Return of the Emerald Skull Read online

  Also available by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell:

  BARNABY GRIMES

  CURSE OF THE NIGHT WOLF

  FERGUS CRANE

  Winner of the Smarties Prize Gold Medal

  CORBY FLOOD

  Winner of the Nestlé Prize Silver Medal

  HUGO PEPPER

  Winner of the Nestlé Prize Silver Medal

  THE EDGE CHRONICLES

  The Quint Trilogy

  THE CURSE OF THE GLOAMGLOZER

  THE WINTER KNIGHTS

  CLASH OF THE SKY GALLEONS

  The Twig Trilogy

  BEYOND THE DEEPWOODS

  STORMCHASER

  MIDNIGHT OVER SANCTAPHRAX

  The Rook Trilogy

  THE LAST OF THE SKY PIRATES

  VOX

  FREEGLADER

  THE LOST BARKSCROLLS

  The Edge Chronicles Maps

  Also available:

  BLOBHEADS

  BLOBHEADS GO BOING!

  MUDDLE EARTH

  For Anna, Katy and Jack

  ut out his beating heart!‘ the ancient voice commanded, each syllable dripping with a dark evil that I was powerless to resist.

  Overhead, the moon slid slowly but inexorably across the face of the sun, casting the courtyard into a dreadful dusk. And as the light faded, so did the last vestiges of my will to resist. There was nothing I could do.

  A circle of shadowy figures clustered like a flock of hideous vultures around the great slab that lay before me. Their beaked faces and long rustling feathers quivered with awful anticipation as their dark eye-sockets turned, as one, towards me.

  On awkward, stumbling legs I approached the wooden altar like a sleepwalker, climbing one step after the other, powerless to fight it.

  The hideous figures parted as I drew closer. At the altar I looked down. There, stripped to the waist, lying face up and spread-eagled, was a man, roped into place. There were cuts and weals on his skin – some scabbed over, some fresh – and his ribs were sticking up, giving his chest the appearance of a damaged glockenspiel.

  His head lolled to one side, and from his parted lips there came a low, rasping moan.

  ‘Please,’ he pleaded, gazing up at me with the panic-stricken eyes of a ferret-cornered rabbit. ‘Don't do it, I'm begging you …’

  At that moment the final dazzling rays of the sun were extinguished by the dark orb of the moon. In shock, I looked up into the sky. The whole disc had turned pitch-black, and from the circumference of the circle a spiky ring of light streamed out in all directions, like a black merciless eye staring down from the heavens.

  The tallest of the feathered figures stepped forward to face me. He wore a great crown of iridescent blue plumage. Behind him, nestling like a grotesque egg on the cushion of a high-backed leather chair, was a hideous grinning skull. As I stared, the huge jewels in the skull's eye-sockets started to glow a bright and bloody crimson, which stained the eerie twilight of the eclipse.

  The feathered figure reached into his cape and withdrew a large stone knife, which he held out to me. Again the ancient voice rasped in my head.

  ‘Cut out his beating heart!’

  Despite myself, I reached out and gripped the haft of the stone knife in my hands. As I did so, I felt my arm being raised up into the air, as if it was attached to a string tugged upwards by some unseen puppeteer.

  The feathered figure reached into his cape and withdrew a large stone knife

  I stared down at the figure tied to the altar. A vivid cross of red paint marked the spot beneath which his heart lay, beating, I was sure, as violently as my own.

  My grip tightened on the cruel stone knife, the blade glinting, as the blood-red ruby eyes of the grinning skull bored into mine. Inside my head, the voice rose to a piercing scream.

  ‘Cut out his beating heart – and give it to me!’

  ow could I have possibly known of the waking nightmare that was to unfold when, on a bright summer afternoon, I set off for Grassington Hall School with a spring in my step and a whistle on my lips? I don't know about you, but schools have always struck me as strange, unnatural institutions. Don't get me wrong: I'm certainly not against hard study and the acquiring of knowledge. Far from it! Why, there's nothing I like better than poring over the dusty volumes on the shelves of Underhill's Library for Scholars of the Arcane after a hard day's work …

  I'm a tick-tock lad by profession – that's a clerk errant for those of you who might not know. I pick up things and deliver them all over this great city as quickly as I can manage, because – tick-tock – time is money!

  The faster I am, the more I earn. Simple as that.

  That's the reason I always take the most direct route from one place to another, over the rooftops. Highstacking, it's called, and it's not for the faint-hearted, I can tell you. I've taken my fair share of tumbles in my time. It goes with the job, and it's one of the reasons there aren't more highstackers around. It's just too dangerous for most tick-tock lads, who prefer to stick to the pavements. ‘Cobblestone-creepers’, we highstackers call them. Needs practice, daring and a sense of adventure to take to the rooftops, not to mention an instinct for danger.

  Now, that's something they don't teach you at those fancy schools.

  Instead, the pampered sons and daughters of the rich are packed off to grand-sounding institutions like Highfield Academy for Young Ladies of Quality and Farrow Court College for the Sons of the Gentry, where they're taught to dance and ride to hounds and hold polite conversations in whatever language is considered fashionable at that moment.

  Not that all schools are as grand as Highfield and Farrow. No, I've seen my fair share of institutions that resemble lunatic asylums or prisons rather than places of learning. Set up by plausible professors with impressive-sounding letters after their names, these schools promise to make ladies and gentlemen out of their unfortunate students and charge gullible parents exorbitant fees to match.

  ‘Lock-up academies’, they're called, because once they're full, the professors lock the gates and control everything that comes in or out. That way they can pocket the fees and not spend so much as a brass farthing on their pupils.

  Old Jenkins the cloth merchant pays little Johnny's school fees, and in return gets a letter each term from the apple of his eye telling him how splendidly he's getting on. The truth, though, is quite different. Little Johnny and his schoolmates are being starved and beaten, and sleeping ten to a vermin-infested bed, while Professor Whackstick and his schoolmaster henchmen get richer and richer.

  I know, believe me, because as a tick-tock lad I've delivered a good few sackfuls of ‘school letters’. Whenever I discover they're fake or have been written under threat, I do my best to warn the parents – but it's amazing how often they'd rather not know. Besides, what's the word of a tick-tock lad against that of a plausible professor? No wonder, then, that there are school rebellions.

  Yes, that's right. Rebellions. When the poor downtrodden inmates of the lock-up academies just can't stand it any more.

  Take Grendel Grange School, for instance. The pupils spent months fashioning all manner of weapons right under the noses of the bullying headmaster, Colonel Griggs, and his staff of ex-military men, who were supposed to be giving their charges the ‘discipline and moral fibre of a military education’. The good colonel certainly got more than he bargained for.

  Despite being fed on rations of mouldy bread and watery gruel, the Grendel Grange Grenadiers – as they called themselves – managed to rout the teachers in a pitched battle and besiege them in the Senior Common Room for five days, using catapults, blowpipes and a home-made cannon.

  Of course, the most famous school rebellion took place a few yea
rs earlier, at Enderby Court College for Young Ladies. The Enderby Amazons defeated Dame Cecily Mandrake and her fifty-strong staff of ex-convicts using croquet mallets and feral cats, and released the girls of the lower school, who counted the daughters of several prominent merchants and the Lord Mayor's niece amongst their number. I must confess, I played a small part in the rebellion, due to my close friendship with one Emily Ford-Maddox, a girl with startling green eyes and a pretty smile …

  But that's another story.

  As I say, schools vary. There are good ones like Highfield Academy and Farrow, and shockingly bad ones like Grendel Grange and Enderby Court. Grassington Hall was, by the standards of the day, a good school. It was situated to the south of the city, where the mills and factories give way to parkland and meadows; where cobbles end and grassy lanes begin. It's possible, out there, to imagine yourself in the country as you walk past the spacious villas with their large gardens and ornamental lakes. Once, late one summer a few years back, I even took a haywain ride at midnight through the southern suburbs during the terrifying scarecrow zombie scare …

  Anyway, the gardens were in full bloom and the birds were singing in the hedgerows as I approached the entrance to Grassington Hall on that bright summer afternoon. I arrived at the gatehouse, which was set into a high perimeter wall at the end of the drive, with an urgent delivery for the headmaster, one Archimedes Barnett, BA (Hons), MA, MRSA.

  There were boys out on the field playing ‘Farrow Fives’ – a game invented originally at Farrow Court, and very popular at the time. It was, as far as I could tell, a cross between baseball and croquet, and involved hitting five large targets situated in the outfield. Whatever the rules, it also involved a lot of running and shouting, by the look of it, not to mention a fair few crunching tackles.

  I explained my business to the gatekeeper, a cheerful-looking fellow of middling years, with a waxed moustache and a warm handshake. I'd seen his type before. An ex-soldier, by the look of his upright bearing and neatly trimmed side-whiskers. Probably a private in the infantry – though the boys all called him ‘the Major’. He summoned one of the lads to take me to the headmaster's study.

  ‘Thompson, here, will show you the way,’ he told me, indicating the fair-haired lad in a scruffy white blazer and grey, grass-stained knee breeches. ‘Mr Barnett will be mighty pleased to see you. That's if he can see you,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘Right now, he's as blind as a corporal in a coal cellar.’

  Thompson, my guide, seemed amiable enough. We took a footpath which ran parallel to the main drive, then crossed a gravelled area for visiting coaches and carriages. The walls of the buildings were made of local stone – a pale grey colour, where they weren't covered with dense ivy. We went through an archway and across a large quadrangle with an ornate fountain, then through a second grander archway on the other side, which led into the main building – a magnificent, echoing structure with lots of glazed tiles and dark wood.

  As we entered, I noticed the pupils we met looked healthy and well cared for, smiling and doffing their white tasselled caps politely as we passed.

  This clearly was no ‘lock-up academy’, I thought as we headed for the stairs.

  The sweeping staircase was as grand as everything else I had seen, the walls lined with portraits. We emerged onto a landing and turned right towards the east wing. Moments later, Thompson stopped in front of a broad oak door, the slightly tarnished plaque informing me that we had arrived at our destination.

  ‘Here we are, sir,’ he said. ‘The headmaster's study. Would you like me to introduce you, sir?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I can do that myself. You go back to your game … And thank you,’ I added as he turned and strode back down the corridor.

  I knocked on the door.

  ‘Enter,’ came a thin, reedy-sounding voice.

  I did so. The room was simply decorated. There was an ornate but worn rug on the floor; there were large bookcases to the right and two leaded windows to the left, in front of which stood a broad desk, the wood as dark as ebony. An elderly, white-haired gentleman who I took to be the headmaster, Archimedes Barnett, was stooped over a letter he was writing, his face so close to the desktop that his nose was all but grazing the vellum. As I approached the desk, he looked up and squinted at me though narrowed eyes, his brow creased with concentration.

  ‘Yes, boy? What can I do for you?’ he said, the quill poised in his right hand. ‘Speak up, I haven't got all day.’

  ‘My name's Grimes, sir,’ I began.

  ‘Grimes? Grimes?’ repeated the headmaster, screwing up his eyes and peering at me. ‘You must be a new boy … Anyway, I hope this is important, Grimes, because I'm expecting a delivery any moment. Speak up, lad.’

  ‘I'm not at the school, sir,’ I said. ‘I've been sent here by Laurence Oliphant. The optician.’ I reached into the fourth pocket of my poacher's waistcoat and removed a small hinged box. ‘Sir, I believe this is the delivery you've been expecting.’

  ‘It is?’ the headmaster exclaimed. ‘Oh, that's simply marvellous!’

  I placed the box in his outstretched hand and watched as he fumbled with the lid for a moment, before opening it, removing the spectacles and slipping them on. They were steel-rimmed, with two sets of half-moon lenses, clamped together to make two circles. He pushed them up onto the bridge of his nose and blinked at me.

  ‘Oh! That's wonderful!’ he cried out. ‘Absolutely wonderful!’ He looked down at the letter he had been writing. ‘I can see close up and’ – he glanced across at yours truly, a great grin spreading from ear to ear – ‘and I can see that you are not a pupil, but a clerk errant – and a fine one at that! Mr …’

  ‘Grimes,’ I reminded him. ‘Barnaby Grimes.’

  He climbed to his feet and extended a hand in greeting. I took it and shook it warmly.

  ‘Barnaby Grimes!’ he chuckled. ‘Very pleased to make your acquaintance, young man.’

  He picked up the letter again and examined it closely, then, laying it aside, looked all round the room.

  ‘Oh, these are far better than the ones I broke!’ he said. ‘That Mr Oliphant is a genius with lenses. He told me he'd get them to me at the end of school today, and here you are, Mr Grimes, and it is barely lunch time. What efficiency!’

  He paused for a moment, took off the spectacles and polished them thoughtfully with a large white handkerchief, before putting them back on.

  ‘I don't suppose,’ said the headmaster, ‘that I could prevail upon you, as a tick-tock lad, to accept a commission from me, Mr Grimes? You see, the problem is,’ he continued, motioning for me to sit down, ‘I'm just too busy to leave the school during term time, yet I have, from time to time, crates and packages that need to be picked up from the docks and brought to me. Very delicate items that have to be handled with the utmost care …’

  I nodded, wondering what exactly these crates and packages might contain.

  ‘But in my experience,’ he went on, ‘when I have employed others to run this errand for me, they've proved unsatisfactory.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘They drop the boxes; they manhandle them and leave them upside down. They give no thought to the contents and how delicate they might be.’ He smiled. ‘Unlike you, Mr Grimes. After all, you have just delivered a fragile pair of spectacles in perfect condition. If you could do the same for my little … packages, I would be indebted to you.’

  ‘I'd be happy to accept, Headmaster. But these packages …’ I said. ‘Just how delicate are their contents?’

  Mr Barnett leaned forward and touched me lightly on the arm. ‘If you'll follow me,’ he said, ‘I'll show you.’

  The headmaster led me from his office, back along the corridor, and up to the second storey.

  ‘No boys are allowed up here unsupervised,’ he told me as he strode down to the end of a long hallway, a plush oriental rug running along its length. He stopped before a tall, heavy door with the wordPRIVATE upon it, and seized the handle. ‘After you, Mr Grimes,�
�� he said, opening the door with a flourish and ushering me inside.

  The chamber that lay beyond the door was long and narrow, with a high, arched ceiling, and led to a pair of tall windows at the far end. Rays of sunlight were streaming in at an angle, filling the room with a curiously rich golden light. And lining the walls – turning the already narrow room into something that was little more than an aisle – were glass display cabinets. Dozens of them. Lined up, one after the other, they towered far above my head as I walked along between them, glancing at their brightly coloured contents.

  Birds.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of birds. Each one lovingly stuffed and mounted in a naturalistic setting of bushes or trees, rocks or sandy scrub. Some were perching, their feet gripping branches and twigs; others were caught in flight, wings open and suspended from invisible wires.

  Each of the cabinets bore a label – neatly written in black italic letters and affixed to the cabinet – which detailed the name and place of origin of the individual birds. Big birds, small birds. Male and female birds. Desert and jungle birds; birds that lived on the ocean. Small, inconspicuous birds, and large exotic birds with crests and spurs and dazzling plumage.

  There were parakeets and lorikeets, and huge multi-coloured macaws. There were giant shaggy ostriches and tiny iridescent hummingbirds. There were elegant flamingos with coral-pink feathers; storks and cranes and wild-feathered secretary birds. There were waders and warblers, dippers and divers, and peacocks in full display. There were swans, gulls and doves of every description; eagles and vultures …

  And all of them – each and every one – were as dead as lead-peppered ducks!

  The headmaster saw the expression on my face and must have interpreted it as appreciative amazement, for he smiled delightedly.

  In fact, the sight of so many beautiful creatures trapped and killed in order to be preserved behind glass appalled me. But I was a tick-tock lad, and my opinion of the headmaster's little hobby was neither here nor there. If he needed someone to pick up his precious parakeets and deliver them safely, then I was the one for the job.