The Last Portal (11 page)

Susie and Joe

Chris felt relieved at
the news, but there was no way he was staying behind. He found a
hunting knife and collected the supplies that they had left, which
he stored in a pack he found in the gallery.

Cass and Duss
had been examining the beach in front of the boat. They confirmed
that a party of about fifty surface people had headed into the
surrounding forest.

‘From the look
of their trackss, they sset out at firsst light,’ Duss said,
examining a set of footprints that led into the trees.

‘Many large
ssurface people,’ Cass added. ‘And from the deep impresssionss,
ssome are carrying heavy loadss.’

‘Yess, yess,’
Duss agreed, crouching down and examining the tracks more closely.
‘They have at leasst a twelve-hour head sstart. Do you know where
they’re going?’

Chris read out
the note.

‘Yess, yess we
know Mount Caporel,’ Cass said. ‘It’ll take them over a week to
reach it.’

‘Do you know
where to go?’ Chris asked.

‘There is only
one route through thesse mountainss from here. It iss very ssteep
and dangerouss and there hass been much fighting along it
recently,’ Duss said.

‘It’s not
ssafe,’ Cass agreed.

‘Batarr iss
obvioussly in a hurry and we cannot travel as fasst ass they can,’
Duss continued thoughtfully. ‘But there may be another way of
catching them. We have tunnelss all over thiss area. One of them
ssurfacess near here and alsso interssectss the route to Mount
Caporel.’

‘Yeah…’ Chris
perked up. ‘How long will it take to reach Mount Caporel?’ ‘If we
can find the right tunnelss,’ Duss paused and Chris got the
impression of a mind quickly calculating travel times and
distances. ‘It sshould take uss about five dayss.’

‘Yess, yess,’
Cass agreed, ‘we sshould ssurface well ahead of them.’

‘Cool.’ Chris
smiled.

By this time,
the sun had already set behind the mountains. Like the previous
day, Chris felt an increasing level of agitation among Duss and
Cass as night drew closer. They quickly led Chris along the beach
to a series of rock outcrops, and then followed these formations
into the forest. When they stopped it was almost dark. The smaller
of the moons, Sarous, was already high in the sky, bathing the
forest in a silvery twilight.

‘The entrance
iss around here.’ Cass pointed to a series of shallow caves.

‘No, over
here.’ Duss moved off to the right and began scratching amongst
some boulders.

‘I remember it
wass closser to the cliff,’ Cass insisted, pointing to an
overhanging rock face a little distance away.

‘No, no, I
remember thiss tree,’ Duss insisted.

Chris sat down
on a rock, somewhat bemused by their conversation. Absent-mindedly,
he was playing with the key, flicking it over between the knuckles
of his fingers − something he wasn’t good at. Inevitably it ended
up on the ground. But despite the near darkness he was surprised
how easily he could see its outline. Curious, he held the key up
against the dark backdrop of the forest. It was glowing, like back
on Earth when the tree struck his house and on the fishing boat in
the storm. As he watched, the glow quickly intensified.

He pocketed the
key as the sounds of distant growls started to drift though the
forest. These noises had an immediate impact on Duss and Cass. They
began sniffing the air with their long snouts and their searching
became more frantic. Pushing back a sudden tightening in his chest,
Chris unstrapped his pack and took out his hunting knife. He could
clearly read the thoughts of Duss and Cass. They were very scared
of a creature called a Prower. He received an impression of a large
black, cat-like animal, similar in appearance to a leopard, but
shorter and very powerful. It particularly liked the taste of
Nethral. He thought these might be the wolf-like animals that
Batarr had warned them about.

Duss and Cass
began clawing around some rocks at the front of a shallow cave.
Chris backed towards them, at the same time keeping an eye on the
surrounding forest. The growls were becoming much more frequent and
closer. He pulled out the key again. Its glow now lit up the
surrounding forest. For the first time he could see the Prower.
Pairs of red eyes stared back at him from the trees and bushes, and
black shapes crouched on nearby rocks. He held the knife in his
other hand and placed himself between the Nethral and the advancing
Prower.

The leader of
the Prower moved into the light and stared at Chris. It had a wide
head with hungry red eyes and a short snort, ringed by sharp teeth.
There was a moment of contact when their eyes were locked together.
He felt its animal instincts, its drive to kill, to eat. He focused
all his energy, all his will, into driving back the creature. It
roared. A terrifying roar filled with malice and hunger. The rest
of the pack advanced from the shadows. Duss and Cass gave several
frightened whimpers behind him and renewed their frantic digging.
Chris hadn’t taken his eyes off the leader.

The creature
roared again, but this time the roar was not so certain, not so
powerful. The pack failed to advance further out of the shadows.
Chris, by now, had lost all fear, all sense of self-preservation.
His mind was locked against the mind of the leader of the Prower.
He advanced on the leader, closing within a short distance. Cass
and Duss were screaming at him from behind but Chris was committed.
Nothing else mattered. The creature took a step backwards, still
growling. Chris felt its growing uncertainty, its confusion, and
its hunger. Then, finally, fear. The Prower leader took a further
step back, spun around, and was gone. The whole pack turned and
followed, howling into the night. The light of the key immediately
dimmed and extinguished.

Cass and Duss
ran up to him and tugged him back.

‘Come on…’ Duss
pulled him toward the hole they had uncovered. ‘We’re very lucky. I
have never sseen the Prower run off like that when they were sso
closse. I thought we were finisshed. We musst go underground before
they come back.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘No one will ever
believe uss when we tell them thiss happened.’ Cass tugged at his
other arm. Chris could feel the questions rising in her mind. ‘I
sstill don’t believe it. A pack that ssize doesn’t just turn around
and run off. What were you doing walking toward them like
that?’

‘Maybe the
light scared them away?’ Chris suggested.

‘What
light?’

Chris realised
that neither had seen the light from his key. He wasn’t even sure
if the Prower had seen it. ‘I mean the moonlight,’ he said
stupidly.

‘Come on,’ Duss
urged, as he stuck his head out of the hole.

Chris scrambled
down behind him. Cass followed, sealing the entrance with a large
rock. As before, the tunnel was small and narrow and he had to
crawl some way before it widened. They emerged into a slightly
smaller cavern than the previous night’s, but still teeming with
glow-worm and insect life. Along one side ran a stream surrounded
by a thick mat of ferns, and many strange plants Chris couldn’t
identify.

He walked over
to the stream and splashed some water on his face. The encounter
with the Prower had left him drained and shaken, but there was also
a sense of exhilaration, of power. Cass sat down on a rock next to
him and watched him.

‘I have never
sseen Prower behave like that,’ she said thoughtfully, watching
Chris splash some more water on his face.

Chris didn’t
answer. He couldn’t tell her that the Prower had fled because he
mentally faced down their leader.

‘Have you ever
sseen Prower behave like that?’ she asked.

‘I think that
the Prower, where I come from, behave quite differently,’ Chris
replied.

Cass leaned
forward on the rock, placing her short arms on her even shorter
legs. ‘In what way?’

‘Ah… I think
they are more scared of people, so I wasn’t really surprised when
they fled.’

Cass took a
moment to consider his answer. ‘And where did you ssay you came
from?’

‘From the other
side of the lake. A very long way from here.’

‘Exactly
where?’

‘Arr… well past
the other side of the lake. In fact, over the other side of the
planet.’

‘Oh...you are a
long way from home then.’

Chris looked
directly at Cass. ‘Yes I am.’

Her head was
tilted to one side as she tried to comprehend his answer. ‘When we
firsst told you who we were, you acted as though you had never
heard of the Nethral.’

Chris read her
thoughts immediately. Nearly everyone on this planet had heard of
the Nethral, although most believed they were a myth and very few
surface people had actually seen them. ‘I was very confused when I
first woke up. I didn’t even know where I was.’

She nodded
slowly.

Chris could see
she wasn’t convinced. ‘Where do we go from here?’ he asked,
deciding to change the subject.

She pointed
along the stream. ‘If we follow thiss sstream for a few hourss. It
will lead to a large lake. From there we can take lotss of routess
to reach your friendss.’

Chris nodded,
relieved, for now at least, the questions were over.

Over the next few
days, Chris saw and experienced a world that went well beyond
anything he could have imagined. The subterranean world was
immense, both in size and beauty. They entered caverns which took
several hours to traverse and teemed with animal and plant life.
Vast forests and lakes were common place. Waterfalls spouted from
every crevice and streams and rivers criss-crossed each cavern,
like flowing lines of silver. And amongst all this stood glistening
limestone cathedrals made from hundreds of thousands of stalactites
and stalagmites, illuminated from above by the eerie phosphorescent
glow of millions of worms and insects that never died or faded,
like the glow of the stars except a thousand times more
intense.

Chris wandered
through the caverns in a type of dream, gazing at the vast array of
colours and sights. Duss and Cass found his behaviour very amusing
and they swelled with pride at his many exclamations of amazement
and wonder at their subterranean world.

The local Nethral
communities that occupied many of the larger caverns greeted Chris
with a mixture of curiosity and astonishment. Initially, when they
sighted him, they stepped away into the shadows, muttering to
themselves. It was clear that visitors from the surface were either
rare or non-existent. But once Cass explained Chris’s
circumstances, and rather embarrassingly credited him with saving
their lives, they drew closer again, peering at him with the same
black protruding orbs. If he stayed perfectly still, without any
sudden moves, they would gather around, nostrils flaring at his
strange smell. Only then, after a thorough inspection, could he
feel their tension ease.

Cass and Duss
turned out to be well known amongst the Nethral communities they
passed, and their progress was followed with great interest. Chris
would hear countless thoughts flying at him as he passed by.
‘Doesn’t he have a small nose? Where’s all his hair? Why is he so
thin? Where are his parents? His head looks really strange.’

In all, he
found their comments very amusing and at times had difficulty
stopping himself laughing out loud. But the Nethral were also very
generous, and all three travellers were provided with gifts of
food, sweet treats and drinks derived from local fruits and
vegetables, all of which tasted like nothing Chris had ever tried
before.

On the morning
of their fifth sleep, which Chris assumed was the fifth day
underground, the caverns became smaller and less frequent. There
were also fewer glow-worms and insects, which reduced the light so
much that Chris started tripping over rocks and hitting his head on
the many limestone stalactites. The tunnels were also starting to
climb steeply, making the going harder. By the end of the day, they
had reached the intersection of two tunnels situated in a small
poorly lit cavern, covered with a dense mat of moss and lichen.

‘We’ll camp
here for the night,’ Cass said, throwing her pack on a bed of
moss.

‘Yess, yess,
thiss iss good place,’ Duss agreed, doing likewise.

‘We’re not far
from the main route through thesse mountainss to Mount Caporel,’
Cass explained. ‘It’ss already night outsside, sso we’ll camp here
till morning.’

That night,
whilst sitting by the light of a small fire, Duss and Cass told
many stories about the history of their people.

‘There had been
many warss between the ssurface racess and the Nethral,’ Cass said,
as they sat down to share some fish.

‘In the passt
the ssurface people ssent whole armiess into the underworld to try
and desstroy uss,’ Duss added. ‘But they never managed to penetrate
very far. They either became hopelesssly losst in the maze of
tunnelss, or were killed by Nethral ambushess.’

‘We’ve never
been conquered,’ Cass said proudly.

‘No, no never
conquered,’ Duss repeated.

Chris smiled
back, reading a huge sense of pride when they talked of their
peoples’ victories over the surface dwellers.

‘And we alsso
learnt from thesse experiencess,’ Cass went on. ‘Now we hide our
tunnel entrancess and make them only ssmall enough for Nethral to
enter.’

‘Thesse dayss
we only vissit the ssurface to collect the fissh and fruit we
cannot get underground,’ Duss said. ‘Thesse dayss the ssurface iss
too dangerouss for the Nethral.’

Cass nodded
slowly, her black orbs fixed on Chris. ‘We all hope that one day
thiss will change, but for now, the ssurface iss a bad place.’

As the night
progressed, the sombre mood changed. Duss and Cass started telling
stories of all the different places in the underworld, and the
types of animals and plants that lived in them. It appeared that
many creatures of the underworld were unique. They had been
separated from their ancestors on the surface for so long that they
no longer bore much resemblance to them. Still others creatures had
no ancestors, living or dead, on the surface.