Minerva’s gaze swept past the rock cluster and rested on the line of bushes where they were hiding. She couldn’t possibly see them, but her intellect told her that they were there.

Artemis focused on the girl’s pretty face. It amazed him that he could appreciate Minerva’s features even as his friend was being hauled into captivity. Puberty was a powerful force.

Minerva was smiling. Her eyes were bright and they taunted Artemis across the distance between them. She spoke to them in English. Artemis and Butler, both expert lip-readers had no difficulty interpreting her short sentence.

“Did you get that, Artemis?” asked Butler.

“I got it. And she got us.”

Your move, Artemis Fowl, Minerva had said.

Butler sat back in the ditch, slapping mud from his elbows.

“I thought you were one of a kind, Artemis, but that girl is a smart one.”

“Yes,” said Artemis, musing. “She’s a regular juvenile criminal mastermind.”

Belowground, in Section 8 headquarters, Foaly groaned into his microphone.

“Great,” he said. “Now there are two of you.”

CHAPTER 8

SUDDEN IMPACT

Inside Chateau Paradizo

No1 was having a lovely dream. In the dream, his mother was holding a surprise party for him, in honor of his graduation from warlock college. The food was scrumptious. The dishes were cooked, and most of the meat was already dead.

He was reaching for a beautifully presented basted pheasant in a basket of woven herb bread ropes, just like the one described in three of Lady Heatherington Smythe’s Hedgerow, when suddenly the vision retreated into the far distance, as though reality itself were being stretched.

No1 tried to follow the feast, but it drew farther and farther away, and now his legs wouldn’t work, and No1 couldn’t understand why. He looked down and saw to his horror that everything from his armpits down had turned to stone. The stone virus was spreading upward across his chest and along his neck. No1 felt the urge to scream, and he was suddenly terrified that his mouth would turn to stone before he could. To be petrified forever and hold that scream inside would be the ultimate horror.

No1 opened his mouth and screamed.

Billy Kong, who had been lounging on a chair, watching, snapped his fingers at a camera on the ceiling.

“The ugly one is awake,” he said. “And I think it wants its mother.”

No1 stopped screaming when his breath ran out. It was a bit of an anticlimax, really, starting out with a lusty howl and petering off to a reedy whine.

Okay, thought No1. I am alive and in the land of men. Time to open my eyes and find out just how deep in the pig dung I actually am.

No1 cracked his eyes open warily, as though he might see something big and hard heading for his face at high speed. What he did see was that he was in a small bare room. There were rectangular lights on the ceiling that threw out the light of a thousand candles, and most of one wall was taken up by a mirror. There was a human, possibly a child, perhaps a female, with a ridiculous mane of blond curls and an extra finger on each hand. The creature was wearing a ludicrously impractical toga-type arrangement and spongy-soled shoes with lightning bolts embossed on the sides. There was another person in the room. A slouching, leering, thin man, who tapped a staccato rhythm on his leg. No1’s eyes were drawn to the second human’s hair. There were at least half a dozen colors in there. The man was a peacock.

No1 decided that perhaps he should raise his empty hands to show that he wasn’t carrying a weapon, but it’s difficult to do that when you are tied to a chair.

“I’m tied to a chair,” he said apologetically, as though it were his fault. Unfortunately, he said this in Gnommish and in the demon dialect. To the humans it sounded like he was trying to dislodge a particularly annoying blockage from his throat.

No1 resolved not to talk again. Doubtless, he would say the wrong thing, and the humans would have to ritually execute him. Thankfully, the female seemed eager to chat.

“Hello, I am Minerva Paradizo, and this man is Mr. Kong,” she said. “Can you understand me?”

It was all gibberish to No1. Not a single recognizable word from the text of Lady Heatherington Smythe’s Hedgerow.

He smiled encouragingly to show he appreciated the effort.

“Do you speak French?” asked the blond girl, then switched languages. “How about English?”

No1 sat up. That last bit was familiar. Strange inflections, surely, but the words themselves were from the book.

“English?” he repeated.

This was the language of Lady Heatherington Smythe. Learned at her mother’s knee. Explored in the lecture halls of Oxford. Used to profess her undying love for Professor Rupert Smythe. No1 loved the book. He sometimes believed that he was the only one who did. Even Abbot didn’t seem to appreciate the romantic bits.

“Yes,”said Minerva.“English. The last one spoke it well enough. French, too.”

Manners must be appreciated somewhere outside a book, No1 had always thought, so he decided to give them a go.

He growled, which was the polite demon way of asking to speak in front of your betters. This must not be how humans interpreted it, because the skinny human jumped to his feet, pulling out a knife.

“No, kind sir,” said No1 hurriedly, cobbling together a couple of sentences from Lady Heatherington. “Prithee sheath thine weapon. I bring joyous tidings only.”

The skinny human was confounded. He spoke English as well as the next American, but this little runt was spouting some kind of medieval nonsense.

Kong straddled No1, holding the knife to his throat.

“Talk straight, ugly,” said the man, deciding to give Taiwanese a go.

“I wish I could understand,” said No1, shaking. Unfortunately, he said this in Gnommish. “What I . . . eh ...meanest to say is ...”

It was no good. Quotes from Lady Heatherington that he could generally shoehorn into any occasion just weren’t coming under pressure.

“Talk straight or die!” shrieked the human into his face.

No1 shrieked right back at him. “How can I talk straight, you son of a three-legged dog? I don’t speak Taiwanese!”

All of this was said in perfect Taiwanese. No1 was stunned. The gift of tongues was not one demons possessed. Except the warlocks. More proof.

He intended to ponder this development for a few moments, now that the knife-wielding human had backed off, but suddenly the beauty of language exploded inside his brain. Even his own tongue, Gnommish, had been severely culled by the demons. There were thousands of words that had been dropped from regular use on the basis that they did not relate to killing things or eating them, and not necessarily in that order.

“Cappuccino!” shouted No1, surprising everyone.

“Excuse me?” said Minerva.

“What a lovely word. And ‘maneuver.’And ‘balloon.’”

The skinny man pocketed his knife. “Now he’s talking.

If he’s anything like the videos you showed me of the other one, we’ll never get him to shut up.”

“‘Pink!’” exclaimed No1 delightedly. “We don’t have a word for that color in the demon commonspeak. Pink is considered undemonlike, so we ignore it. It’s such a relief to be able to say pink!”

“Pink,” said Minerva. “Fabulous.”

“Tell me,” said No1. “What is a cotton candy? I know the words, and it sounds . . . scrumptious . . . but the picture in my head cannot be accurate.”

The girl seemed pleased that No1 could talk, but slightly miffed that he had forgotten his situation.

“We can talk about cotton candy later, little demon. There are more important things to discuss.”

“Yes,” agreed Kong. “The demon invasion, for example.”

No1 rolled the sentence around in his head. “Sorry, my gifts must not be fully developed. The only meaning I have for ‘invasion’ is a hostile entry of an armed force in

to a territory.”

“That’s the one I mean, you little toad.”

“Again, I’m a little confused. My new vocabulary is telling me that a toad is a froglike creature. . . .” No1’s face fell. “Oh. I see, you’re insulting me.”

Kong scowled at Minerva. “I think I preferred him when he spoke like an old movie.”

“I was quoting scripture,” explained No1, enjoying the shape of these new words in his mouth. “From the acred book Lady Heatherington Smythe’s Hedgerow.”

Tags: Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net