THE BATTLE OF THE SUN

John Dee had a surprise for Jack when he returned to the house on the Strand.

Grinning and laughing and eating bread and cheese were Anselm, and Robert and Peter, and Roderick. Stone no more, but living boys. William had been freed too, but he had run away, and no one knew where.

‘How did this happen?’ cried Jack.

‘I hardly know myself,’ said John Dee. ‘I have been working day and night to free them, but then, as all the bells of London began to ring out, wild and clear, the boys assumed their usual form. But it is about you, Jack, I know that. You are ready for the Battle.’

‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘I do not know if my power is greater than his, or equal to his, but what power I have I will use.’

‘Many will help you,’ said John Dee. ‘You will not stand alone.’

Jack hugged all the boys in turn, but he had only one thought, and that was his mother. John Dee shook his head sadly.

‘The Magus has her in a deeper spell than summoning can break. Win the day, Jack, as you must do, and your mother will be restored to life.’

Jack went down and touched her face. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘if I live, so shall you. If I die, we shall be together again.’

Sir Boris had gone.

‘Where is the Knight?’ asked Jack.

‘He is awaiting his enemy,’ said John Dee. ‘There he is. Behold!’

Jack looked out on to the Thames, deserted of people, littered with boats held fast in the sleeping golden river. The Knight was mounted on his horse in the middle of the flow, or what would have been the flow, and he was still and upright, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

‘It is all so still, so silent,’ said Jack.

He turned to Silver. ‘Where will you be?’

‘Nearby,’ she said. ‘Have no fear, Jack.’

‘No fear,’ said Jack, smiling. ‘I will go out now, and wait for him.’

But as Jack reached the water-gate, there was a tremendous noise in the sky, like thunder, and a flash like lightning, and on wings of leather, and with eyes ancient and glittering, came the Dragon, in one mighty swoop, his voice huge and harsh over the house.

‘How now, Jack Snap?’

The Knight was waiting.

And came the Dragon, banking, wheeling, turning, circling, his mouth blowing fire that blistered the banks of the river and ran a black and burnt swathe up the river itself.

And came the Dragon, raging at the Knight, clipping him close with cruel wings, as the Knight sought to fight him off with his sword.

And came the Dragon, his breath so foul and sulphurous that the people on the bank swooned away from stink and burning. The Dragon’s wings were like a pair of leather bellows that flamed his own fire, and when he blew out in a rush of smoke, he fanned the fire he made and sent it shooting across the city, where it caught and burned whatever was left of wood or cloth, and the city that was not caught in gold ran in fire.

The Dragon flew east, and for a time disappeared. Jack ran to Sir Boris, who had been hit twice, and whose armour was damaged. Jack was strong, but the Knight had a supernatural weight to him, and try as he might, Jack could not get him back on to his horse. As Jack looked round, he saw the shadow of the Dragon returning.

But Jack was not alone. There was a huzzah and a hooloo, and right out of nowhere, like angels, like saviours, Anselm, Robert, Peter and Roderick each took a corner of the Knight, and with Jack’s help, sprung him back on to his horse.

Sir Boris surged forward, charging with his lance and catching the Dragon in his soft underbelly, at the one open point where dragons can be caught. The Dragon fell.

Men and women rushed from the bank on to the solid river to see this extraordinary sight. The Dragon lay quite still and felled, so much so that some began to climb over him, like a fallen oak.

Sir Boris cantered his horse ahead and raised his sword to chop off the Dragon’s head – but the Dragon was ancient and wily, and with a terrible flick of his scaly tail that flung twenty-one persons from one side of the Thames to the other, the Dragon roared up once more.

And as the Dragon slid backwards, splaying his gnarled feet, it was seen that his weight in the fall – the weight of a cathedral – had opened a chasm in the golden river, and as the Knight cantered forward to deal his final blow, his horse saw the chasm and reared, and the Knight in the weight of his armour had no time to stop himself as he fetched backwards off his horse, and fell down and down and down and down and down into the deep ending of the Thames.

And the Dragon snorted. ‘How now, Jack Snap!’

But Jack knew that the Dragon was wounded.

‘Go,’ said Jack, ‘you helped me once. Go and I will not stop you.’

But before any more could be said, Jack heard the unmistakable sound of hooves – metallic hooves on the metallic river. He looked up. Far away, echoing nearer, coming under London Bridge, rode the Magus on his horse that shone like a black sun.

Jack stood up. Everything was quiet but for the coming-closer clip-clop of the hooves.

Jack took the bridle of Sir Boris’s horse and leapt lightly into the saddle.

Then, walking the horse around the Dragon, he rode out to the middle of the river, and stood and waited.

* * *

In the house on the Strand, Roger Rover, John Dee and Silver were watching from the open window. The old Queen was sitting upright in a gilded chair.

‘I have read about dragons,’ she said, ‘but I did not think they existed.’

‘Everything exists,’ said John Dee. ‘It is just a matter of finding it.’

The Magus rode alongside Jack and reined in his horse.

‘Jack, my Jack, this is all folly. I have defeated you before and I shall defeat you now. Why do you try and fight me? Yet I will offer you a chance. Bow your head to me, kneel before me, and you shall have a share in my treasure and in my power. You shall not be my rival, you shall be like a prince to me. You are too young, you cannot use this unruly power that is in you. Offer it me, and you shall know what power is. I shall soon rule England, and from England, I shall soon rule the world.’

‘You will never rule me,’ said Jack. ‘I would die first.’

The Magus regarded him. ‘Die, Jack, would you? Then you shall!’

And the Magus galloped forward, his cloak flying out behind him, and from the streams of his cloak came every kind of evil – came goblins and devils, red-eyed demons and hook-faced birds, came creatures without heads, came heads without bodies, came silent furies and whistling deaths, came claws, beaks, talons, came the tearing, ripping, shearing racket of dark power.

As Jack ducked and swung his sword, Mother Midnight in the poop-house pulled her own cloak around her and flew straight out of the window, calling like a bird of prey, but the birds of prey who came at her call were light and clear and aimed themselves fearlessly at the flapping hells that covered the sky.

As soon as the window was open, the brave little dog Max, seeing his beloved Jack in the thick of the fray, jumped out and landed on fast feet and ran at hounds of hell six times his size.

When Mistress Split saw this, she thought only to save her Boojie, and springing off her one leg, she abseiled down the sunflower, and pulled out her huge sword from beneath her skirts and set to work at every monster that came near her or threatened the dog.

‘Slash Mash Crash Bash!’ she shouted. ‘Come here to be beheaded.’ BANG! went a goblin’s head. CRASH! went an imp in a cart. MASH! went a pair of evil eight-legged things with beady eyes and nasty fur. SLASH! went her sword, and down went an homunculus with a red face.

‘Bless my wig!’ cried the Keeper of the Tides. ‘Am I to be here helpless while my friends perish?’

And he pushed his ceremonial cannon into the window and began firing cannonballs into the squawking air.

‘Take that, and that, and that!’ he cried, as a hideous harpy thudded at his feet.

At the house on the Strand Roger Rover took command of the Queen’s troops and they poured out on to the river, and never were men braver, their swords flashing, their double-headed axes slashing the sky.

The Queen was on her feet, her lion heart alive with battle. Fearlessly she stood in the fully open window and shouted out, ‘The Queen of England is with you!’

And it was time for Silver to do her part.

She ran downstairs and into the armoury and fastened on herself a breastplate and helmet and took a small light sword. Then she went to find Jack.

As soon as she reached the river a thicket of suffocating brown moths covered her face, their wings like stinging nettles. She dropped the visor on her helmet and pushed on, showing no fear at the ghoulish wreckage around her.

Jack was fighting a hellish thing in a cloak that had eight arms and no head.

‘Jack! The Magus! Look!’ cried Silver.

The Magus had taken his chance in the commotion, and slipped away towards the unguarded house, empty but for the Queen. Jack looked up to see him scaling the wall like a bat.

With one mighty push, Jack shoved his horse right through the swirling cloak with eight arms, and galloped towards the house. As the horse came near, Jack stood up on the saddle like a circus boy, and leapt straight up the wall at the Magus.

The two of them fell, rolling and tumbling over each other.

‘Your power is ended,’ cried Jack. ‘Ended!’

But the Magus struggled free, and ran as swift as a wild animal through the smoking fighting crowds on the river, Jack pelting behind him.

Before Jack could reach him, the Magus took out a horn, and blew it. The noise was so frightening and eerie that everyone stopped fighting for a moment. Stopped to see what it was that was happening.

The River Thames opened like a wound, and from the deep underground wound came an army of metal men. They had no eyes, no hearts. They walked in step, mechanically, and in unbreakable ranks. The sound of them vibrated on the river. The noise was deafening.

The Magus began to laugh, and his laugh was metal, and his face was metal.

The metal men began to cut down the brave soldiers of the Queen. Lop off their metal heads and their metal bodies fought on. Lop off their metal legs and their metal arms swung their axes. Lop off their metal bodies and their metal legs kicked whatever came near.

Jack slipped through the confusion to where the Dragon lay wounded. He sat by the Dragon’s head. ‘Help me once more,’ he said.

‘How so, Jack Snap, why might I?’ said the Dragon.

‘I do not know,’ said Jack. ‘Melt the metal men.’

The Dragon looked at Jack as though he knew him from a long way off, another time, an older land, and perhaps he did, for there are many things that dragons know. Then, without warning, the Dragon twisted his great head, and as the ranks of metal men came near, the Dragon breathed his fierce fire.

WHOOSH! went the fireball. WHOOSH! went the purple flames. The heat was intense, the heat was as hot as the sun skimming the earth. The heat turned the air into shimmering waves so hot that a woman a mile away had her eyebrows singed off.

The metal men reddened and glowed. Their metal joints swelled and stalled. Their ungiving bodies turned molten, and as they flared and glowed and heated to a thousand degrees, they melted the solid gold of the river where they marched, and the river was turning to molten gold, and the metal men were sinking, clanking, steaming, burning.

The troops and fighters on the river were desperately trying to reach the banks. The battle had become a chaos.

Suddenly the Magus was beside Jack, his face twisted and snarling. ‘Save yourself, Jack, if you can!’ And with double fury he flung himself at Jack.

As the two fought harder and harder, Jack felt his strength growing, and his mind clearing. He had the Magus by the throat and he was looking into him, through him, it seemed, and what he saw was nothing – emptiness.

‘You have no power,’ said Jack. ‘You are empty.’

A little further away, watching the fight, was the Abbess.

‘It’s time to stop, Jack,’ said a familiar voice. ‘The battle is done.’

Silver was there. Jack looked up at her. ‘Didn’t I promise to tell you when it was time? Well, now it’s time to stop. The battle is over. I promise you. The metal men are defeated. And your mother is waiting in the house.’ Silver was smiling. ‘Come on, Jack.’

Jack hesitated and let go of the Magus, who lay winded on the golden river. Jack looked at Silver carefully; she didn’t smile like that, false and unhappy. Jack said, ‘Show me the King’s ring.’

And the shadow Silver collapsed back into a ball of mercury and rolled away. The Abbess from her vantage point was displeased. She had expected the Magus to slay Jack at that moment, and while she did not care whether Jack lived or did not, or whether the Magus succeeded or did not, she cared very much to control matters. The presence of Silver, true or false, seemed to spoil that. She wrapped her cloak about her and made her way towards the house.

‘Max! Get that ball,’ shouted Jack, and the brave dog dodged and tackled between the feet and hooves and claws, and steam and broken iron, and was gone.

As was the Magus.

But now the whole length of the solid gold river was cracking. It was as if a sulphur spring had burst beneath.

Clouds of thick steam rose up. The solid gold was breaking and splitting into little landmasses that were driven with tidal fury down the river that had been pent up. Horses, monsters, griffons, harpies, soldiers, mobsters, fighting boys found themselves on flat rafts of gold, swept away from London and out towards the sea. Eddying and swirling like a tortured serpent, the river returned from its stilled state, and hurtled between the breaking, splintering gold islands, where clung precariously all the old enemies, now crying piteously for their lives.

Jack saw the Magus on a block of gold, using his cloak like a sail, and rafting towards London Bridge.

Jack grabbed a pikestaff from a soldier, and aimed it like a jumping pole to fling himself across the boiling, breaking river, now on to a fragment of gold, now on to an upturned boat, but gaining on the Magus as the tide roared.

‘Jack Snap!’ cried a familiar voice. It was the Dragon. ‘You cannot kill him without his heart!’ And the Dragon tossed the Cinnabar Egg to Jack, who caught it lightly, bowing once from his speeding river-run boat, as he and the Magus alone surfed the tidal Thames.

The Keeper of the Tides saw the black figure of the Magus skimming towards him through the chaos of the seething river, and he saw Jack, in fantastic leaps and bounds, not far behind. As the Magus approached, the Keeper of the Tides dropped the net and caught the Magus, spinning him up as a clever spider does a fat black fly.

Now Jack was underneath and, as the Magus struggled in the net, Jack grabbed the net, and such was his strength that the net broke, and the two of them went down into the river. Down, down, down, down, down.

Under the water they were, and the Magus turned into a fish with huge blank eyes, but Jack did not let him go, and the Magus turned into a giant crab, with claws that could wrench a man’s arm from its socket, but Jack did not let him go, and the Magus turned into an eel and wrapped himself around Jack’s body, but Jack held and held and held, and finally the Magus turned back into himself, and the two of them grappled under the water, until Jack had the Magus’s head held back, as he had done with the Sunken King.

And Jack took out the Cinnabar Egg, and holding it above the water line, he cracked it in one hand.

‘My heart!’ cried the Magus. ‘My safe-kept heart.’

And the Magus began to disappear.

‘Jack,’ he said, bubbles of water coming from his mouth like dreams, ‘you were stronger, after all. Ah, Jack, what worlds we could have had . . . what hearts.’

And as Jack held the Magus, he felt something like forked lightning enter him, and he fainted.

What shapes are they up ahead? What sounds?

The river was still under the Bridge. The Keeper of the Tides looked and looked but nothing came to the surface.

Then he heard shouting from the riverbanks, like all of London was shouting from the riverbanks, and he saw that the hard hateful roofs of gold were nothing more than higgledy-piggledy tiles and thatch, and the walls that had gleamed and glistened were plaster and wood again, and the streets that had been paved with gold and shone like mirrors at midday were back to their usual filth and mud.

And across the bank, water flowed into the cisterns, and men and women dunked their heads, and baptised their babies, and dipped their thirsty cattle in the troughs, and the troughs were wood and not gold, and the cattle were warm steaming flesh and not gold, and the ovens were baking real bread, and the alehouses were serving real ale, and all that was chaos and dirt and teeming life was life again and not worth a gold tooth if you sold it, but richer than the universe.

And men and women were hugging each other, and sharing trotters and cabbage, and the city gates were open, and country people crowded in bringing gifts of eggs and cakes, and the soldiers, high on their horses, picked fruit high on the tree, and bent down to give it to the children.

And the fish in the river were fish.

And the birds in the trees were birds.

And the bees were not golden bees, and the flowers were not golden flowers, and the air smelt of herrings and honey-hay, of malt and yeast and pigs, and of the sweet moving day.

And the Queen, in her gilded chair, looking out on to the river, clapped her gnarled and ringed hands.

And the fiddlers played, and the singers sang, and there was dancing everywhere. And people found that life was better than gold, and that love was worth more than riches. And what had been lost was found.

‘Where’s Jack?’ said Silver.