The Storm Tower Thief Page 15

  “What?”

  “The Farew’s!” he gasped. “Something’s happened! I was just picking out random words from the Fog Guide, so I tried ‘deadly,’ you know, because invisible fogs can be deadly, then I added a few fognado symbols on the end for good measure, and”—Dougal gulped—“I think it might be opening!”

  Angus was halfway across the Pigsty before Dougal had finished speaking, with Indigo hard on his heels. Dougal set the qube down on a small table where they all could see it. It looked exactly the same as always. Only now it was steaming, from the inside.

  “Er . . . what happens when one of these things opens, anyway?” Angus asked, backing away as it gave an odd little hiccup. He’d given no thought to the possible perils of actually collecting the message.

  “Now you come to mention it . . .” Dougal swallowed. “If you leave one of these things lying around for too long, or you forget the password and can’t get it open, the pressure can build up inside. I think the whole thing’s supposed to—”

  BANG!

  The qube exploded, firing random squares across the Pigsty like bullets.

  Ping! Ping! Ping!

  Dougal sank swiftly behind an armchair. But Angus stood frozen, his brain addled, not sure which way to dive.

  “ANGUS! LOOK OUT!” Indigo knocked him sideways and pushed him behind the other chair only just in time.

  BANG!

  A second explosion rocked the Pigsty. Strings of tiny letters, numbers, and symbols shot across the top of Angus’s head, spelling out the immortal words 24LIGHTNINGPOO*&! It was closely followed by TWINGLE and some extremely colorful phrases about FROGSNOT???

  POP! POP! POP!

  Indigo grabbed a coal shovel from the fireplace and used it to shield them both as a fresh batch of squares burst in the dying embers of the fire, like extremely aggressive popcorn. Then a sudden silence fell.

  “Wow, thanks!” Angus smiled gratefully at Indigo. “If you hadn’t pushed me out of the way . . .”

  Indigo grinned back, looking faintly embarrassed.

  “Is it over yet?” Dougal called from behind the other armchair.

  Angus poked his head up warily and almost choked. Tiny squares had been blasted to the four corners of the Pigsty. A collection of miniature lightning bolts was now stuck firmly to the ceiling, and as for the walls . . .

  “Whoa!” Dougal said, scrambling to his feet and staring around. “It’s like a whole alphabet exploded in here!”

  The remains of the qube, however, were now lying calmly on the table, exposing a neatly folded, steaming note inside.

  Angus darted over. “I don’t believe it! Dougal, you did it! You unlocked the qube! And ‘deadly’ was really the password?”

  “Yeah, with a few fognado symbols bunged in on the end!” Dougal smiled, looking immensely pleased with himself. “After all the complicated combinations we’ve been trying, it was simple!”

  “Listen, thanks,” Angus said, suddenly wishing he could think of some far more impressive words to thank his friend.

  “Go on,” Dougal urged, nudging the remains of the qube toward Angus. “Whatever’s inside it, it was meant for you.”

  Angus grabbed the small sheet of paper and unfolded it with trembling fingers. Finally, after weeks of waiting, he was about to hear from his parents for the first time since they’d been kidnapped by Scabious Dankhart.

  He recognized his dad’s handwriting instantly and felt his heart leap. The note had been scribbled in a great rush.

  “What does it say?” Indigo breathed in a barely audible whisper beside him.

  Angus gulped. “It says, ‘Angus, Dankhart is planning to attack Perilous with deadly ice diamond storms, to cause as much chaos and kill as many people as possible. You must find the lightning heart and use it to stop him. Tell no one what you’re looking for.’” The last few words had been underlined several times. “That’s all it says.” Angus turned the paper over and found nothing but an inky, smudged thumbprint in one corner.

  He handed the note to Dougal and Indigo for inspection, a whole host of new thoughts and questions now battering his brain cells. And the most pressing question of all: “What on earth’s a lightning heart?”

  It took ten whole days before the research department finally opened its doors once again. All ice diamond spores had now been melted, but the trail of destruction left behind was devastating. Large swaths of frost-damaged books, their covers blackened and dead looking, hung limply from the shelves, spines disintegrating. Several flights of stairs reaching up to the highest shelves had simply snapped, as brittle as ancient bones, and now lay in splinters on the floor. Storm vacuums, set to blow instead of suck, had been placed throughout the soggy department and were now wafting warm air around the cavernous hall in an attempt to dry it out. But the floor was still littered with freezing puddles of meltwater, and an extremely sinister chill lingered in the air around them. Angus could feel it trying to force its way down his throat and into his lungs with every breath he took.

  When the three lightning cubs were finally allowed to resume their duties, nobody seemed to know quite what to do with them without the guidance of Catcher Grimble. They were eventually placed under the supervision of a plump lightning catcher called Castleman, who put them back to work in the map room. There they set about squeezing meltwater from a collection of large woolen maps, which had now shrunk to the size of tea towels. It was wet, dull, monotonous work, but as Catcher Castleman was also responsible for taking senior lighting catchers on a tour of the worst pockets of damage, they saw very little of her. They discussed the message inside the Farew’s qube without being disturbed.

  “If only your dad had said more about what this lightning heart actually is,” Indigo said as she and Angus wrung out a knitted map of the Netherlands between them and then hung it over the back of a reading chair to dry.

  Dougal sighed. “Yeah. I mean, it could be anything. Maybe it’s something top secret the experimental division has been working on, and Catcher Sparks has got it hidden in her office. Hey, it could be an actual heart made from lightning!” he said, eyebrows disappearing under his bangs. “Although I don’t know what use that would be to anyone. Or . . . what if it’s a massive electrical storm?”

  “It better not be.” Angus shuddered at the thought. He’d already come face-to-face with one terrifying storm in the lightning vaults, and he was in no hurry to encounter another anytime soon, even if it put a stop to the chaos Dankhart was causing.

  “D-do you think we should tell Jeremius about the lightning heart?” Indigo said, holding a dripping map over a bucket.

  “No!” Angus and Dougal said together.

  They’d been over this thorny issue dozens of times in the last few days alone.

  “We’ve already agreed we can’t tell anyone,” Angus said, lowering his voice just in case. “I still don’t know if Jeremius can be trusted. Besides, my dad told me not to.”

  Indigo’s forehead creased. “But if the lightning heart can stop Dankhart and the ice diamonds . . . I mean, why wouldn’t your dad want anyone else knowing about it? Why didn’t he mention it to Jeremius as well?”

  “I wish I knew,” Angus said.

  He grabbed another map from the soggy pile and squeezed it with more vigor than was really necessary. He’d somehow thought that once the message from his parents was revealed, things would become clearer, but instead they’d taken a significant turn for the complicated. And he, Dougal, and Indigo were now faced with several serious problems. How were they supposed to find the mysterious lightning heart when none of them had the faintest idea of what it actually was? Worse still, how would they even know if they’d found it, unless it had a large label attached to it, saying LIGHTNING HEART?

  All their efforts to find the lightning heart in the past ten days had failed miserably. Perilous was crawling with extra lightning catchers, and it was virtually impossible to sneak into any room or department unseen. Dougal had narrowly avoided a
whole week’s work of boot-waxing duty after Miss DeWinkle found him creeping into the library late one evening when he should have been in bed. Indigo had almost walked straight into Principal Dark-Angel after tiptoeing out of the forecasting department. But Angus had not been so lucky. He’d been caught red-handed by Catcher Sparks as he crept through the experimental division, earning himself another lecture, which seemed to go on forever.

  “McFangus! This is the second time in a matter of weeks that I have been forced to speak to you about your behavior. If I catch you, Dewsnap, or Midnight creeping about this Exploratorium again, or if any of you gets caught in an ice diamond storm and comes down with frost shock, I will personally see to it that you spend the entire summer holiday cleaning out storm drains with a toothbrush!”

  The three of them had retreated to the Pigsty after that, to avoid any further trouble. Their search for the lightning heart, which had barely even begun, had come to a complete standstill. And Angus had no clue where to hunt for it next. Instead, he read the secret message from his dad over and over each night before going to bed.

  His dad had given him a mission, a way of thwarting Dankhart’s plans. It was the first time he’d felt useful since his dad and mum had been kidnapped and imprisoned in the dungeons at Castle Dankhart. He couldn’t let them down now. He had to find the lightning heart somehow. He had to show his parents that they had not been forgotten.

  If he closed his eyes, he could still picture them standing in the kitchen at the Windmill, joking with Uncle Max. He could remember every detail of a brilliant weekend they’d spent at the beach, skimming stones across the calm sea. They’d each kept a small white pebble as a souvenir. But now the picture had started to fade, to blur around the edges. His mum’s voice sounded strangely flat and lifeless; her laughter belonged to somebody else. His dad’s features seemed to grow fainter the more tightly Angus tried to hold them in his memory.

  He needed to find the lightning heart, to make new memories that somehow involved his mum and dad, even if they only came from words scribbled hastily in a note like the one he carried safely in his pocket.

  Meanwhile, in the rest of the Exploratorium, the ice diamond storm was still the main topic of conversation in every department and at every crowded dinner table. Rumors were rife that a secret squad of highly trained lightning catchers, armed with shatterproof storm nets, had been formed to patrol the stone tunnels and passageways in order to catch whoever was responsible.

  Dougal updated them with the latest reports from the Weekly Weathervane. But details were scarce, and the magazine soon started running a series of features on common cold-weather ailments instead.

  “It’s like they don’t want us to know what’s going on,” Dougal said one evening, flipping the pages shut in disgust. “I mean, Doctor Fleagal’s top tips on chilblains aren’t exactly going to help much, are they?”

  “Looking for loser cures, Munchfungus?” Percival and Pixie Vellum appeared behind their table. “You won’t find any help in the Weathervane.”

  “Do us all a favor, Vellum, and go bug somebody else.” Angus sighed.

  “Yeah,” Dougal added. “Your face is curdling my rice pudding.” Indigo snorted. Dougal grinned at his own joke.

  Percival was clearly about to say something highly insulting in return when he suddenly spotted Germ weaving his way toward them with a hot plate of potatoes.

  “Never mind, it’ll keep. Come on,” he muttered, turning to Pixie, and they both stalked away swiftly.

  “How on earth did you manage that?” Dougal asked, amazed, as Germ sat down a moment later. “Those two are usually harder to get rid of than stinkweed!”

  “It might have something to do with the fact that Percival came up to the sanatorium the other night with a nasty case of nostril boils. And he probably doesn’t want me spreading the news around. Oops!” Germ grinned mischievously. “It looks like the boil’s already out of the bag.”

  “Er . . . nostril boils?” Angus asked warily.

  “It’s a simple case of cross-contamination,” Germ said, with a glint in his eye. “If you’ve already got snow boot boils, and you pick your infected feet, then pick your nose without washing your hands in between . . . Vellum wasn’t so full of himself when he had gruesome rivers of pus streaming from both nostrils, I can tell you.”

  Angus, Indigo, and Dougal roared with laughter as Percival Vellum sank into a chair at the far end of the kitchens, leaving just the tips of his burning ears visible.

  “I thought he was going to start blubbering when we discovered more boils growing behind his ears.” Germ turned and waved at the embarrassed-looking twin.

  “How’s it going up in the sanatorium, anyway?” Angus asked when they’d finished listening to all the gory details of Percival Vellum’s treatment.

  “We still can’t risk prying two of the oldest lightning catchers out of their armchairs. They’re way too fragile,” Germ said. “Doctor Fleagal chipped the worst of the icicles off them, but it’s going to be a long, slow thaw, I’m afraid.”

  “But they’ll be all right, won’t they?” Indigo asked. “I mean, Catcher Grimble’s so old.”

  “Don’t worry, little sis.” Germ gave her a reassuring smile. “If anyone can get old Grimble up and about again, it’s Doctor Fleagal. We’re just lucky Adrik Swarfe’s little invention hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

  “How do you know about Adrik Swarfe?” Dougal asked, surprised. So far, nobody else in the Exploratorium had even mentioned his name.

  “I was cleaning out some vomit buckets a couple of days ago,” Germ explained, “and I accidentally overheard Doctor Fleagal and Gudgeon talking about Swarfe and all the nasty little things he invented here, you know, when he was a lightning catcher.”

  “You’re—you’re not serious?” Angus exchanged shocked looks with Dougal and Indigo. “Adrik Swarfe was a lightning catcher here—at Perilous?”

  “Yep,” Germ said, shrugging. “But then he had some sort of tiff with Dark-Angel and ran off to join Dankhart and the rest of his cronies.”

  “You’re kidding!” Dougal scoured the Weathervane again, as if this astonishing news had somehow slipped between the very pages he’d just been reading.

  “It all happened eons ago, years before any of us were even born. Plus, Dark-Angel doesn’t like talking about it, according to old Fleagal. She flies into a temper whenever anyone mentions his name. Mind you, I can’t say I blame her. Swarfe goes skipping off to join our dear old uncle Scabby—”

  “Shhh! Stop saying that!” Indigo hissed, looking terrified.

  “—taking all our weather secrets with him,” Germ continued. “And look what’s happening now. Seriously evil bloke, I reckon.”

  Dougal shuddered. For several minutes, Angus sat picturing a devious-looking lightning catcher stalking through the stone tunnels and passageways of Perilous . . . until he finally remembered his dinner, and had to eat the rest of it cold.

  He left Dougal and Indigo fifteen minutes later to return an overdue book to the library. The new librarian, Miss Vulpine, had already sent him several threatening reminders. He was just about to push through the library doors when—

  “Hey, Angus!”

  Germ was chasing after him down the corridor. On closer inspection, he looked slightly disheveled, with bits of frayed bandage stuck to his hair and yellow antiseptic stains on both hands.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  He drew Angus away from the library, looking distinctly uneasy.

  “What’s up?” Angus asked, puzzled.

  “Look, I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others, in case you choked on a carrot or something. But your uncle came up to the sanatorium the other day with a deep cut on his finger. Old Fleagal started asking him how he got the scar on his chin. And Jeremius said . . .”

  “Said what?”

  Germ scratched his head, not quite looking Angus in the eye. “He said it happened two years ago, when he was staying wit
h my uncle at Castle Dankhart.”

  “What! But he can’t have . . . I mean, he must have meant . . .” Angus stared at Germ, feeling as if he’d just been hit in the stomach by a giant Hungarian hailstone.

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking it over, and I reckon there’re only three reasons why Jeremius would admit something like that,” Germ said. “One, he was making a really bad joke. Two, he’s betrayed Perilous, the lightning catchers, and all the weather oaths he’s ever taken and is now in cahoots with the monsoon mongrels.”

  “But he can’t be!” Angus said desperately. “I mean, if he had betrayed everyone, he definitely wouldn’t go around bragging about it, would he?”

  “In that case, it must be option three,” Germ said. “My uncle kidnapped your uncle.”

  If Jeremius had been kidnapped, how had he escaped? And wouldn’t he now know how to get Angus’s mum and dad out, if he’d already managed it himself? But what other explanation could there be? Angus felt his head spin; new doubts about his uncle flooded his brain. Had he been right not to trust Jeremius all along? How many secrets was his uncle keeping?

  “Don’t tell anyone else what you heard, okay? Not even Indigo and Dougal,” Angus said.

  “My lips are sealed as tightly as a jar of stormberry jelly,” Germ said, pretending to zip his mouth closed. “Luckily, I’m already an expert in keeping big family secrets!”

  Angus stumbled back to his room in a state of such confusion that he tripped over Edmund Croxley without stopping to apologize.

  To everyone’s surprise, cold-weather survival lessons resumed in the Rotundra just twelve days after the ice-diamond storm. Feeling extremely uncomfortable after Germ’s revelations, Angus did his best to avoid his uncle’s eye for the entire lesson.

  Luckily, icicle storms pelted the peaked glass roof above as they entered the Rotundra, and Jeremius seemed to think that was the perfect opportunity to teach them how to use their own body heat to warm up cold hands and feet. Angus therefore spent fifteen minutes with Dougal’s bare toes wedged into his armpit.