Free The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer Page B

he’d had a few days to prepare, but for this jaunt he barely had time to catch up on his martial arts routines.
    As soon as the Fowl Bentley had pulled up at Fowl Manor, Artemis had disappeared into his study, firing up his computers. Butler took the opportunity to work out, freshen up, and prepare dinner: onion marmalade tartlets, rack of lamb with garlic gratin, and a red berries crepe to inish.
    Artemis broke the news over coffee.
    “We need to go to Sicily,” he said, toying with the biscotti on his saucer. “I made a breakthrough on the time spell figures.”
    “How soon?” asked the bodyguard, mentally listing his contacts on the Mediterranean island.
    Artemis looked at his Rado watch and Butler moaned.
    “Don’t check your watch, Artemis. Check the calendar.”
    “Sorry, old friend. But you know time is limited. I can’t risk missing a materialization.”
    “But on the jet you said that there wasn’t another materialization due for six weeks.”
    “I was wrong, or rather, Foaly was wrong. He missed a few new factors in the temporal equation.”
    Artemis had filled Butler in on the 8th Family details as the jet soared over the English Channel.
    “Allow me to demonstrate,” said Artemis. He put a silver salt shaker on his plate “Let us say that this salt shaker is Hybras. My plate is where it is: our dimension. And your plate is where it wants to go: Limbo. With me so far?”
    Butler nodded reluctantly. He knew that the more he understood, the more Artemis would tell him, and there wasn’t much space in a bodyguard’s head for quantum physics.
    “So, the demon warlocks wanted to move the island from plate A to plate B, but not through space, through time.”
    “How do you know all this?”
    “It’s all in the fairy Book,” replied the Irish teenager. “Quite a detailed description, if a bit flowery.”
    The Book was the fairy bible, containing their history and commandments. Artemis had managed to obtain a copy from a drunken sprite in Ho Chi Minh City years earlier. It was proving to be an invaluable source of information.
    “I doubt the Book has too many charts and graphs,” noted Butler.
    Artemis smiled. “No, I got the specifics from Foaly, not that he knows he’s sharing information.”
    Butler rubbed his temples. “Artemis, I warned you not to mess with Foaly. The decoy thing is bad enough.”
    Artemis was fully aware that Foaly was tracking him and any decoys he sent out. In fact, he only sent out the decoys to make Foaly dip into his funds. It was his idea of a joke.
    “I didn’t initiate the surveillance,” objected Artemis. “Foaly did. I found more than a dozen devices on my computers alone. All I did was reverse the spike to get into some of his shared files. Nothing classified. Well, maybe a few. Foaly’s been busy since he left the LEP.”
    “So what did Foaly’s files tell you?” said Butler resignedly.
    “They told me about magic. Basically, magic is energy, and the ability to manipulate energy. To move Hybras from A to B, the demon warlocks harnessed the power of their volcano to create a time rent, or tunnel.” Artemis rolled his napkin into a tube, popped the salt shaker into it, and deposited the shaker on Butler’s plate.
    “Simple as that?” said Butler doubtfully.
    “Not really,” said Artemis. “In fact, the warlocks did an exceptional job, considering the instruments available to them at the time. They had to calculate the power of the volcano, the size of the island, the energy of each individual demon on the island, not to mention the reverse pull of lunar attraction. It’s amazing that the spell worked as well as it did.”
    “There was a glitch?”
    “Yes. According to the Book, the warlocks induced the volcano, but the force was too strong. They couldn’t control it, and the magic circle was broken. Hybras and the demons were transported, but the warlocks were blasted into space.”
    Butler whistled. “That’s quite a glitch.”
    “It’s