‘So what? I wasn’t intending to hang around in there,’ said Victor.
‘I mean really fast!’
‘ ‘Scuse me,’ said Gaspode patiently. They looked down at him.
‘Me an’ Laddie could do it,’ he said. ‘Four legs’re better ‘n two and so forth, y’know? When it comes to savin’ the day.’
Victor looked at Dibbler and raised his eyebrows.
‘I suppose they might be able to,’ Dibbler conceded. Victor nodded. Laddie leaped gracefully, snatched the torch out of his hand and ran back into the building with Gaspode lurching after him.
‘Did I hear things, or can that little dog speak?’ said Dibbler.
‘He says he can’t,’ said Victor.
Dibbler hesitated. The excitement was unhinging him a little. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose he should know.’
The dogs bounded towards the screen. The Victor-Thing was nearly through, half-sprawled among the cans.
‘Can I light the fire?’ said Gaspode. ‘ ‘Smy job, really.’
Laddie barked obediently and dropped the blazing paper. Gaspode snapped it up and advanced cautiously towards the Thing.
‘Savin’ the day,’ he said, indistinctly, and dropped the torch on a coil of film. It flared instantly and burned with a sticky white fire, like slow magnesium.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now, let’s get the hell out of-‘
The Thing screamed. What semblance there still was of Victor left it, and something like an explosion in an aquarium twisted among the flames. A tentacle whipped out and grabbed Gaspode by the leg.
He turned and tried to bite it.
Laddie ricocheted back down the stricken hall and launched himself at the flailing arm. It recoiled, knocking him over and spinning Gaspode across the floor.
The little dog sat up, took a few wobbling steps, and fell over.
‘Bloody leg’s been and gone,’ he muttered. Laddie gave him a sorrowful look. Flames crackled around the film cans. .
‘Go on, get out of here, you stupid mutt,’ said Gaspode. ‘The whole thing’s goin’ to go up in a minute. No! Don’t pick me up! Put me down! You haven’t got time-‘
The walls of the Odium expanded with apparent slowness, every plank and stone maintaining its position relative to all the others but floating out by itself.
Then Time caught up with events.
Victor threw himself flat on his face.
Boom.
An orange fireball lifted the roof and billowed up into the foggy sky. Wreckage smashed against the walls of other houses. A red-hot film can scythed over the heads of the recumbent wizards, making a menacing wipwipwip noise, and exploded against a distant wall.
There was a high, thin keening that stopped abruptly.
The Ginger-Thing rocked in the heat. The gust of hot air lifted its huge skirts in billows around its waist and it stood, flickering and uncertain, as debris rained down around it.
Then it turned awkwardly and lurched onward.
Victor looked at Ginger, who was staring at the thinning clouds of smoke over the pile of rubble that had been the Odium.
‘That’s wrong,’ she was muttering. ‘It doesn’t happen like that. It never happens like that. Just when you think it’s too late, they come galloping out of the smoke.’ She turned dull eyes upon him. ‘Don’t they?’ she pleaded.
‘That’s in the clicks,’ said Victor. ‘This is reality.,
‘What’s the difference?’
The Chair grabbed Victor’s shoulder and spun him around.
‘It’s heading for the Library!’ he repeated. ‘You’ve got to stop it! If it gets there the magic’ll make it invincible! We’ll never beat it! It’ll be able to bring others!’
‘You’re wizards,’ said Ginger. ‘Why don’t you stop it?’
Victor shook his head. ‘The Things like our magic,’ he said. ‘If you use it anywhere around them, it only makes them stronger. But I don’t see what I can do . . . ‘
His voice trailed off. The crowd was watching him expectantly.
They weren’t looking at him as if he was their only hope. They were looking at him is if he was their certainty.
He heard a small child say, ‘What happens now, Mum?’
The fat woman holding it said, authoritatively, ‘It’s easy. He rushes up and stops it just at the last minute. Happens every time. Seen him do it before.’
‘I’ve never done it before!’ said Victor.
‘Saw you do it,’ said the woman smugly. ‘In Sons of the Dessert. When this lady here’, she gave a brief curtsey in the direction of Ginger, ‘was on that horse what threw her over the cliff, and you galloped up and grabbed her at the last minute. Very impressive, I thought.’
‘That wasn’t Sons of the Dessert,’ said an elderly man pedantically, while he filled his pipe, ‘that was Valley of the Trolls.’
‘It was Sons,’ said a thin woman behind him. ‘I should know, I watched it twenty-seven times.’
‘Yes, it was very good, wasn’t it,’ said the first woman. ‘Every time I see a scene where she leaves him and he turns to her and gives her that look, I burst into tears-‘
‘Excuse me, but that wasn’t Sons of the Dessert,’ said the man, speaking slowly and deliberately. ‘You’re thinking of the famous plaza scene in Burninge Passiones.’
The fat woman took Ginger’s unresisting hand and patted it.
‘You’ve got a good man there,’ she said. ‘The way he always rescues you every time. If I was being dragged off by mad trolls my ole man wouldn’t say a word except to ask where I wanted my clothes sent.’
‘My husband wouldn’t get out of his chair if I was being et by dragons,’ said the thin woman. She gave Ginger a gentle prod. ‘But you want to wear more clothes, miss. Next time you’re taken off to be rescued, you insist they let you take a warm coat. I never see you on the screen without thinking to myself, she’s temptin’ a dose of ‘flu, going around like that.’
‘Where’s ‘is sword?’ said the child, kicking its mother on the shin.
‘I expect he’ll be off to fetch it directly,’ she said, giving Victor an encouraging smile.
‘Er. Yes,’ he said. ‘Come on, Ginger.’ He grabbed her hand.
‘Give the lad room,’ shouted the pipe smoker authoritatively.
A space cleared around them. Ginger and Victor saw a thousand expectant faces watching them.
‘They think we’re real,’ moaned Ginger. ‘No-one’s doing anything because they think you’re a hero, for gods’ sake! And we can’t do anything! This Thing is bigger than both of us!’
Victor stared down at the damp cobblestones. I can probably remember some magic, he thought, but ordinary magic’s no good against the Dungeon Dimensions. And I’m pretty sure real heroes don’t hang around in the middle of cheering crowds. They get on with the job. Real heroes are like poor old Gaspode. No-one ever notices them until afterwards. That’s the reality.’
He raised his head slowly.
Or is this the reality?
The air crackled. There was another kind of magic. It was snapping wildly in the world now, like a broken film. If only he could grab it . . .
Reality didn’t have to be real. Maybe if conditions were right, it just had to be what people believed . . .
‘Stand back,’ he whispered.
‘What’re you going to do?’ said Ginger.
‘Try some Holy Wood kind of magic.’
‘There’s nothing magic about Holy Wood!’
‘I . . . think there is. A different sort. We’ve felt it. Magic’s where you find it.’
He took a few deep breaths, and let his mind unravel slowly. That was the secret. You did it, you just didn’t think about it. You just let the instructions come from outside. It was just a job. You just felt the eye of the picture-box on you, and it was a different world, a world that was just a flickering silver square.
That was the secret. The flicker.
Ordinary magic just moved things around. It couldn’t create a real thing that’d last for more than a second, because that took a lot of power.
But Holy Wood easily created things over and over again, dozens of times a second. They didn’t have to last for long. They just had to last for long enough.
But you had to work Holy Wood magic by Holy Wood’s rules . . .
He extended a rock-steady hand towards the dark sky.
‘Lights!’
There was a sheet of lightning that illuminated the whole city . . .
‘Picture box!’
Gaffer spun the handle furiously.
‘Action!’
No-one saw where the horse came from. It was just there, leaping over the heads of the crowd. It was white, with lots of impressive silver work on the bridle. Victor swung up into the saddle as it cantered past, then made it rear impressively so that it pawed the air. He drew a sword which hadn’t been there a moment before.
The sword and the horse flickered almost imperceptibly.
Victor smiled. Light glinted off a tooth. Ting. A glint, but no sound; they hadn’t invented sound, yet.