Lucky you, thought No1. Dunked in dung.
No1 tried to feel envious. But even being near the pit made him gag; the thought of being immersed in it, surrounded by cocooned imps, made his stomach churn.
A shadow fell across the flagstones before him, flickering in the firelight.
‘Ah, Number One,’ said Abbot. ‘Always an imp, never a demon, eh? What am I going to do with you?’
No1 stared at his own feet, clicking baby talons on the floor.
‘Master Abbot, sir. Don’t you think? Isn’t there the tiniest chance?’ He took a deep breath and raised his eyes to meet Abbot’s. ‘Couldn’t I be a warlock? You saw what happened with the skewer. I don’t want to embarrass you, but you saw it.’
Abbot’s expression changed instantly. One second he was playing the genial master, the next his true colours shone through.
‘I saw nothing,’ he hissed, heaving No1 to his feet. ‘Nothing happened, you odious little freak of nature. The skewer was coated with ash, nothing more. There was no transformation. No magic.’
Abbot drew No1 close enough to see the slivers of trapped meat between his yellowed teeth. The next time he spoke, his voice seemed different somehow. Layered. As though an entire choir was singing in harmony. It was a voice that could not be ignored. Magical?
‘If you are a warlock, then you should really be on the other side, with your relative. Wouldn’t that be for the best? One quick leap, that’s all it would take. Do you understand what I am saying to you, Runt?’
No1 nodded, dazed. What a lovely voice. Where had that come from? The other side, of course; that’s where he should go. One small step for an imp.
‘I understand, sir.’
‘Good. The subject is closed. As Lady Heatherington Smythe would say, “Best foot forward, young sir, the world awaits.”’
No1 nodded, just as he knew Abbot wanted him to, but inside his brain churned along with his stomach. Was this to be the whole extent of his life? Forever mocked, forever different. Never a moment of light or hope. Unless he crossed over.
Abbot’s suggestion was his only hope. Cross over. No1 had never seen the appeal of jumping into a crater before, but now the notion seemed nigh on irresistible. He was a warlock; there couldn’t be any doubt. And somewhere out there, in the human world, there was another like him. An ancient brother who could teach him the ways of his kind.
No1 watched Abbot stride away from him. Off to exercise his power on some other part of the island, possibly by belittling the females in the compound – another of his favourite pastimes. Then again, how bad could Abbot be? After all, he had given No1 this wonderful idea.
I cannot stay here, thought No1. I must go to the volcano.
The notion took firm hold of his brain. And in minutes it had drowned out all the other notions in his head.
Go to the volcano.
It pounded inside his skull, like waves breaking on the shore.
Obey Abbot. Go to the volcano.
No1 brushed the dust from his knees.
‘You know what,’ he muttered to himself in case Rawley could hear, ‘I think I’m going to the volcano.’
CHAPTER 4: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
THE MASSIMO BELLINI THEATRE, CATANIA, EASTERN SICILY
ARTEMIS Fowl and his bodyguard, Butler, relaxed in a private box at the stage-left side of Sicily’s world-famous Massimo Bellini Theatre. Perhaps it is not altogether accurate to say Butler relaxed. Rather he appeared to relax, as a tiger appears to relax in the moment before it strikes.
Butler was even less happy here than he had been in Barcelona. At least for the Spain trip he’d had a few days to prepare, but for this jaunt he barely had time to catch up on his martial arts routines.
As soon as the Fowl Bentley had pulled up at Fowl Manor, Artemis had disappeared into his study, firing up his computers. Butler took the opportunity to work out, freshen up and prepare dinner: onion marmalade tartlets, rack of lamb with garlic gratin and a red berries crêpe to finish.
Artemis broke the news over coffee.
‘We need to go to Sicily,’ he said, toying with the biscotti on his saucer. ‘I made a breakthrough on the time spell figures.’
‘How soon?’ asked the bodyguard, mentally listing his contacts on the Mediterranean island.
Artemis looked at his Rado watch and Butler moaned.
‘Don’t check your watch, Artemis. Check the calendar.’
‘Sorry, old friend. But you know time is limited. I can’t risk missing a materialization.’
‘But on the jet you said that there wasn’t another materialization due for six weeks.’
‘I was wrong, or rather, Foaly was wrong. He missed a few new factors in the temporal equation.’
Artemis had filled Butler in on the eighth family details as the jet soared over the English Channel.
‘Allow me to demonstrate,’ said Artemis. He put a silver salt cellar on his plate, ‘Let us say that this salt cellar is Hybras. My plate is where it is: our dimension. And your plate is where it wants to go: Limbo. With me so far?’
Butler nodded reluctantly. He knew that the more he understood, the more Artemis would tell him, and there wasn’t much space in a bodyguard’s head for quantum physics.
‘So, the demon warlocks wanted to move the island from plate A to plate B, but not through space, through time.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘It’s all in the fairy Book,’ replied the Irish teenager. ‘Quite a detailed description, if a bit flowery.’
The Book was the fairy Bible, containing their history and commandments. Artemis had managed to obtain a copy from a drunken sprite in Ho Chi Minh City years earlier. It was proving to be an invaluable source of information.
‘I doubt the Book has too many charts and graphs,’ noted Butler.
Artemis smiled. ‘No, I got the specifics from Foaly, not that he knows he’s sharing information.’
Butler rubbed his temples. ‘Artemis. I warned you not to mess with Foaly. The decoy thing is bad enough.’
Artemis was fully aware that Foaly was tracking him and any decoys he sent out. In fact, he only sent out the decoys to make Foaly dip into his funds. It was his idea of a joke.
‘I didn’t initiate the surveillance,’ objected Artemis. ‘Foaly did. I found over a dozen devices on my computers alone. All I did was reverse the spike to get into some of his shared files. Nothing classified. Well, maybe a few. Foaly’s been busy since he left the LEP.’
‘So, what did Foaly’s files tell you?’ said Butler resignedly.
‘They told me about magic. Basically, magic is energy and the ability to manipulate energy. To move Hybras from A to B, the demon warlocks harnessed the power of their volcano to create a time rent or tunnel.’ Artemis rolled his napkin into a tube, popped the salt cellar into it and deposited the cellar on Butler’s plate.
‘Simple as that?’ said Butler doubtfully.
‘Not really,’ said Artemis. ‘In fact, the warlocks did an exceptional job, considering the instruments available to them at the time. They had to calculate the power of the volcano, the size of the island, the energy of each individual demon on the island, not to mention the reverse pull of lunar attraction. It’s amazing the spell worked as well as it did.’