Artemis Fowl Read Free

arrangement was when Virgil Butler had been contracted as servant, bodyguard, and cook to Lord Hugo de Fol´e for one of the first great Norman crusades.
    At the age of ten, Butler children were sent to a private training center in Israel, where they were taught the specialized skills necessary to guard the latest in the Fowl line. These skills included Cordon Bleu cooking, marksmanship, a customized blend of martial arts, emergency medicine, and information technology. If, at the end of their training, there was not a Fowl to guard, then the Butlers were eagerly snapped up as bodyguards for various royal personages, generally in Monaco or Saudi Arabia.
    Once a Fowl and a Butler were put together, they were paired for life. It was a demanding job, and lonely, but the rewards were handsome if you survived to enjoy them. If not, then your family received a six-figure settlement plus a monthly pension.
    The current Butler had been guarding young Master Artemis for twelve years, since the moment of his birth. And, though they adhered to the age-old formalities, they were much more than master and servant. Artemis was the closest thing Butler had to a friend, and Butler was the closest Artemis had to a father, albeit one who obeyed orders.
    Butler held his tongue until they were aboard the Heathrow connection from Bangkok, then he had to ask.
    “Artemis?”
    Artemis looked up from the screen of his PowerBook. He was getting a head start on the translation.
    “Yes?”
    “The sprite. Why didn’t we simply keep the Book and leave her to die?”
    “A corpse is evidence, Butler. My way, the People will have no reason to be suspicious.”
    “But the sprite?”
    “I hardly think she will confess to showing humans the Book. In any case, I mixed a slight amnesiac into her second injection. When she finally wakes up, the last week will be a blur.”
    Butler nodded appreciatively. Always two steps ahead, that was Master Artemis. People said he was a chip off the old block. They were wrong. Master Artemis was a brand-new block, the likes of which had never been seen before.
    Doubts assuaged, Butler returned to his copy of Guns & Ammo , leaving his employer to unravel the secrets of the universe.

CHAPTER 2
TRANSLATION
    By now, you must have guessed just how far Artemis Fowl was prepared to go in order to achieve his goal. But what exactly was this goal? What outlandish scheme would involve the blackmailing of an alcohol-addicted sprite? The answer was gold.
    Artemis’s search had begun two years previously when he first became interested in surfing the Internet. He quickly found the more arcane sites: alien abduction, UFO sightings, and the supernatural. But most specifically the existence of the People.
    Trawling through gigabytes of data, he found hundreds of references to fairies from nearly every country in the world. Each civilization had its own term for the People, but they were undoubtedly members of the same hidden family. Several stories mentioned a Book carried by each fairy. It was their bible, containing, as it allegedly did, the history of their race and the commandments that governed their extended lives. Of course, this book was written in Gnommish, the fairy language, and would be of no use to any human.
    Artemis believed that with today’s technology the Book could be translated. And with this translation you could begin to exploit a whole new group of creatures.
    Know thine enemy was Artemis’s motto, so he immersed himself in the lore of the People until he had compiled a huge database on their characteristics. But it wasn’t enough. So Artemis put out a call on the Web: Irish businessman will pay large amount of U.S. dollars to meet a fairy, sprite, leprechaun, pixie. The responses had been mostly fraudulent, but Ho Chi Minh City had finally paid off.
    Artemis was perhaps the only person alive who could take full advantage of his recent acquisition. He still retained a childlike belief in magic, tempered by an