The Lightning Key (21 page)

As he carried the last of the benzine from the
road to the trees Miles looked back along the road toward Wa'il, but there was no sign of anyone in the shimmering haze. He took out the food, wondering if Nura and her companions had passed by while he and Tenniel were buying fuel, and they breakfasted on cheese and dates and satisfied their thirst with lukewarm water. He roped the full containers into place while Tenniel connected the complicated system of pipes and tubes that would feed the benzine to the engine; then they lay down in the shade of the palm fronds to catch up on some rest before the heat made sleep impossible.

In the cool of Miles's pocket Tangerine lay still and quiet. No dreams entered his simple sleep, but nestled in his sawdust-filled head the Tiger's Egg hummed inaudibly, and somewhere between the light the tiger himself paced, restless and disturbed and aching to scratch a deep itch that he could not understand.

T
he Great Cortado, road-dusted and turban-heavy, made his way down to the port to arrange passage back to Fuera, leaving his companions outside a small café. It was the kind of task he would normally give to his grumbling accomplice, but when the saddlebags were unpacked and they were met with the foul smell from the wooden box he decided that he would go himself after all. He took off hurriedly, leaving the fool and the mystic in charge of his reeking luggage. When he got back he would have to leave the boy's head somewhere near an anthill while they waited to sail, and be satisfied with a skull on a pole instead. Not quite the
same impact, perhaps, but it would have to do.

He hoped to find the
Albatross
still in port. He had business with its captain, an enterprising man named Savage, who had agreed to pay them a wad of money for sabotaging the
Sunfish
in the race from Fuera to Al Bab. The Great Cortado felt he had achieved that end in spectacular fashion. Setting fire to the airship had been his idea, not Savage's, but by his reckoning the captain owed them at least the price of a return trip, and he intended to hold him to his promise.

In the shaded café garden Nura sat in a corner and lit her clay pipe. Doctor Tau-Tau sweated and muttered beside her, trying in vain to wipe the grime from his forehead with his tea-towel veil, and wrinkling his nose at the smell from Cortado's grim souvenir. He looked enviously at Nura's pipe, which was producing a fragrant smoke that at least partially masked the smell. They had ridden all night and on through the morning, not stopping even when a freak thunderstorm soaked them to the skin, and he felt as though he had not slept for a week. Sweat trickled down his back, mixing with the sand that seemed to get everywhere, and he squirmed in discomfort and cursed under his breath.

“You are anxious,” said Nura. “Are you afraid of the sea?”

Doctor Tau-Tau gave a bitter laugh. “The sea is the least of my worries,” he said.

“Then you are afraid of Cortado?” she said.

“Aren't you?” asked Tau-Tau. “The man is deranged. He's carrying a boy's head in a box.”

Nura exhaled slowly. “You're forgetting where he got it from,” she said. “A true clairvoyant fears nothing, especially if he carries a Tiger's Egg.”

Tau-Tau grunted. “To tell you the truth I don't have the faintest idea how to use the thing,” he said. He was too weary for pretense, and, forbidding as she was, something about this dark-eyed woman made him want to unburden himself.

“That is why I agreed to come with you,” said Nura.

“That's what I'm worried about,” said Doctor Tau-Tau. “With you here I become expendable. How long before he's carrying
my
head around in a box?”

“I see what you mean,” said Nura. “Why don't you take out the Tiger's Egg and I will teach you some simple principles.”

Doctor Tau-Tau eyed her suspiciously, but he reached into his sleeve nonetheless and produced the bogus stone from its hiding place. Nura held out her hand and he placed the stone on her palm, where it was lit to a soft gold by a shaft of sunlight
that broke through the vines above them.

“What would you like to learn?” she asked.

“Cortado wants to effect some kind of transformation,” said Tau-Tau. “I don't know what it is exactly, but I overheard him talking about it.”

“All right,” said Nura. “The Tiger's Egg magnifies your desires and helps you to achieve them. What would you most like to transform at the moment?”

The fortune-teller looked about him. “I'd like to make that . . . thing . . . a bit less smelly, for a start,” he said, pointing at the wooden box.

Nura handed the bogus Egg back to him. “Hold it tightly in your left hand,” she said, “and put your right hand on the box. Do you feel the Tiger's Egg beginning to get warmer?”

Now, it's a funny thing that a person under stress can often be persuaded of something just by having it suggested to him. Hypnotists use this trick all the time, and indeed Doctor Tau-Tau himself had used it for years in his dubious sideshow act. At this moment, however, he was the one under stress, and no sooner had Nura mentioned it than the stone felt several degrees warmer. He nodded nervously.

“You will find it becomes extremely hot as the power surges through it,” said Nura, looking him straight in the eye. “Now,” she said, “repeat this
incantation after me, and make sure you get every word right. Even the smallest mistake could have unforeseen consequences.”

“Shouldn't we practice . . . ?” began Tau-Tau, but Nura had already started.

“Eifantolim brussala bulomen brussala bulomen tromtata . . .,”
she intoned rapidly, and Doctor Tau-Tau stumbled through the unfamiliar words behind her, clutching the small stone for all he was worth.

Nura finished and sat back in her seat, taking a long puff on her pipe. Doctor Tau-Tau dropped the stone into his lap and shook his burning hand. He stared nervously at the wooden box, trying to detect any easing in the smell without risking too deep a breath.

“I don't think you got that right,” said Nura, without removing her pipe.

“What do you mean?” asked Tau-Tau. “I repeated every word.”

“Did you say
bulomen brussala
or
bruloman bosala
?” she asked.

“I . . . I can't remember,” said the flustered fortune-teller.

“We'd better take a look,” said Nura.

She took a long knife from Cortado's saddlebag and used it to pry the lid from the box. A cloud
of flies and an indescribable smell emerged. Doctor Tau-Tau covered his nose with his tea towel and glanced hesitantly inside. He did not have to look closely to see that something had gone badly wrong. Two curved horns rose from a tufted crown, and below them a clouded yellow eyeball stared sightlessly up at him.

“Oh, dear,” said Nura, looking at him and shaking her head slowly. “
That's
going to take some explaining.”

L
ittle softwing, pearly white and sky-shaken, hummed very quietly to herself as Tenniel's flying contraption pitched and plunged a thousand feet above the waves. If you want to know just how quietly she hummed, imagine the sound of jelly setting; then turn the volume up just a fraction. She hummed because she knew that without her song the
Runaway Cloud
would not stay aloft for long, and she kept her humming as quiet as she could because she was afraid it would attract the attention of the wrong sort of angels.

They had taken off in the late afternoon, after sleeping longer than they had intended in their
improvised shelter beneath the palm trees. They detoured around the port of Al Bab and headed out across the cobalt sea. The engine ran better on the superior fuel they had bought, and they gained altitude steadily so that they could hide among the clouds. As the light faded they saw far below them the
Albatross
, running under full sail toward Fuera.

Miles had pestered Tenniel into letting him take a turn at the controls, pointing out that he had recently learned to drive a car without mishap (he didn't mention crashing into an anchor). Besides, he said, a copilot was needed so that Tenniel could get some rest. In truth the Hiccup Man's shoulders ached from the previous night's flight, and he was more than happy to sit in the passenger seat and give the boy a flying lesson. From time to time Little distributed food from the small stores they had, and she helped Tenniel with the complicated business of switching the fuel lines as each container emptied. Before darkness fell Tenniel made a last round of the fuel tanks, counting those they hadn't used and making calculations with a stub of pencil on the wooden frame.

“Do you think we'll make it to Fuera?” asked Miles.

“Make-hic it?” said Tenniel gleefully. “My boy, the
Runaway Cloud
has excelled herself. She seems to get a hic-little farther on every tank.”

“That's because she's lighter with each tank we empty,” said Miles.

The Hiccup Man slapped his forehead and scribbled some more figures on the wood. “You're a hic-genius, boy,” he said. “That's exactly what's happening. At this rate we could get far beyond Fuera before we'd need to refuel.”

“We have to land in Fuera,” said Miles. “That's where we left Baltinglass's car.”

“Never mind Morrigan,” said Baltinglass. “That young boy will look after her like she was his own mother. The question is, will this bone shaker get us all the way to Larde?”

“We're not going straight to Larde,” said Miles. “There's been a change of plan. We're going to Hell's Teeth.” He could not think beyond the daunting task of restoring his father and undoing the Tiger's Egg. If he survived that, he thought, he would happily crawl onward to Larde on his hands and knees.

“First I heard of it,” said Baltinglass, sounding slightly miffed, “but I'm sure you know what you're doing.”

“How hic-far is that from Fuera?” asked Tenniel, sucking his pencil.

“About half a day by road,” said Baltinglass.

The Hiccup Man calculated some more, squinting at his figures in the gathering twilight. “Then we might just make it,” he said. “We're starting-hic on our second-to-last tank now.”

“Full steam ahead, then, if Master Miles is in agreement.”

“Full speed ahead it is,” said Miles.

“We can always refuel when we make our stop,” said Tenniel.

“I don't think so,” said Miles, picturing the jagged teeth of stone beneath which the Fir Bolg lived their stark lives. “Not unless she can run on stewed rabbit.” He sat at the controls of the
Runaway Cloud
with knots forming in his stomach, his mind racing as if to outrun the engine. Soon they would reach Hell's Teeth, and his makeshift plan felt as precarious as the contraption that carried them through the darkening sky. He was sure their change of plan left something out of kilter, but he could not put his finger on it.

He tried to lay all the elements out clearly in his mind while his hands were busy with the levers. Silverpoint would have reached Larde sometime
that morning, and Miles knew that Lady Partridge would set off with The Null as soon as the Storm Angel had delivered his message. The Fir Bolg would be lurking beneath the standing stones of Hell's Teeth, where Little could find them and tell them that Miles had come to settle his mother's debt. The Tiger's Egg was safe in his pocket and its cryptic key in his memory.

All he needed was Nura's help to interpret the key, but she was still on the road to Larde, and there, Miles realized, lay the snag. He nursed a glimmer of hope that he might be able to help the Fir Bolg on his own, having cured Dulac Zipplethorpe and Baltinglass of Araby more or less by accident, but the task of unlocking the Tiger's Egg and transferring his father's soul was an altogether more daunting one, and he had been relying on Nura to help him when the moment arrived.

He wished he had asked more questions of his aunt and his grandmother in the short time he had spent with them. The things they had told him about the Tiger's Egg now seemed frustratingly vague. “You will need the far eyes to see all parts of the puzzle at once, and the bright hands to steal the energy,” his grandmother had said. She had told him he needed to master his gifts to have any chance of
success, but how was he to do that now? There was not much opportunity to practice healing while flying through the night sky, but he supposed he could try to find a way to practice using the far eyes.

It was hard to know where to start. He imagined it would be a bit like entering the Realm, except that he would have to do it without falling asleep. Once again he wished he could ask Nura's advice, and then it struck him. Nura had said that she knew at once of Celeste's death, even from hundreds of miles away. It was true that they had been twins, but Miles at least was family. What better way for him to practice the far eyes than to try and contact her now? Not only was she the person he needed to talk to, she was the one who was most likely to hear him.

He checked their heading on the compass, then stared into the blackness ahead of him and deliberately let his eyes slip out of focus. He pictured Nura as he had first met her, holding his eye with her penetrating stare. The uncomfortable feeling of being unpacked for inspection came back to him, and suddenly he felt lost, a tiny speck in the vast, expanding night sky. He was tumbling or flying; it all seemed the same thing, and still he could see his aunt's piercing eyes as though they were right before him.

“Nura?” he said, without actually speaking.

He heard his aunt's reply much as you can hear the silence when you enter an abandoned house. It was there and yet not there. “I'm here, Miles. Are you all right?” she said.

“We're okay,” he said. “Can you really hear me?”

“Of course,” said Nura. “How else would I be answering you?”

Miles felt a sort of giddiness rise up from his stomach, and he almost laughed out loud. “I've changed our plan,” he said. “Can you meet us at a place called Hell's Teeth?”

“You plan to visit the Fir Bolg?” said Nura.

“I don't think I have a choice,” said Miles. “I have to fulfill my mother's promise, but time is short. I've arranged for . . . for my father to be brought there too, but I'll need your help. How soon can you get there?”

“We are making good speed in Cortado's van,” said Nura. “I'll try to think of a way to get away from them for a while, Miles, but I can't promise anything. You may have to rely on your own wits.”

“Okay,” said Miles. The rising giddiness threatened to overwhelm him. He could not believe he was speaking to someone far away, using nothing but his own thoughts.

“We're flying!” was the only thing he could say that seemed to fit.

“I know,” said Nura. “Be careful, Miles.” A moment later she was gone.

It felt as though she had left without closing the door. Miles was vaguely aware of his hands on the levers of the
Runaway Cloud
, as though they belonged to someone else, but his gaze was still settled on the middle distance. Tufts of cloud rushed toward him like dark pillars on a dark background. They reminded him of the standing stones at Hell's Teeth, but he knew that they had not come that far, or descended so low. A flood of images came suddenly into his mind. He imagined he saw tiny figures fanning out ahead of him. He saw the tiger, no longer fierce but trailing a mist of sadness, and he saw Baltinglass standing on a rock, lit up like a Christmas tree and roaring at the sky.

He saw himself too, standing face to face with Bluehart, who stood with his back to a tall rock. Bluehart was watching as another Sleep Angel, who looked like Stillbone, approached Miles from behind. Stillbone reached out to touch his shoulder, and Miles saw himself fall at the angel's touch. A chill ran through him and he wondered if the things he saw were just warnings, or images of an
unchangeable future. He closed his eyes to escape them, and the
Runaway Cloud
gave a lurch and began to tilt dangerously.

“My hic-turn, I think,” said Tenniel, taking the levers from Miles. “It's time you had a break, boy. You were hic-falling asleep there.”

“Thanks,” said Miles. He felt groggy as he vacated the pilot's seat, and his legs almost buckled beneath him. He had never felt so exhaused in his life, and within moments of strapping himself into the copilot's chair he sank into a confused, roller-coaster sleep.