with your heart.” Artemis sighed. The heart was an organ for pumping oxygen-rich blood to the cells. It could no more think than an apple could tap-dance. He was about to explain this to the dwarf when the tunnel opened to a large chamber, and Artemis’s breath was taken away.

The chamber was the size of a small barn, with walls sloping to an apex. There were feeder tunnels dotted at various heights, and blobs of glowing gunk suckered to exposed rock served as a lighting system. Artemis had seen this particular system before.

“Dwarf phlegm,” he said, nodding at a low cluster of tennis ball–sized blobs. “Hardens once excreted, and glows with a luminescence unmatched in nature.” “It’s not all phlegm,” said the dwarf mysteriously, and for once Artemis did not feel like getting to the bottom of Mulch’s mystery, as the bottom of Mulch’s mysteries was generally in the vicinity of Mulch’s mysterious bottom. Artemis placed Holly gently on a bed of fake-fur coats and recognized a designer label.

“These are my mother’s coats.”

Mulch dropped Butler’s leg. “Yep. Well, possession is nine-tenths of the law, so why don’t you take your tenth back up to the surface and talk larceny with the thing that used to be Opal Koboi?” This was a good point. Artemis had no desire to be booted out of this sanctuary.

“Are we safe down here? Won’t they follow us?”

“They can try,” said Mulch, then he spat a glowing wad of spit on top of a fading spatter. “But it would take a couple of days with industrial drills and sonar. And even then I could bring the whole thing down with a well-placed burst of dwarf gas.” Artemis found this hard to believe. “Seriously. One blast, and this entire structure comes tumbling down?” Mulch adopted a heroic pose, one foot on a rock, hands on hips. “In my line of work, you gotta be ready to move on. Just walk away.” Artemis did not appreciate the heroic pose. “Please, Mulch, I beg you. Put on some pants.” Mulch grudgingly agreed, tugging faded tunneling breeches over his meaty thighs. This was as far as he was prepared to go, and his furry chest and prodigious gut remained glowing and bare.

“The pants I will wear for Holly’s sake, but this is my home, Artemis. In the cave, Diggums keeps it casual.” Water dripped from a stalactite into a shimmering pool. Artemis dipped his hand in, then laid his palm on Holly’s forehead. She was still unconscious following her second physical trauma in as many minutes, and a single spark of magic squatted on her head wound, buzzing like an industrious golden bee. The bee seemed to notice Artemis’s hand and skipped onto the brand, calming his skin but leaving a raised scar. Once it had finished its work, the magic returned to Holly and spread itself like a salve across her forehead. Holly’s breathing was deep and regular, and she seemed more like a person asleep than unconscious.

“How long have you been here, Mulch?”

“Why? Are you looking for back rent?”

“No, I am simply collating information at the moment. The more I know, the more comprehensively I can plan.” Mulch nudged the lid from a cooler, which Artemis recognized from an old picnic set of the family’s, and pulled out a bloodred salami.

“You keep saying that ‘bout comprehensive planning, et cetera, and we keep ending up eyeball-deep in the troll hole without spring boots.” Artemis had long ago stopped asking Mulch to explain his metaphors. He was desperate for any information that might give him an edge, something that would help him wrest control of this desperate situation.

Focus, he told himself. There is so much at stake here. More than ever before.

Artemis felt ragged. His chest heaved from recent healings and exertions. Uncharacteristically, he did not know what to do, other than wait for his friends to wake up.

He shuffled across to Butler, checking his pupils for signs of brain injury. Holly had shot him in the neck, and they had taken quite a tumble. He was relieved to find both pupils to be of equal size.

Mulch squatted beside him, glowing like a dumpy demigod, which was a little disturbing if you knew what the dwarf was actually like. Mulch Diggums was about as far from godliness as a hedgehog was from smoothliness.

“What do you think of my place?” asked the dwarf.

“This is…” Artemis gestured to their surroundings. “Amazing. You hollowed all of this out yourself. How long have you been here?” The dwarf shrugged. “Coupla years. Off and on, you know. I have a dozen of these little bolt-holes all over the place. I got tired of being a law-abiding citizen. So I siphon off a little juice from your geothermal rods and pirate your cable.” “Why live down here at all?”

“I don’t live live here. I crash here occasionally. When things get hot. I just pulled a pretty big job and needed to hide out for a while.” Artemis looked around. “A pretty big job, you say? So where’s all the loot?” Mulch wagged a finger that glowed like a party stick. “That, as my cousin Nord would say, is where my improvised lie falls apart.” Artemis put two and two together and arrived at a very unpleasant four.

“You were here to rob me!”

“No, I wasn’t. How dare you?!”

“You are lurking down here to tunnel into Fowl Manor. Again.”

“Lurking is not a nice word. Makes me sound like a sea serpent. I like to think I was hiding in the shadows. Cool, like a cat burglar.” “You eat cats, Mulch.”

Mulch joined his hands. “Okay. I admit it. I might have been planning to have a peek into the art vault. But look at the funny side. Stealing stuff from a criminal mastermind. That’s gotta be ironic. You brainiacs like irony, right?” Artemis was appalled. “You can’t keep art here. It’s damp and muddy.” “Didn’t do the pharaohs any harm,” argued the dwarf.

Holly, who lay on the ground beside them, opened her eyes, coughed, then executed a move that was much more difficult than it looked by actually springing vertically from where she lay and landing on her feet. Mulch was impressed until Holly attempted to strangle him with his own beard, at which point he stopped being impressed and got busy choking.

This was a problem with waking up after a magical healing: often the brain is totally unharmed, but the mind is confused. It is a strange feeling to be smart and dopey at the same time. Add a time lapse into the mix, and a person will often find it difficult to transition from a dream state to the waking world, so it is advisable to place the patient in tranquil surroundings, perhaps with some childhood toys heaped around the pillow. Unfortunately for Holly, she had lost consciousness in the middle of a life-or-death struggle and awoke to find a glowing monster looming over her. So, she understandably overreacted.

It took about five seconds before she realized who Mulch was.

“Oh,” she mumbled sheepishly. “It’s you.”

“Yes,” said Mulch, then coughed up something that squeaked and crawled away. “If you could please relinquish the beard—I just had a salon conditioning treatment done.” “Really?”

“Of course not really. I live in a cavern. I eat dirt. What do you think?” Holly finger-combed Mulch’s beard a little, then climbed down from the dwarf’s shoulders.

“I was just sitting in spit, right?” she said, grimacing.

“It’s not all spit,” said Artemis.

“Well, Artemis,” she said, rubbing the faint red mark on her forehead, “what’s the plan?” “And hello to you, too,” said Mulch. “And don’t thank me. Saving your life once more has been my pleasure. Just one of the many services offered by Diggums Airlines.” Holly scowled at him. “I have a warrant out for you.”

“So why don’t you arrest me, then?”

“The secure facilities aren’t really operating at the moment.”

Mulch took a moment to process this, and the trademark bravado drained from his craggy features, crease by crease. It almost seemed like his glow dimmed a few notches.

“Oh, holy lord Vortex,” he said, tracing the sacred sign of the bloated intestine over his stomach to ward off evil. “What has Opal done now?” Holly sat on a mound, tapping her wrist computer to see if anything worked.

“She’s found and opened the Berserker Gate.”

“And that’s not the worst thing,” said Artemis. “She killed her younger self, which destroyed everything Opal has invented or influenced since then. Haven is shut down, and humans are back in the Stone Age.” Holly’s face was grim in the glow of luminous spit. “Actually, Artemis, finding the Berserker Gate is the worst thing, because there are two locks. The first releases the Berserkers…” Mulch jumped into the pause. “And the second? Come on, Holly, this is no time for theatrics.” Holly hugged her knees like a lost child. “The second releases Armageddon. If Opal succeeds in opening it, every single human on the surface of the earth will be killed.” Artemis felt his head spin as the bloody scale of Opal’s plan became clear.

Butler chose this moment to regain his senses. “Juliet is on the surface with Masters Beckett and Myles, so I guess we can’t let that happen.” They sat in a tight group around a campfire of glowing spit while Holly told what had been considered a legend but was now being treated as pretty accurate historical fact.

“Most of this you will already know from the spirits who tried to invade you.” Butler rubbed his branded neck. “Not me. I was out cold. All I have is fractured images. Pretty gross stuff, even for me. Severed limbs, people being buried alive. Dwarfs riding trolls into battle? Could that have happened?” “It all happened,” Holly confirmed. “There was a dwarf corps that rode trolls.” “Yep,” said Mulch. “They called themselves the Troll Riders. Pretty cool name, right? There was a group that only went out at night who called themselves the Night Troll Riders.” Artemis couldn’t help himself. “What were the daytime troll riders called?” “Those gauchos were called the Daytime Troll Riders,” answered Mulch blithely. “Head to toe in leather. They smelled like the inside of a stinkworm’s bladder, but they got the job done.” Holly could have wept with frustration, but she’d learned during her brief period as a private investigator when Mulch had served as her partner that the dwarf would shut up only when he was good and ready. Artemis, on the other hand, should know better.

“Artemis,” she said sharply, “don’t encourage him. We are on a timetable.” Artemis’s expression seemed almost helpless in the luminescence. “Of course. No more comments. I am feeling a little overwhelmed, truth be told. Continue, Holly, please.” And so Holly told her story, her features sharply lit from below by the unconventional glow. Butler could not help but be reminded of horror stories told to him and his fellow scouts by Master Prunes on weekend trips to the Dan-yr-Ogof cave in Wales. Holly’s delivery was bare bones, but the circumstances sent a shiver along his spine.

And I do not shiver easily, thought the big man, shifting uncomfortably on the muddied root that served as a seat.

“When I was a child, my father told me the story of Taillte almost every night so that I would never forget the sacrifice our ancestors made. Some laid down their lives, but a few went beyond even that and deferred their afterlives.” Holly closed her eyes and tried to tell it as she had heard it. “Ten thousand years ago, humans fought to eradicate the fairy families from the face of the earth. There was no reason for them to do this. Fairies are in the main peace-loving people, and their healing abilities and special connection to the land were of benefit to all, but always among the humans there are those individuals who would control all they see and are threatened by that which they do not understand.” Artemis refrained from making the obvious point that it was one of the fairy folk who was more or less attempting to destroy the world presently, but he filed it away to trot out at a later date.

“And so the People took refuge on the misty isle of Ériú, the home of magic, where they were most powerful. And they dug their healing pits and massed their army at the Plains of Taillte for a last stand.” The others were silent now as Holly spoke, for they could see the scene in their own memories.

“It was a brief battle,” said Holly bitterly. “The humans showed no mercy, and it was clear by the first night that the People were doomed to extermination. And so the Council decided that they would retreat to the catacombs below the earth from whence they had come before the dawn of the age of man. All except the demons, who used magic to lift their island out of time.” “Okay,” said Mulch. “I was sticking with it, but then you said whence, so now I have to go to the fridge.” Holly scowled briefly, then continued. By now everyone knew that eating was how Mulch handled bad news, and good news, and banal news. All news, really.

“But the Council reasoned that even their underground refuge would be in danger from the humans, and so they built a gate with an enchanted lock. If this lock were ever opened, then the souls of the Berserker warriors buried around the gate would rise up and possess what bodies they could to prevent humans from gaining access.” Artemis could still remember the sickly stench he’d experienced when the fairy Berserker had attempted to occupy his mind.

“And if the Berserker Gate were opened by fairy hand, then the warriors would be in thrall to that fairy to fight at his or her command. In this case, Opal Koboi.

“This spell was conjured to last for a century at least, until the People were safely away and the location of the gate forgotten.” Holly’s lip curled as she said this, and Artemis made a deduction.

“But there was a betrayal?”

Holly’s eyes flickered in surprise. “How…? Yes, of course you would guess, Artemis. We were betrayed by the infamous gnome warlock, Shayden Fruid, once known as Shayden the Bold, but since called Shayden the Shame of Taillte. There’s an inverted statue of Shayden in the chapel of Hey-Hey, which is not meant as a compliment, believe me.” “What happened, Holly?” said Artemis, urging her on.

“Shayden Fruid hid in a conjured mist until the dying Berserkers were buried around the gate and the People had descended into the underworld, and then he attempted to tamper with the lock. Not only did he intend to open the lock for the humans, but also to lead the enthralled Berserkers against their own people.” “This guy was a real sweetheart,” Mulch called, his face bathed in fridge glow. “Legend has it that he once sold his own mother down the river. And I’m not talking metaphorically here. He actually put his mother in a boat and traded her in the next village downstream. That should have been a red flag right there.” “But Shayden’s plan failed, didn’t it?” said Artemis.

“Yes, because the secret stage of the plan called for someone to stay behind and collapse the valley on top of the gate. A great warlock who could maintain the mist until the gate was buried, and then use it to cover his getaway. As the demons had already left, only the elfin warlock Bruin Fadda, whose hatred of the humans was legendary, could complete the mission, climbing to the lip of the valley to conjure the collapse that had been prepared by a team of dwarf engineers.” Somehow it seemed to Artemis, Butler, and Holly that they had all experienced what had happened. Perhaps it was the last remnant of Berserker plasma on their brows, but suddenly they could hear the breath in Bruin Fadda’s throat as he raced down the hillside, screaming at Shayden to step away from the lock.

“They struggled fiercely, each mighty warrior mortally wounding the other. And at the end, Bruin, dying and driven mad with pain, hate, and despair, conjured a second lock, using his own blood and forbidden black magic. If that lock were to be opened, then Danu, the Earth mother, would surrender her magic to the air in a blast of power that would annihilate every human on the surface, and the People would be safe forever.” “Just humans?”

Holly woke from her reverie. “Just humans. The hated oppressors. Bruin had lost every member of his family in a raid. He was beyond reason.” Butler rubbed his chin. “Every weapon has a sell-by date, Holly. It’s been ten thousand years. Couldn’t this spell have a half-life or something?” “It’s possible. But the Berserkers are loose, and the first lock worked just fine.” “Why would Opal want to open the second lock?”

Artemis knew the answer to that one. “It’s political. There is a huge lobby in Haven that has been advocating for full-scale war for years. Opal would be a hero to them.” Holly nodded. “Exactly. Plus, Opal is so far gone now that she seriously believes that her destiny is to be some kind of messiah. You saw what she was prepared to do just to escape.” “Do tell,” said Mulch.

“She had her younger self kidnapped, and she then set up a fake ransom demand for her present self, so that we would put her inside a natural nuclear reactor, thus helping her to generate enough black magic for her to open the first lock.” Mulch slammed the fridge door. “I am sincerely sorry I asked. This is typical of the kind of mess you get us into, Artemis.” “Hey,” snapped Holly. “This is not the time to blame Artemis.”

“Thank you,” said Artemis. “Finally.”

“There will be plenty of time to blame Artemis later, when this is resolved.” Artemis folded his arms with exaggerated movements. “That is uncalled for, Holly. I am as much a victim here as everyone else. Even those Berserkers are being used to fight a war that ended ten thousand years ago. Couldn’t we simply tell them the war is over? They are guarding a gate that I presume doesn’t even lead anywhere anymore.” “That’s true. We haven’t used the old networks for millennia.”

“Can’t you somehow communicate that?”

“No. They are under fairy bonds. Nothing we say will make an impact.” “How much time do we have?” asked Artemis.

“I don’t know,” admitted Holly. “My father told me the legend as a bedtime story. It was passed down to him from his father. The whole thing came from the mind of an empath warlock who synched with Bruin Fadda in his final moments. All we know is that the second lock is complex magic. Opal is running on black magic now, but that has a high price and fades fast. She will want to get it open before dawn, while the fairy moon is still high. Her Berserkers will be bare wisps of their former selves after all this time, and they can’t last much longer than that. Some will give in to the afterlife’s call before then.” Artemis turned to Butler for a question about tactics. This was the bodyguard’s area of expertise. “How should Opal deploy her forces?” “Opal will have most of those Berserkers gathered around her, watching her back while she picks that magical lock. The rest will guard the walls and run roving patrols around the estate, armed to the teeth, no doubt. Probably with my arms.” “Do we have any weapons?” asked Artemis.

“I lost my Neutrino after the crash,” said Holly.

“I had to sign in my handgun at Haven immigration,” said Butler. “Never had a chance to pick it up.” Mulch returned to the campfire. “You did say every human on the surface would be killed. I just want to point out that you are underground. So you could, you know, just stay here.” Holly shot him a pretty raw poisonous look.

“Hey, no need for that. It’s good to explore all the options.”

“If Opal does open the second lock, not only will it kill billions of humans, but it will spark off an unprecedented civil war among the People. After which Opal Koboi would probably declare herself supreme empress.” “So you’re saying we should stop her?”

“I’m saying we have to stop her, but I don’t know how.”

Artemis looked toward the heavens as if divine inspiration were forthcoming, but all he could see were the glowing walls of Mulch’s subterranean refuge and the inky blackness of tunnel mouths dotted along their surfaces.

“Mulch,” he said, pointing. “Where do those tunnels lead?”