CHAPTER SIXTY THREE


    So three immediate jobs to undertake: make people disappear; retrieve the book; deal with the two so-called rulers who were currently simmering in the phone shaped booths.


    ‘Hurry up, new Elion,’ said the Emperor from his booth. His voice was shrill and lady-like, ‘Release the book and send me to Earth.’


    ‘Yes, hurry,’ said Trinket from her booth. ‘The City of Coronet needs a ruler. Gibor is at the gate and he must be defeated.’


    Tom glanced at them then looked back to where the ravens were now roaring around the machine, flying so fast they were black blurs against the torch light.


    A single raven broke away from the flying flurry of raven’s and descended to hover just above the throne, its black eyes just inches from Tom’s eyes.


    ‘I know,’ said Tom to the bird. ‘I know what I am here for. The helmet has made me remember everything.’


    Tom reached over to the left where the metal plate held the single red button. A plate slowly began to lower on a set of hinges. Down and down until it formed a shelf. On the shelf was a book. The book was beautiful. It had a deep green cover, and its pages were made of thin gold. The cover was embossed with whorls, and a raised portrait of a naked man (with a cloth tied in pleats around his most private parts). The name of the book was Wyld Book of Secrets.


    Tom reached over and took hold of the book. It was incredibly heavy. He had to prise his finger under the book, then grip with both hands to lift it. The pages must be made of pure gold. The man on the cover was mystical and noble, like a god or a demigod. He stood on an angle with one hand on a cane. He had his head back and face angle toward the sky. His nose was long and noble and his ears were small and his hair was dark and curly. There seemed to be a halo around him, a lighter green to the darker green of the background. He wore an expression as though he was listening to someone speak from the sky.


    Looking closely, Tom saw that what he had thought were random designs and whorls on the book’s cover were actually vines and trees and owls and bees, and in the background there was something that looked like a dinosaur, or a dragon.


    Tom placed the book back on the shelf, and then looked behind the shelf. A whole system of mechanical complexity had been exposed when the shelf folded down.


    Here was a dish, and in this dish were dozens of small metal spheres, like ball bearings, only manufactured of something that might have been metal or might have been stone (or might have been something else entirely). Feeding the small balls into the dish was a series of tubular openings, the tubes running up vertically and wrapping around each other until they got inserted into another strange machine, this one looking biological, like the interwoven strands of an alien brain.


    The raven that had been hovering in front of Tom’s face cranked its head down and to the right and, with its wings doing advanced aeronautical adjustments, the raven went into a stall, then rolled, then reached with its claws to grip a metal bar that ran like a perch across the top of the bowl of mineral balls. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    The raven dipped its beak into the dish and raised its head with a ball in its beak. It swept its wings up and with a few powerful thrusts it flew straight up and out from the machine, then up and up until it disappeared out of the tower through one of the arrow slit windows.


    With a jolt, Tom realised he was flying with the bird. He wasn’t physically with the bird (he remained sitting in the chair inside the copper egg inside the machine) but he was sharing the bird’s awareness. He saw what the raven saw, and he heard what the raven heard. Not only that, it appeared that the bird was linked into Tom’s thoughts, and it obeyed the commands that Tom gave through his thoughts.


    Tom flew with the bird, out through the stone girt window, and into the night. Tom knew exactly where the bird had to fly, and what the bird would do when it got to its destination. He was swimming in information.


    On Tom’s instructions the bird flew straight up into the night.


    The wind ripped, and the mountain smelled of ice and moss. Eventually they were above the snowline on White mountain and Tom was shivering (even though he still sat in the machine in the warmth) because he could feel what the bird felt, and see what the bird saw, and hear what the bird heard.


    Suddenly, the bird went into a dive, then banked right and brought its wings into its body and tucked its talons hard into its belly. It flew through a slit in the stone straight into White mountain.


    Tom and the raven were now in the catacombs.


    They flew down through the tunnels at a speed that beggared belief. The raven flew with precision, its wings tucked in tight against its body, directing itself with the slightest adjustment on the tips of its wings.


    They flew through tight tunnels, then out into a wide and vast cavern, and Tom recognised the cavern from his earlier trip on the horse behind Jane. For a brief second the bloodless children appeared on the slope beneath. They looked up and made strange squeaking sounds, then they were far behind.


    The bird flew through a cavern of stalactites coloured like lollies, then down a milky passage with marble stairs.


    Down and down, twisting through the piping caves and the craggy rocks, and the lumps of coloured minerals. Everything rushed, like being flung through a thick forest.


    Finally they came to the underground town of Twillydown. The Drizzles were outside their little huts, dancing on their woven rugs and singing praises to Elion who was back in the machine.


    The raven slowed, its wings buffeting as it gathered air to decelerate. Tom saw Demurmur just as she stepped from her hut onto the yellow rug that lay before her door. Her body was short and stumpy and thick with hair. She wore a crimson dress, and her eyes were glazed. She obeyed Tom’s silent command to look up at the approaching bird (Tom could speak to Demurmur with his mind).


    Demurmur put her hands up to the bird, as if she knew that this was her fate, and that she was ready to receive it.


    The raven thrust its claws forward and lined up the Drizzles shoulder with its beady eye. It landed, grabbing with its talons. The raven opened its beak against Drizzle''s ear and the ball bearing that it had dragged from the dish in the machine rolled forward and dropped into Demurmur’s ear canal.  She shut her eyes, and smiled. She took a step forward, and another Drizzle called:


    ‘Demurmur, are you okay?’


    Demurmur sang a song:


    ‘And from the field was taken … a woman from her plough.’


    She began to run, and suddenly she became hazy, and then she disappeared.