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‘You know, make it work, like a machine.’
‘This isn’t a machine in the usual sense of the word,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t require activation. In the right environment, with the right operator, it simply does what it’s supposed to. Now, let’s make certain we do, in fact, have the portal before us, first of all. Jack, did you bring the witching rod?’
After a flicker of panic during which Jack thought he had left it behind, he discovered that it was indeed still inside his backpack.
‘Yes, Professor.’
‘Please direct it at the painting and tell me what you feel.’
Jack did so, and was rewarded by an immediate tremor through the wire. When he lifted his hand, the wire bent noticeably down, striving to reach the painting.
‘It’s pulling me,’ he said. ‘Pulling me closer!’
‘As expected. Good. Jaide, can you make absolutely certain that the constructor is aligned with the centre of the frame?’
‘Yes, Professor.’ She bent over the tube and sighted along it, shifting it an inch to the right. That was better, but it still needed a book or two under the end closer to her to make it perfectly level. Once she had done that, she nodded.
‘Now, Jack, tie the rope around your sister’s waist. I trust you can tie a good bowline?’
‘A what?’
The professor explained how to tie the knot, and Jack quickly caught on, making a secure loop around Jaide.
‘Now wind the rope around that column a few times and hold the end.’
Jack wound the rope around one of the columns that supported the balcony above them and busied himself with another knot. Two of them, to be completely sure. Perhaps three.
‘Are you sure this is safe?’ asked Ari, peering out from behind the stack of boxes as Jack did as he was told, keeping a tight hold on the other end as he did so.
‘Is a door safe?’ asked Professor Olafsson.
‘Of course it is,’ said Ari, ‘unless it slams shut on your tail. It’s what might be on the other side that worries me.’
‘There’s no reason to be fretful. This is a hiding place, nothing more. Were we attempting a journey to the Dimension of Evil, on the other hand . . .’
‘What?’ asked Ari nervously.
‘The Dimension of Evil,’ said the professor calmly. ‘Where The Evil comes from.’
‘So this doorway could go there?’
‘Oh no, very little chance of that!’ chuckled the death mask. ‘No Warden would hide a gold card there. You might as well just hand it over to The Evil.’
‘Little chance – that’s still a chance,’ said the cat. ‘Maybe we should think about this. Jaide?’
Jaide wasn’t listening to him. She had got the tube almost perfectly in alignment. It just needed a nudge back to the left. She checked again. Perhaps a touch more . . .
The moment her fingers touched the brass, she was wrenched off her feet and fired along its length like a cannonball down a cannon. The shelves of the library blurred around her. Jack, his mouth open in an O of shock and the rope whipping through his hands, flashed past in an instant. The canvas ballooned ahead of her, and the frame swept by, flashing gold all around.
She jerked to a halt, wobbling in space as though she’d landed on an invisible trampoline. Gasping, she looked around her.
Jaide was inside the painting. There was the woman playing cards just a step or two away, as three-dimensional as life, albeit frozen into immobility under the spreading branches of the tree. There were the fields, rising and falling in golden waves to the distant hills, and there was the brick path that snaked between them.
Funny, she thought. They had never noticed that the path was made of yellow bricks.
Follow the yellow brick road, she thought, and raised her right foot to walk further into the world of the painting, where the sky was smudged and the hills were blurry, as though painted in a hurry.
‘Jaide!’
The voice came from behind her, wobbly and distant, as though it had travelled through miles of water.
‘Jaide, come back!’
It was Jack. She turned to look behind her, and saw his face in the frame, as though he was now a painting. A moving painting, hanging against an endless sunset-hued sky. He was banging against the invisible boundary separating them, calling her name. The rope around her waist pulled insistently at her, vanishing into thin air like the brass tube did where it entered the real world.
‘Jack, what’s wrong?’
‘You have to come back!’
‘But I’m perfectly safe here. See?’
She indicated the calm world around her with a sweep of one hand. What could be safer than a painting of a woman playing cards? All she had to do was find the gold card, and she could go.
‘Jaide, quickly! We’re under attack!’
There was an edge of panic to his voice that couldn’t be denied. She took one step towards him, and was instantly snatched up by the cross-continuum conduit constructor and whisked back to her world in a breathtaking rush.
She staggered. Jack grabbed her arm and stopped her from falling. Before she could ask what was going on, there came a booming crash at the library door. Cornelia took off from the head of the Mister Rourke statue and flew squawking up to the landing. Ari stood between the twins and the door, staring up at the shivering wood with his fangs bared.
‘What is it?’ asked Jaide.
‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. ‘But I don’t think the door’s going to hold.’
Another crash shook the door, then another. The wood splintered inwards, making a gaping hole. A metal-clad hand reached through the hole and twisted around to grab the handle.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Booby Trap!
‘QUICK!’ SAID JACK, WHO HAD let go of the rope and was lifting a box of books. ‘We’ve got to barricade the door!’
Jaide was frozen for a second by a glimpse through the hole of a domed, metallic head. She thought it was a monster of some kind, but then she realised it was actually a suit of armour – the suit of armour that normally stood right outside the library, now moving on its own!
She ran to help Jack pile boxes against the door but was pulled up short by the rope catching on something. Quickly stepping out of the loop, she pushed a box up against the door. The armoured gauntlet couldn’t quite reach the doorknob, so it was making the hole larger, pulling off splinters of solid mahogany the size of Jack’s hands as easily as he might snap a matchstick.
‘What’s making the armour move?’ shouted Jaide. ‘Is it The Evil?’
‘It can’t be. We’re inside the wards!’ exclaimed the professor. ‘I don’t . . . ah . . . It must have been you!’
‘Me?’ exclaimed Jaide. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
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‘You went into the painting. That’s what woke them up. They’re guards!’
‘We triggered a booby trap?’ said Jack, thinking of his father’s old adventure novels. That was what criminals used when they really wanted to keep something hidden. ‘How do we switch it off?’
‘I don’t know, dear boy.’
‘There must be a way,’ cried Jack. He threw another box on the makeshift wall in front of the door, just as another hand punched through the wood, emerging just above his head. The jointed metal fingers lunged at him, snapping open and shut like the jaws of a metal mouth. Jack staggered back, the hand missing the collar of his T-shirt by a fraction of an inch.
With a deafening crash, the doors burst open, sending the twins and boxes of books flying everywhere. One metal figure thrust through the jagged splinters with arms outstretched, closely followed by a second. The visors on the second one flipped open, revealing that the space within contained nothing but a startled spider.
‘Back!’ shouted Jack.
He retreated, snatching up Ari, who looked as if he was prepared to stand up to an army of magical armour but was more likely to get squashed before they even noticed him, and ran to join Jaide, who had fallen back near the painting.
A breeze was beginning to whip up around Jaide, as she raised her hands and called upon her Gift. Jack’s Gift was also stirring, reaching out to the shadows cast by the setting sun, which was painting dark lines down the walls and bookcases. Jack could hide in them, but that wouldn’t do the others any good. Although maybe, he thought, if he held on very tight, he could take Ari with him . . .
The leading suit of armour bulled through the hanging remnants of the door and the fallen boxes, and clanked towards them. As it reached the first line of shadow, Jack had another idea. He reached out with his Gift towards the shadow, and it responded by twitching like a snake, the clear line from the window now rippling under his invisible hand.
Jack focused upon it, dragging it up the suit of armour, and then wrapping it around the helmet like a scarf of darkness. Even though the armour was nothing but metal and there were no eyes within the helmet to be confused or blinded, it still stopped and clutched at the veil of darkness that grew thicker and thicker around its head. Its strong metal fingers found purchase on nothing more substantial than air.
