Mulch grudgingly agreed, tugging faded tunneling breeches over his meaty thighs. This was as far as he was prepared to go, and his furry chest and prodigious gut remained glowing and bare.
“The pants I will wear for Holly’s sake, but this is my home, Artemis. In the cave, Diggums keeps it casual.”
Water dripped from a stalactite into a shimmering pool. Artemis dipped his hand in, then laid his palm on Holly’s forehead. She was still unconscious following her second physical trauma in as many minutes, and a single spark of magic squatted on her head wound, buzzing like an industrious golden bee. The bee seemed to notice Artemis’s hand and skipped onto the brand, calming his skin but leaving a raised scar. Once it had finished its work, the magic returned to Holly and spread itself like a salve across her forehead. Holly’s breathing was deep and regular, and she seemed more like a person asleep than unconscious.
“How long have you been here, Mulch?”
“Why? Are you looking for back rent?”
“No, I am simply collating information at the moment. The more I know, the more comprehensively I can plan.”
Mulch nudged the lid from a cooler, which Artemis recognized from an old picnic set of the family’s, and pulled out a bloodred salami.
“You keep saying that ’bout comprehensive planning, et cetera, and we keep ending up eyeball-deep in the troll hole without spring boots.”
Artemis had long ago stopped asking Mulch to explain his metaphors. He was desperate for any information that might give him an edge, something that would help him wrest control of this desperate situation.
Focus, he told himself. There is so much at stake here. More than ever before.
Artemis felt ragged. His chest heaved from recent healings and exertions. Uncharacteristically, he did not know what to do, other than wait for his friends to wake up.
He shuffled across to Butler, checking his pupils for signs of brain injury. Holly had shot him in the neck, and they had taken quite a tumble. He was relieved to find both pupils to be of equal size.
Mulch squatted beside him, glowing like a dumpy demigod, which was a little disturbing if you knew what the dwarf was actually like. Mulch Diggums was about as far from godliness as a hedgehog was from smoothliness.
“What do you think of my place?” asked the dwarf.
“This is…” Artemis gestured to their surroundings. “Amazing. You hollowed all of this out yourself. How long have you been here?”
The dwarf shrugged. “Coupla years. Off and on, you know. I have a dozen of these little bolt-holes all over the place. I got tired of being a law-abiding citizen. So I siphon off a little juice from your geothermal rods and pirate your cable.”
“Why live down here at all?”
“I don’t live live here. I crash here occasionally. When things get hot. I just pulled a pretty big job and needed to hide out for a while.”
Artemis looked around. “A pretty big job, you say? So where’s all the loot?”
Mulch wagged a finger that glowed like a party stick. “That, as my cousin Nord would say, is where my improvised lie falls apart.”
Artemis put two and two together and arrived at a very unpleasant four.
“You were here to rob me!”
“No, I wasn’t. How dare you?!”
“You are lurking down here to tunnel into Fowl Manor. Again.”
“Lurking is not a nice word. Makes me sound like a sea serpent. I like to think I was hiding in the shadows. Cool, like a cat burglar.”
“You eat cats, Mulch.”
Mulch joined his hands. “Okay. I admit it. I might have been planning to have a peek into the art vault. But look at the funny side. Stealing stuff from a criminal mastermind. That’s gotta be ironic. You brainiacs like irony, right?”
Artemis was appalled. “You can’t keep art here. It’s damp and muddy.”
“Didn’t do the pharaohs any harm,” argued the dwarf.
Holly, who lay on the ground beside them, opened her eyes, coughed, then executed a move that was much more difficult than it looked by actually springing vertically from where she lay and landing on her feet. Mulch was impressed until Holly attempted to strangle him with his own beard, at which point he stopped being impressed and got busy choking.
This was a problem with waking up after a magical healing: often the brain is totally unharmed, but the mind is confused. It is a strange feeling to be smart and dopey at the same time. Add a time lapse into the mix, and a person will often find it difficult to transition from a dream state to the waking world, so it is advisable to place the patient in tranquil surroundings, perhaps with some childhood toys heaped around the pillow. Unfortunately for Holly, she had lost consciousness in the middle of a life-or-death struggle and awoke to find a glowing monster looming over her. So, she understandably overreacted.
It took about five seconds before she realized who Mulch was.
“Oh,” she mumbled sheepishly. “It’s you.”
“Yes,” said Mulch, then coughed up something that squeaked and crawled away. “If you could please relinquish the beard—I just had a salon conditioning treatment done.”
“Really?”
“Of course not really. I live in a cavern. I eat dirt. What do you think?”
Holly finger-combed Mulch’s beard a little, then climbed down from the dwarf’s shoulders.
“I was just sitting in spit, right?” she said, grimacing.
“It’s not all spit,” said Artemis.
“Well, Artemis,” she said, rubbing the faint red mark on her forehead, “what’s the plan?”
“And hello to you, too,” said Mulch. “And don’t thank me. Saving your life once more has been my pleasure. Just one of the many services offered by Diggums Airlines.”
Holly scowled at him. “I have a warrant out for you.”
“So why don’t you arrest me, then?”
“The secure facilities aren’t really operating at the moment.”
Mulch took a moment to process this, and the trademark bravado drained from his craggy features, crease by crease. It almost seemed like his glow dimmed a few notches.
“Oh, holy lord Vortex,” he said, tracing the sacred sign of the bloated intestine over his stomach to ward off evil. “What has Opal done now?”
Holly sat on a mound, tapping her wrist computer to see if anything worked.
“She’s found and opened the Berserker Gate.”
“And that’s not the worst thing,” said Artemis. “She killed her younger self, which destroyed everything Opal has invented or influenced since then. Haven is shut down, and humans are back in the Stone Age.”
Holly’s face was grim in the
glow of luminous spit. “Actually, Artemis, finding the Berserker Gate is the worst thing, because there are two locks. The first releases the Berserkers…”
Mulch jumped into the pause. “And the second? Come on, Holly, this is no time for theatrics.”
Holly hugged her knees like a lost child. “The second releases Armageddon. If Opal succeeds in opening it, every single human on the surface of the earth will be killed.”
Artemis felt his head spin as the bloody scale of Opal’s plan became clear.
Butler chose this moment to regain his senses. “Juliet is on the surface with Masters Beckett and Myles, so I guess we can’t let that happen.”
They sat in a tight group around a campfire of glowing spit while Holly told what had been considered a legend but was now being treated as pretty accurate historical fact.
“Most of this you will already know from the spirits who tried to invade you.”
Butler rubbed his branded neck. “Not me. I was out cold. All I have is fractured images. Pretty gross stuff, even for me. Severed limbs, people being buried alive. Dwarfs riding trolls into battle? Could that have happened?”
“It all happened,” Holly confirmed. “There was a dwarf corps that rode trolls.”
“Yep,” said Mulch. “They called themselves the Troll Riders. Pretty cool name, right? There was a group that only went out at night who called themselves the Night Troll Riders.”
Artemis couldn’t help himself. “What were the daytime troll riders called?”
“Those gauchos were called the Daytime Troll Riders,” answered Mulch blithely. “Head to toe in leather. They smelled like the inside of a stinkworm’s bladder, but they got the job done.”
Holly could have wept with frustration, but she’d learned during her brief period as a private investigator when Mulch had served as her partner that the dwarf would shut up only when he was good and ready. Artemis, on the other hand, should know better.
“Artemis,” she said sharply, “don’t encourage him. We are on a timetable.”
Artemis’s expression seemed almost helpless in the luminescence. “Of course. No more comments. I am feeling a little overwhelmed, truth be told. Continue, Holly, please.”