The Serpent of Eridor (16 page)

Inching instinctively back towards the door, Alex felt no longer frightened, merely angry. He had played the game and lost. So close, so finely judged, yet he was to die anyway.

His eyes fixed on the window behind Karlan. ‘Zorrin,' he yelled. ‘Thank the stars.'

Karlan swung round. The panes were empty. Only his own furious expression was visible. Beyond hung impenetrable black night. Though he had no chance at all of making it through the door, sheer survival instinct drove Alex to bolt for it.

A scream ripped through the air, a terrible inhuman sound of mortal agony. Glancing over his shoulder, Alex saw Karlan arching backwards, howling, knees buckling beneath him. Behind the wizard Clawds reared up: eleven feet of fighting feline, blood glistening on the tips of his outstretched claws. Face contorted with pain, Karlan swung round, his deadly finger aiming directly at Clawds: his slashed, bleeding back towards Alex, his ripped shirt in tatters.

Clawds's paw hit the wizard's arm like the crack of a baseball bat. In agony Karlan stared down at the broken limb. White-faced he lurched forward, landing in a senseless heap on the floor, arm sticking out at an unnatural angle.

Shaking from his adrenaline surge, Alex looked up at the immense cat. ‘Clawds, that was amazing.'

‘Thanks.' Clawds wiped his bloodstained claws on the wizard's shirt. ‘Who saved me?'

Skoodle stuck his head out from behind a chair leg. ‘Me,' he squeaked.

Vast yellow eyes swung towards the hamster. ‘You, tiny one? How?'

‘The flower from Makusha. Stupid to trust a lump of granite. But I thought… maybe… there was a chance… ' His voice tailed off under the piercing gaze of the immense cat.

For a moment Clawds stood looking down, head to one side, frowning. Finally he spoke. ‘Pax. Never again will I eat any hamster, or indeed any rodent, if that's what you desire.'

Whiskers quivering, Skoodle made an attempt to look dignified. ‘You can stuff yourself with rats, but if you would be so kind as to avoid hamsters and mice – other than the ones who are disguised wizards – that would be very nice, please. Or is it thank you?'

‘Done.' Reaching down, Clawds held out his paw, which was the size of a table tennis bat. Skoodle reached up with his own minuscule one. The two solemnly shook hands.

Running footsteps approached. Alex and Clawds turned to face the door, ready to fight. Skoodle ran behind Alex.

Myth at his heels, Zorrin sprinted into the room, finger drawn at the ready, face set. For a moment he stood surveying the scene before him: the gigantic cat, the unconscious wizard lying twisted on the floor, right behind Alex. Alex bloodied but still standing, Skoodle behind his left foot.

‘Do you like the new size or should I go back to the portable version?' asked Clawds.

‘Big is great,' replied Zorrin, grinning. ‘At least until this battle is over.'

Clawds nodded. ‘No problem.' He pointed at Karlan. ‘What are you going to do with this pseudo-mouse? He's likely to wake in a minute.'

‘Trap him.'

Zorrin held his hand out flat. A bubble appeared on his palm. Enlarging rapidly, it floated over to the broken figure on the floor – and landed with a small pop, enveloping Karlan totally.

‘Bubble prison. He'll live, assuming we can get back in time to give him more air. If we don't… ' Zorrin shrugged.

‘So if his friends kill us, he dies. Seems fair,' said Skoodle.

‘Back to battle,' Zorrin said. ‘Follow me.'

The group ran out of the room, the rhythmical fall of Alex's trainers echoing softly down the hall.

‘Silence needed,' whispered Zorrin, throwing some violet pellets ahead of them which landed in a shower of deep purple and silver sparks. As Alex ran across the smoking embers his footfalls became completely silent and springier, as if he were running on air bubbles.

Round the next bend they came to the foxes: stuck, heavily scratched, tufts of fur lying around them.

‘Sons of poisonous wart-bellied toads,' yelled Arnak. ‘Release us at once or Tevo will slash your heads open and dunk his bread in your brains.'

‘You did do well,' Zorrin said to Alex.

‘Pond waddlers,' shouted Ferox. ‘Die, orange slug bottoms.'

Alex shrugged. ‘I had to use four.'

‘Purple rat's droppings,' shrieked Arnak.

‘Not a bad hit rate. I don't suppose you've had much practice throwing cabivitrim.'

‘Correct,' said Skoodle. ‘But he had a good coach. Me.'

‘Four-toed yellow buzzard flies,' bellowed Ferox, pulling hard on his stuck tail. It came away with a loud rip, leaving fur stuck to the floor and the tip completely bald.

Zorrin pointed at the foxes.
‘Via dungato.'

The floor beneath the foxes became hazy then disappeared altogether. Grabbing uselessly at the evaporating edges, Arnak and Ferox fell into molten blackness. As the screams of the foxes died away the floor moulded itself back to normal.

‘Cool. Where did they go?' asked Skoodle.

‘Dungeons. They'll be trapped until Flick or I release them. We can decide later what to do with them.' He pointed at the spot where the foxes had vanished. ‘
Relaschia cabivitrim
.'

‘That sounded like a sneeze,' said Alex.

‘It unlocked the cabivitrim.' Zorrin picked up the box and glove from the floor and put them in an inner pocket.

A ferocious volley of barking filled the corridor. Rycant's heavy form rounded the corner, thundering towards them, saliva dripping from his blood-hungry jaws. The golden-furred form of Tariq appeared sprinting three steps behind him, tree-trunk legs powering the massive bear along.

‘Run,' yelled Tariq.

Zorrin pointed at the ground immediately ahead of the dog.
‘Via dungato.'

A hole appeared. Rycant tried to stop, front paws slammed on the floor, legs outstretched. Carried by his momentum, Rycant disappeared over the edge, barking furiously. Tariq stopped inches from the hole, which resealed itself silently in front of him.

‘What happened?' he asked, staring at the floor.

Alex grinned. ‘Dungeon express.'

‘Tevo is already imprisoned with several others,' said Zorrin. ‘We need to find Flick and Keeko. They may need our help.'

As Zorrin checked his watch crystal they heard a soft rhythmical scraping sound approaching from around the bend. Repeatedly, a longish rustle followed a short sighing. Zorrin aimed a spell at the junction of the two corridors.

‘
Visage
,' he mouthed.

A mirror appeared on the wall, showing Ikara with her tail coiled tightly around a large unconscious badger. She was slithering along a few feet then stopping to contract, dragging the heavy animal behind her. From the rigidity of her facial muscles it seemed that only sheer cussedness kept her going. She didn't appear to be aware of the watchers, as there wasn't any break in her rhythm when the mirror appeared.

‘It's invisible to her,' Zorrin mouthed in answer to Alex's puzzled frown.

They ran to join her.

‘Finally. The badger police,' she said, loosening her grip. ‘That was almost as tiring as dragging a human from a mudbath.'

Alex grinned. ‘Don't worry. I haven't forgotten. I'm still grateful.'

‘Keep it that way,' replied Ikara, stretching. ‘My muscles are on fire, but I couldn't leave him. If he'd woken up he might have become a nuisance again.'

Zorrin pointed at the floor near the badger.

‘You'll like this,' Alex told Ikara.

‘Via dungato.'

The floor melted, dumping both badger and Ikara into a hole.

‘Unfortunate,' said Zorrin, adding,
‘Expelo serpentus dungato.'

The ground melted once more. With a whoosh Ikara was launched out of the yawning gap, which resealed itself instantly.

‘Most amusing,' Ikara hissed, untangling her coils. ‘A little more focus next time, please.'

‘Sorry. The last loop of your tail must still have been around the badger. At least you got to see a part of Ravenscraig that very few visitors do.'

‘A photo would have been fine.'

‘Good tip.'

Flick reparticulated behind them, breathing heavily and holding Keeko, her waist-length black and gold hair looped up into a ponytail. ‘Keeko knocked out one of the badgers. Crashed a suit of armour over him.'

‘Flatted and splatted.' Keeko hopped to the floor and started doing a victory dance with Skoodle.

‘And Rectoria?' asked Zorrin. ‘Is she still free?'

‘No. She's in the dungeons, but dealing with her was tougher than I'd expected.'

‘Ravenscraig is temporarily safe but it's vital that we find the hidden map,' said Zorrin, running a hand through his mood streak.

Skoodle sighed. ‘So that we can tackle a massive aggressive lizard-wizard monster?'

‘Exactly.'

In the study, Zorrin sat hunched over his desk. Skoodle slept nearby in a half-eaten plate of cookies while Keeko flicked raisins at him from the cloud sofa.

‘It's got to be somewhere in Ravenscraig.' Alex sat tearing paper into shreds, tossing bits on to the floor. ‘We need to think laterally.'

Ikara was draped around the top of a hatstand, her head supported by two pegs. ‘Same as for the last six hours. It's been a real riot,' she replied, yawning. ‘Especially when we belt off round Ravenscraig each time we think we've cracked the puzzle. Such good exercise. Although those mice I bravely tackled on the third floor were extremely tasty.'

‘You knew they weren't evil before you ate them,' said Alex, lounging back in his chair. ‘Zorrin had already told you.'

Ikara licked her lips. ‘Still brave. He could have been wrong. Wizards sometimes are, you know.'

‘Undoubtedly,' said Zorrin, rising to pace the floor, Myth at his heels. ‘Let's think it through again. We've checked the charts and maps.'

‘All normal,' said Tariq from a sofa, where he lay cleaning the last of Rycant's fur from between his front claws.

‘We've searched the labs and stables.' Zorrin stared into space, as if looking at a mental blueprint of Ravenscraig.

‘Normal,' said Alex. ‘Or as normal as it gets at your pad. We've been into the dungeons, the kitchen and every one of about a hundred other rooms. We've prodded at paintings, lifted carpets and scavenged in cubbyholes. You've had a go at transforming almost everything, including zapping the wallpaper.'

‘All we have ended up with,' said Ikara, ‘are several smoking black holes in the decor. Although when you got angry and set fire to a table lamp, that was very funny.'

‘I wasn't cross,' said Zorrin. ‘I was… '

‘Frustrated?' suggested Tariq, watching a particularly large bloodstained tuft drop to the floor and vanish – the result of an automatic cleaning spell.

‘Impatient, irritated, exasperated, at the end of your tether? Out of ideas?' asked Ikara. ‘Cerebrally blank? Zip inspiration? Kaput neuronally?'

‘All right, brainbox, it's your turn.' Zorrin threw a bag of paperclips at her. ‘You tell me where the map is.'

Ikara reached her tail out for a cookie, to the accompaniment of the soft metallic clatter of falling clips. ‘I didn't say I knew.'

‘I'm hungry,' said Keeko.

‘Stomach triumphing over catastrophe?' asked Skoodle.

Zorrin's white streak was spitting red sparks in his frustration. ‘We'll give it another twenty minutes. If we haven't thought of something by then, we'll go and eat.'

‘Eagle stew?' asked Ikara. ‘Rock cakes?'

‘Let's start from the beginning,' suggested Tariq, his tone so calm that even a Zen practitioner would have been proud of him. ‘We're looking for something that came into this house about sixty or seventy years ago. Maybe it materialised here.'

Zorrin shook his head. ‘Not possible, owing to Ravenscraig's security.' Red, blue and purple sparks dropped from his hair on to the desk, starting several paper fires.

Tariq batted them out as Skoodle wandered out of the danger zone.

‘It may seem a stupid question,' came a dry hiss, ‘but could this ancient object be something with an irritating habit of disappearing?' Ikara waved her tail at the astromometer, which was gradually reparticulating.

‘By the Great Warthog's beard, you could be right.' Zorrin leapt up and shot across to the hazy instrument. ‘One of my father's friends, a wise old wizard called Brinstaller, sent it. He disappeared shortly afterwards.'

‘That's the wizard who made the map. I've cracked it,' crowed Ikara.

Zorrin muttered a few words and pointed at the astromometer. Apart from a flash of green and gold light as the spell hit one of the violet glass phials, nothing happened. He tried several other charms, which in turn produced a cross-looking elephant and a shower of footballs (which he disparticulated). The next attempt produced a small tornado that smelled like rotting cheese. Choking, they all ran from the room while Zorrin directed the foul gust out through the cloud door, a chunk of cloud sofa held over his mouth to stop him inhaling the stinking air.

‘Did anything else arrive at the same time?' asked Tariq, poking his head back round the door. ‘A leaflet on how to use it, a tag… a letter stating where it came from?'

‘Genius. Yes, a book of instructions. I've got it here somewhere.' Zorrin reached deep into the cloud sofa and rummaged around. Triumphantly he produced an extremely large book in smoke-grey leather entitled ‘The Astromometer: A Guide'. Zorrin pulled it open as the others crowded round him.

The text appeared to be a straightforward aid to interpreting the stars. It listed the meaning of changes in the depths of the various coloured liquids, followed by sections on star movements and advanced astrophysics.

Zorrin leaned back with a sigh. ‘It would take months to get through this, even if I knew what I was looking for.'

‘Is there a section on what to do when things go wrong?' asked Ikara as she slid gracefully back up the hatstand.

‘You're becoming inconsistent,' said Skoodle. ‘That was a helpful comment.'

Ikara stuck the full length of her tongue out at him. ‘Don't wind me up, mouth-watering rodent.'

Skoodle turned his back on her as Zorrin flicked through the text to find the troubleshooting section. The fat chapter described how to make adjustments in case of equiviscous evaporation, in a Torvian leap year, or with interference from hyper-blackmagnetism. Tariq and Alex leaned over Zorrin's shoulder, scanning the bewildering text.

After an hour of reading no one had been able to spot any words seemingly out of place, misspelled, a spell – or anything else offering a clue to whether this book could be the key to transformation. Dark gloom settled in again.

‘The astromometer can't be the answer,' said Zorrin. ‘Something else must be the hidden map. Let's go and eat, then start again in half an hour.'

Ikara let go of the top of the hatstand and landed in a neat coil on the floor. ‘Another dead end. Complete disaster. We don't know when Virida wants her stone by, but she doesn't strike me as patient. This is getting dull.'

The band trooped down to the kitchen to find Flick wearing black goggles and a fuchsia-striped overall, with long turquoise hair held above her ears in bunches. On the kitchen table sat rainbow-coloured jars and beakers, the gloop inside bubbling and making small frequent explosions. A test tube near her spat out two globs of yellow gunge, then the rest of the sludge turned mud brown.

‘Fludzi ploop. Not enough rhinoceros toenails.' She sprinkled in some mid-brown powder. With a bang the mess returned to yellow, bubbling fiercely despite the lack of a flame beneath it.

‘How are you getting on?' she asked, peering at the molten gunge.

‘Dreadful,' said Ikara, coiling herself into the fruit bowl, engulfing an apple. ‘It's seriously aggravating to spend so long trying to solve a puzzle when – if we succeed – we all get killed, anyway.'

Flick pulled off her goggles and reached up to a shelf above her head for mugs. ‘Don't be so negative. Too much thinking about death is depressing. Coffee?'

As she filled mugs, Zorrin outlined their theory about the astromometer.

‘Certainly, it has potential,' said Flick, opening a box of what looked like flat purple bananas and offering them round. ‘Couldn't you make it transmorph?'

‘No. The instruction book is vast, so we homed in on the section on troubleshooting. Irritatingly, there were absolutely no words that even half resembled a transmorphing spell.'

Flick finished off a last sticky mouthful and licked her fingers. ‘That's easy. Fifth line down, backwards from the middle.'

‘Why do you think that would work?' asked Zorrin, as a stray hair spark lit his third banana. Without bothering to blow it out he crammed it into his mouth.

Flick watched him, wrinkling her nose. ‘Never eat anything that's still alight. Remember Nanny Orlink's rules, Zorrin. The fifth line bit is the code I had with Pops. It's a great little spell. When you read the words forward they say something ordinary like, ‘Warty toads are delicious in soup'. Yet when you read them backwards the words transform into an enchantment. But you have to find the exact middle of the sentence to start.'

‘You never told me this before,' said Zorrin, wisps of purple smoke drifting out of his nose.

‘Why would I? It was a secret between Pops and me. The only other wizard who knew was my godfather, Brinstaller.'

‘Dancing terrapins. It's got to be the answer,' shouted Zorrin, leaping from his chair and rushing out, the others behind him. On arrival in the study he grabbed the instruction book and began counting the letters on the fifth line of the problem section. When Zorrin had found the exact middle he started to read backwards. The words came out as mumbo jumbo. Five times he tried it, with no success.

He slammed the book shut. ‘This is frustrating.'

‘Maybe it's not in the troubleshooting section,' said Tariq, reopening the book at the front. ‘Try the beginning of the main text.'

With a sigh, Zorrin found the fifth line and started counting the characters. Marking the place with his nail, he began to read backwards. The words that came from his mouth bore no relationship to those written on the page, backwards or otherwise. As he reached the end of the line the astromometer disappeared with a small bang.

Zorrin gazed at the space where the instrument had been. ‘We've found a spell, although not the one we wanted. Now I've lost my astromometer, probably forever. It was really useful. Blast all childhood wizard wheezes. We'll have to—'

The place where the astromometer had stood started to fill with soft pale blue mist. It became rapidly more solid until, wall to ceiling, stood a vast map of an underground labyrinth. Across the very top, written in green flames, was ‘Caves of Desdea'.

Keeko cheered as she cartwheeled across the floor. Skoodle jived on the desk as Zorrin, Tariq and Alex whooped and danced round the map. Ikara rolled on to her back, stretching, displaying her glossy gold underbelly. ‘Ice,' she murmured.

Zorrin stopped, mid-whoop. ‘Everything was great till then. That word.'

‘Get over it,' laughed Alex.

‘You can't fight fashion,' said Skoodle.

‘Watch me.' Zorrin turned to the map as Keeko rolled her eyes behind his back.

Ornate, curly writing marked the cave of Hypnos. The cavern contained a large lake surrounded by a complicated mesh of tunnels.

‘That's interesting,' said Zorrin. ‘Hypnos is shown as being in the very centre of the lake. It's probably because he's an aqualate.'

‘A what-alate?' asked Ikara.

‘Aqualate. An amazing creature: front part lizard, back half snake. It has gills, so it's capable of living under water. On land it's astonishingly fast, owing to its muscular legs. Under water it uses its tail for power. In either environment it's deadly. I've got a picture of one somewhere.'

He reached into the cloud sofa and produced a large book entitled ‘Weirdities', subtitled ‘Species of Eridor: from Alcanates to Zyrons'
.
Zorrin flicked rapidly through to AQ. The aqualate in the picture was a revolting-looking creature, its moss-coloured skin mottled and scaly as if camouflage. A huge ugly lizard head with blazing red eyes and vicious flesh-ripping teeth sat on a squat neck above its powerful body and legs, beyond which a long muscular snake's tail curled away.

‘The front end looks horrible,' said Ikara, ‘but I expect the back half's a distant relative of mine.'

‘How big are aqualates?' asked Tariq.

‘Variable. Depends on age. Hypnos is probably over a hundred years old, so he could be twenty metres by now.'

Alex had a sudden vision of a whole nest of them. ‘Could there be more than one down there?'

‘I doubt it,' replied Zorrin. ‘Hypnos left the main colony of aqualates many years ago. He travelled alone to Desdea to be an apprentice to Saranak the wizard. No one knows what happened in those dark caves long ago, but Saranak disappeared. All attempts to trace him have failed.'

‘Probably lunch. Two slices of bread, one wizard. Mmm,' said Ikara.

‘Who was Saranak? Was he one of our people?' asked Tariq.

‘No, although once he had been true and noble. However, something corrupted him, eating his soul. The more power he acquired the more he craved it.' Deep pain clouded Zorrin's eyes, tracing through his voice. The sparks in his hair died. ‘Still, he doesn't concern us. If Hypnos has the sapphire he's not going to let it go easily. He has enormous magical power and is physically a fearsome creature. No one has emerged from Hypnos's cave alive in the last twenty years.'

‘Is this a pep talk? I'm feeling so positive already.' Ikara slid on to the floor near Skoodle and formed herself into a question mark, using the hamster as the dot. Her voice dropped into deep melodrama. ‘How are we going to get into this mountain of doom?'

Zorrin pointed at the lower region of the map. A beam of light blazed from his finger. As the beam travelled, each section appeared in three dimensions, rising into the air, performing a Mexican wave in response to the light.

‘Through the jungle to the south of the caves. The north coastal side falls like a flat wall of sheet metal hundreds of metres down into the sea. There are no caves or cracks to force entry through. The mountains to the east and west are even worse than Makusha.'

‘Count me out of that,' said Skoodle. ‘I've made a pact with myself to avoid life-threatening experiences until I get killed by Virida.'

‘Can't we materialise inside the caves?' asked Tariq.