They materialized on Hybras, inside the crater itself. Their arrival was accompanied by a flash of displaced energy. The group lay on the soot-blackened slopes, panting and steaming. The ground beneath them was warm to the touch, and the acrid stink of sulphur stung their nostrils. The euphoria of materialization soon dissipated.
Artemis breathed experimentally, the air from his mouth blowing up small dust eddies. Volcanic gas made his eyes water, and flat flakes of ash instantly coated every exposed patch of skin.
“This could be hell,” he commented.
“Hell or Hybras,” said No1, climbing to his knees. “I got some of this ash on a tunic before. It never comes out.”
Holly was up, too, running a system’s check on her equipment.
“My Neutrino is fine. But I can’t get a lock on a communications signal. We’re on our own. And I seem to have lost the bomb.”
Artemis knelt, his knees cracking through the ash crust, releasing the heat below. He glanced at his watch and caught sight of his own face. His hair was gray with ash, and for a second he thought he was looking at his father.
A thought struck him. I look like my father, a father I may never see again. Mother. Butler. I have only one friend left.
“Holly,” he said. “Let me look at you.”
Holly did not look up from her wrist computer.
“No time right now, Artemis.”
Artemis padded across to her, walking gingerly on the thin crust.
“Holly, let me look at you,” he said again, holding her shoulders.
Something in Artemis’s voice made Holly stop what she was doing and pay attention. This was not a tone Artemis Fowl used very often. It could almost classify as tenderness.
“I just need to make sure you’re still you. Things get mixed up between dimensions. On my last trip I switched fingers.”
He held up his hand for her to see. “Strange, I know. But you seem to be fine. All present and correct.”
Something flashed in the corner of Artemis’s eye. There was a metal case half buried in the ash farther up the crater wall.
“The bomb,” sighed Artemis. “I thought we’d lost it in transit. There was a flash when we landed.”
Qwan hurried across to the bomb. “No. That was energy displacement. Mostly mine. Magic is almost another being. It flows where it will. Some of mine did not flow back to me in time, and ignited on reentry. I am happy to say that the rest of my power is fired up and ready to go.”
Artemis was struck by how much of this prehistoric being’s language was similar to NASA jargon. No wonder we don’t have a chance against the fairies, he thought. They were solving dimensional equations when we were still knocking stones together.
Artemis helped the warlock heave the bomb from the ash’s grip. The timer had been knocked for a loop by the time-jump and now read more than five thousand hours. Finally, a stroke of luck.
Artemis used Butler’s picks to examine the bomb’s workings. Maybe he could disarm it if he had a few months, a couple of computers, and some laser tools. Without those things, there was about as much chance of him disarming this weapon as there was of a squirrel making a paper airplane.
“This bomb is perfectly operational,” he said to Qwan. “Only the timer was affected.”
The warlock stroked his beard. “That makes sense. That instrument is relatively simple, compared to the complexity of our bodies. The dimension tunnel would have no trouble reassembling it. The timer is another matter. It will be affected by any time flares we run across here. It could blow at any second, or never.”
Not never, thought Artemis. I may not be able to disarm this thing, but I can certainly blow it when I need to.
Holly peered at the deadly device. “Is there any way we can dispose of it?”
Qwan shook his head. “Inanimate objects cannot travel unaccompanied in the time tunnel. We, on the other hand, could get sucked back in at any moment. We need to get some silver on us immediately.”
Holly glanced at Artemis. “Maybe some of us want to get sucked back in.”
“Maybe you do,” said Qwan. “But only under certain conditions. If you just let yourselves go, who knows where you’ll end up. Or when. Your natural space and time will attract you, but with the spell deteriorating, you could arrive encased in rock a mile below the surface, or stranded on the moon.”
This was a sobering thought. It was one thing to have a quick tourist’s look at the surface of the moon. It was quite another to be stuck there forever. Not that you would know anything about it after the first minute.
“So we’re stuck here?” said Holly. “Come on, Artemis. You have a plan. You always have a plan.”
The others gathered around Artemis. There was something about him that always made people assume that he was the leader. Perhaps it was the way he assumed it himself. Also, in this instance, he was the tallest person in the group.
He smiled briefly. So this is how Butler feels all the time.
“We all have our reasons for wanting to go back,” he began. “Holly and I have left friends and family behind who we would dearly love to see again. No1 and Qwan, you need to get your people out of this dimension. The spell is unraveling, and soon nowhere on this island will be safe. If my calculations are correct, and I feel certain that they are, then not even silver can anchor you here for much longer. Now, you can go when the spell dictates, or we can decide when to make the jump.”
Qwan did his sums in his head. “Not possible. It took seven warlocks and a volcano to move the island here. To get us back I would need seven magical beings. Warlocks, preferably. And of course, a live volcano, which we don’t have.”
“Does it have to be a volcano? Wouldn’t any energy source do?”
“Theoretically,” agreed Qwan. “So you’re saying we could use the bomb?”
“It’s possible.”
“Highly unlikely, but possible. I still need seven magical beings.”
“But the spell is already cast,” argued Artemis. “The infrastructure is there. Couldn’t you do it with fewer?”
Qwan wagged a finger at Artemis. “You are a smart Mud Boy. Yes, maybe I could do it with fewer. Of course, we would not know until we arrived.”
“How many?”
“Five. Five at the absolute least.”
Holly ground her teeth. “We have only three, and No1’s a novice. So we need to find two demons with magic on this island.”
“Impossible,” snapped Qwan. “Once an imp warps, that’s the end of any magic they might have. Only warlocks, like myself and No1, do not warp. So we keep our magic.”
Artemis brushed ash from his jacket.
“Our first priority is to get out of this crater and find some silver. I suggest we leave the bomb here. The temperature is not enough to ignite it, and if it does explode, the volcano will absorb some of the force. If we are going to find some other magical creature, we will undoubtedly have a better chance outside this crater. At any rate, the sulfur is giving me a headache.”
Artemis did not wait for an agreement. He turned and made for the crater lip. After a moment, the others followed, struggling with each footfall through the crust of ash. It reminded Artemis of a giant sand dune he’d trudged up with his father once. Here, falling would have harsher consequences.
It was a difficult and treacherous hike. The ash concealed grooves in the rock and small crevasses that vented warm air from the volcano. Colorful fungi grew in clusters around these vents, and they glowed in the crater shadows like coral night-lights.
Nobody spoke much during the climb. No1 muttered his way through large tracts of the dictionary, but the others realized that this was his way of keeping his chin up.
Artemis glanced upward occasionally. The sky was dawn-red, and glowed above him like a lake of blood.
That’s a cheery metaphor, thought Artemis. Maybe it says something about my character that a lake of blood is the only image I can come up with.
No1’s build
was best suited for the steep climb. He had a low center of gravity, and could rest on his stumpy tail if need be. His thick feet anchored him securely, and armored plates covering his body protected him from sparks or bruising in the event of a fall.
Qwan was clearly suffering. The old warlock had been a statue for the past ten thousand years and was still working the kinks out of his bones. Magic soothed the process somewhat, but even magic could not completely erase the pain. He winced each time his foot punctured the soot crust.
Finally the group reached the summit. If time had passed, it was impossible to tell how much. The sky still had the same red tinge, and all timepieces had virtually stopped.
Holly jogged ahead the last few steps, then raised her right hand, fingers closed in a fist.
“That means halt,” Artemis told the others. “It’s a military thing. Human soldiers use the exact same sign.”
Holly poked her head above the rim for a moment, then returned to the group.
“What does it mean if there are a lot of demons on their way up the mountain?”
Qwan smiled. “It means our brother demons saw the flash of our arrival and are coming to greet us.”
“And what does it mean if they are all armed with crossbows?”