Free Return of the Emerald Skull by Paul Stewart

breaking my neck in the process.
    Sidney's letter would have to wait. There was nothing for it but to bed down and waitfor the cold light of dawn. Pulling my curtain around me, I sat down, propped myself up against the wall between the beds of Sidney and his neighbour – and waited.
    I must have dozed off, for the next thing I remember was a voice in my ear, soft and insidious.
    ‘
Arise, my children
,’ it said. ‘
Arise and prepare
.’
    I opened my eyes. Early morning light was streaming in through the barred windows. I looked around, expecting someone to be there – a prefect, perhaps, or one of the teachers. But there was no one.
    ‘
Arise, my children
,’ the voice continued. ‘
Arise and prepare
.’
    I clearly wasn't the only one to have heard it. Around me, the other boys in the dormitory had climbed from their beds, wiped the sleep from their eyes and were already beginning to file out through the door. I turned to young Sidney, hoping that at lastwe would be able to get that letter written alerting Sidney senior to his son's plight.
    No such luck. The kid was already up and padding obediently after the others across the dormitory floor.
    ‘Sidney,’ I hissed. ‘Sidney …’
    I might as well have been talking to myself. I seized him by the shoulders, but he shrugged me off like a barge dog shaking off canal water.
    Reluctantly I followed Sidney and my dormitory companions back along the corridor and down the stairs. I was hungry – my stomach grumbling louder than a washerwoman on a wet Monday. But when we reached the bottom of the stairs, there was no sign of breakfast and the prefects ushered us towards the classrooms.
    ‘Fall in, Heron House!’ they bellowed, their words echoing along the corridor.
    Most of them were wearing feathered head-dresses while, curiously, others weredressed in schoolmasters’ clothes – white laboratory coats, leather-patched tweed jackets, mortar boards and flapping gowns. All of them were armed. Beneath my curtain cloak, I gripped my swordstick and kept my head down.
    ‘Falcon House to the west classrooms! Heron House to the quad!’
    I trooped after Sidney junior and his pals as they made their way towards the quad, past the line of supervising prefects in their feathered head-dresses. I was just approaching the last in line when he leaned forward, grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him. It was Thompson – but changed. He was no longer the eager guide who had shown me to the headmaster's study on my first visit. Now, his face was hard, his eyes glazed and his jaw fiercely clenched.
    ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘I don't recognize your face.’
    ‘Me?’ I said, coolly holding his gaze.‘I'm Grimes. Grimes minor.’
    His eyes continued to bore into mine.
    ‘I once substituted for you on the Farrow Fives field,’ I told him.
    I saw a flash of recognition, or memory, pass across his frowning features. He let me go, but I knew he remained suspicious. Setting off once again, I felt his piercing gaze on my back as I made my way out into the quad.
    I discovered that we were heading towards the west wing. There were classrooms on both the ground and first floors, with doors leading out either onto a raised balcony or onto the quad itself. The ornate guttering with its gurning gargoyles, the brass and stone statues guarding each entrance, and the rose and ivy winding their way round each window, made it a building worthy of a stately home. As I drew nearer, though, the sounds of banging and crashing and splintering of wood reminded me all too clearlythat this was no duke's palace, but rather a school in turmoil.
    All at once a huge cupboard landed heavily on the paving stones to my left with a loud
crash!
A derisory cheer went up from above me and I looked up to see half a dozen boys standing on an upper balcony, looking down, grinning. A moment later, there was another loud whoop as a blackboard was hurled from the adjacent balcony and struck the ground with a