Kingdom of the Wicked

“He’s something else,” said Valkyrie as she dressed. “Definitely doesn’t live in the same world as the rest of us.” She pulled on her boots and zipped up her jacket. “There. How do I look?”

“Amazing.”

“You’re not biased?”

“That’s entirely possible, but you still look amazing.”

Valkyrie laughed, and jumped out of the window.

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oarhaven sat beside a dark and stagnant lake, and was surrounded on all sides by barren lands of coarse grasses and dead trees. Nothing ever grew in Roarhaven. No birds ever sang.

The Sanctuary squatted on the edge of town, a low, circular building like a rusted hubcap that had come spinning off a passing car and then had just fallen over. The building itself went five floors beneath the surface, and was riddled with tunnels and secret passageways. Everything was dark and damp and smelled vaguely of mould. On the third floor down there was a large room filled with cabinets, and it was to this room that Valkyrie and Skulduggery were headed, to look for information about this Argeddion guy the werewolf had dreamed about.

“I’m so excited right now,” Valkyrie said as they neared.

“Stop complaining.”

“Finally, a reason to go into the fabled Mystical Hall of Magical Cabinets.”

Skulduggery looked at her. “That’s not what it’s called.”

“A chance to sort through millions of files and really do some good old-fashioned detective work. This is where the job gets glamorous. This is where I come alive.”

“You can stop being sarcastic any time now.” He led the way through the doors, and they walked along the rows of cabinets.

Valkyrie sighed. “Wouldn’t it be simpler if this was all on a computer somewhere? It’d take up a bit less space, for a start.”

“Computers crash,” said Skulduggery. “Electronic information can be hacked. Sometimes, hard copy is the way to go.”

“But there’s so much of it,” she whined. “Please tell me that there’s some sort of cool magical search system where the name we seek will suddenly appear to us.”

“Yes,” said Skulduggery. “It’s called Alphabetical Order.” He opened a cabinet, skimmed over the files, then opened another one.

Valkyrie thought about helping, then decided against it. She’d probably just get in the way. “Is Argeddion really a problem?” she asked.

“You don’t think everything that’s happened has been a problem?”

She shrugged. “It’s been an inconvenience, and it’s been unfortunate, because of the people who have been hurt or killed. But if Argeddion was really going to affect the world, or if this Summer of Light thing is bad news, the Sensitives would have seen something, wouldn’t they?”

“They don’t see everything,” Skulduggery murmured, and looked up. “In fact, they see very little. In the past they have missed huge, world-changing events. In 1844, a psychic called Ethereal Ethel – yes, she chose that name herself – had a vision. She saw into the future, to Sunday the twenty-eighth of June, 1914. Do you remember why this date is significant?”

“Did Ireland win a big football match that day?”

“You would have learned about this in school. I also went over it as part of your close-protection training.”

“Oh, was this about Ferdie?”

“Please don’t call him that.”

“Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then.”

Skulduggery returned his attention to the cabinets. “Go on.”

“He was assassinated in Sarajevo. There was an attempt on his life with a grenade that didn’t kill him but injured the people around him. He wanted to visit the hospital on his way back, so he deviated from the agreed route and promptly got himself killed like an idiot, which basically kick-started World War One. So Ethereal Ethel had a vision of his assassination?”

“No. She had a vision of a woman in Greece who would invent a new kind of shoe.”

“Oh.”

“Every psychic missed the assassination. It changed the world, and they all missed it.”

“What about the shoe?”

“The Greek woman invented the shoe, then was run over by a train. Ethel missed that bit as well.”

“She wasn’t a very good psychic.”

“No, she wasn’t,” he said, searching through another cabinet. “But that’s what you get when you rely on prophecy to highlight oncoming threats – you’re going to be caught by surprise nine times out of ten. It’s a trap you must not fall into.”

“But psychics saw Darquesse’s arrival, and look at me, here I am.”

“You’re talking about it like it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, like the only reason you’re Darquesse is because they had a vision about you. That’s not what happened. Self-fulfilling prophecies don’t exist. The threat you pose as Darquesse did not come about because of what they saw. You didn’t learn your true name because of a vision. You learned your true name from the Book of Names, and once you became a threat, they started having the visions. When a psychic does have a vision, they are rarely wrong. The problem is they don’t see everything that’s going to happen.”

“Right.”

“You look confused.”

“I feel confused. The Death Bringer—”

“Was a scientific inevitability, not a prophecy. You’re not the Chosen One, Valkyrie. There is no Chosen One, there never was and never will be. The very idea is ridiculous. You’re your own person, independent and free to choose.”

“But we saw Darquesse. We saw what she does.”

“We saw a possible future, and if we’re very unlucky, that future will happen. But you’re not going to destroy the world just because people have seen you destroy the world. You’re going to destroy it for your own reasons.”

“That really fails to make me feel better.”

“I realised that halfway through. Sorry.” He slid the cabinet shut and stood there, tapping his fingers. “Nothing here. No files on Argeddion, no notes or cross-references or mentions of the Summer of Light. How annoying. We walked all the way in here and now have nothing to show for it. What a waste of walking. We could have walked somewhere else and be having a great time by now.”

“Yeah,” said Valkyrie as they started back, “it’s a real tragedy, all right. Maybe we should get the word out that we’re looking for him.”

“Already taken care of, but it could be days or weeks before we hear from anyone – if anyone out there does know him.”

They climbed the stone stairs into the main corridor network. “Do you think the Sensitives would have any information?” she asked. “Maybe we should call in on Finbar.”

“Finbar is out of the psychic business, Valkyrie, you know that.”