“Yes. Stephanie Edgley.”
“No.”
“No?”
“That’s your given name. That’s the name other people handed you. If a mage with any kind of knowledge wanted to, he could use that name to influence you, to attain some small degree of control – to make you stand, sit, speak, things like that.”
“Like a dog.”
“I suppose so.”
“You’re likening me to a dog?”
“No,” he said, and then paused. “Well, yes.”
“Oh, cheers.”
“But you have another name, a real name, a true name. A name unique to you and you alone.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. You don’t know it either, at least not consciously. This name gives you power, but it would also give other people absolute power over you. If someone knew it, they could command your loyalty, your love, everything about you. Your free will could be totally eradicated. Which is why we keep our true names hidden.”
“So what’s the third name?”
“The name you take. It can’t be used against you, it can’t be used to influence you and it’s your first defence against a sorcerer’s attack. Your taken name seals your given name, protects it, and that’s why it’s so important to get it right.”
“So Skulduggery is the name you took?”
“It is.”
“What about me? Should I have a third name?”
He hesitated for only a moment. “If you’re going to be accompanying me on this, then yes, you probably should.”
“And am I going to be accompanying you?”
“That depends. Do you need your parents’ permission?”
Stephanie’s parents wanted her to find her own way in life. That’s what they’d said countless times in the past. Of course, they’d been referring to school subjects and college applications and job prospects. Presumably, at no stage did they factor living skeletons and magic underworlds into their considerations. If they had, their advice would probably have been very different.
Stephanie shrugged. “No, not really.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me.”
They reached the car and got in, and as they pulled out on to the road, she looked at him.
“So who’s this Serpine you were talking about?”
“Nefarian Serpine is one of the bad guys. I suppose, now that Mevolent is gone, he’d be considered the bad guy.”
“What’s so bad about him?”
The purr of the engine was all that filled the car for a few moments. “Serpine is an Adept,” Skulduggery said at last. “He was Mevolent’s most trusted lieutenant. You heard what China was saying, about how she is a collector, how Gordon was a collector? Serpine is a collector too. He collects magic. He has tortured, maimed and killed in order to learn other people’s secrets. He has committed untold atrocities in order to uncover obscure rituals, searching for the one ritual that he, and religious fanatics like him, have been seeking for generations. Back when the war broke out, he had this… weapon. These days he’s full of surprises, but he still uses it because, quite frankly, there is no defence against it.”
“What’s the weapon?”
“To put it simply, agonising death.”
“Agonising death… on its own? Not, like, fired from a gun or anything?”
“He just has to point his red right hand at you and… well, like I said, agonising death. It’s a necromancy technique.”
“Necromancy?”
“Death magic, a particularly dangerous Adept discipline. I don’t know how he learned it, but learn it he did.”
“And what does the Sceptre thing have to do with all this?”
“Nothing. It has nothing to do with anything.”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s a weapon of unstoppable destructive power. Or it would be, if it actually existed. It’s a rod, about the length of your thigh bone… Actually, I think I might have a picture of it…”
He pulled the car over and got out to open the Bentley’s boot. Stephanie had never been to this part of town before. The streets were quiet and empty. She could see the bridge over the canal in the distance. Moments later Skulduggery was back behind the wheel, they were driving again and Stephanie had a leather bound book on her lap.
“What’s this?” she asked, opening the clasp and flicking through the pages.
“Our most popular myths and legends,” said Skulduggery. “You just passed the Sceptre.”
She flicked back and came to a reproduction of a painting of a wide-eyed man reaching for a golden staff with a black crystal embedded in its hilt. The Sceptre was glowing and he was shielding his eyes. On the opposite page was another picture, this time of a man holding the Sceptre, surrounded by cowering figures, their heads turned away. “Who’s this guy?”
“He’s an Ancient. In the legends, they were the very first sorcerers, the first to wield the power of the elements, the first to use magic. They lived apart from the mortal world, had no interest in it. They had their own ways, their own customs and their own gods. Eventually, they decided that they wanted to have their own destinies too, so they rose up against their gods, rather nasty beings called the Faceless Ones, and battled them on the land, in the skies and in the oceans. The Faceless Ones, being immortal, won every battle, until the Ancients constructed a weapon powerful enough to drive them back – the Sceptre.”
“You sound like you know the story well.”
“Tales around the campfire might seem quaint now, but it’s all we had before movies. The Faceless Ones were banished, forced back to wherever they came from.”
“So what’s happening here? He’s killing his gods?”
“Yep. The Sceptre was fuelled by the Ancients’ desire to be free. That was the most powerful force they had at their disposal.”
“So it’s a force for freedom?”
“Originally. However, once the Ancients no longer had the Faceless Ones to tell them what to do, they started fighting among themselves, and they turned the Sceptre on each other and fuelled it with hate.”
The streetlights played on his skull as they passed in and out of darkness, flashing bone-white in a hypnotic rhythm.
“The last Ancient,” he continued, “having driven his gods away, having killed all his friends and all his family, realised what he had done and hurled the Sceptre deep into the earth, where the ground swallowed it.”
“What did he do then?”
“Probably went for a snooze. I don’t know, it’s a legend. It’s an allegory. It didn’t really happen.”
“So why does Serpine think it’s real?”
“Now that is puzzling. Like his master before him, he believes some of our darker myths, our more disturbing legends. He believes the world was a better place when the Faceless Ones were in charge. They didn’t exactly approve of humanity, you see, and they demanded worship.”
“The ritual that he’s been looking for – is it to bring them back?”
“It is