The Serpents of Arakesh (20 page)

I felt my face flame. ‘It's nothing … it's something … I just …'

‘Drop it, Jamie,' said Rich flatly. ‘That's cool, Adam — let's wrap it. Good thinking.'

Kenta flashed me a smile. ‘Thanks.'

She stashed the precious phial safely away in her backpack, with my shawl wrapped snugly round it for protection.

Richard rubbed his hands together, with a broad smile. ‘Now what?' he asked cheerfully. ‘Home?'

‘Well, yes,' said Kenta hesitantly. ‘Except … how are we planning to get back through that wall?'

We prodded and poked and tapped and pressed and heaved and shoved, but it was no use. The stone wall was immovable, and deep down I knew the only thing with any hope of opening it was the Curator's magic pass. And he'd taken that with him.

‘How about we hide under the waterfall again, and wait till he comes back?' Jamie suggested. ‘Then we can sneak out the same way we came in.'

‘I dunno,' said Rich dubiously. ‘He had ten phials of potion with him, and at the rate he was handing them out, that could last the rest of the morning, easy. And we know the temple closes at noon. I don't fancy being locked in all night.'

There was a gloomy silence, before Gen finally spoke up. ‘There's light coming down that staircase. I don't suppose that could be a way out?'

‘It can't do any harm to look,' said Rich. ‘If it turns out to be a dead end, we can always come back.'

Gen led the way up the stairway, with Jamie close behind. The stairs rose steeply upwards to a small landing, then doubled back on themselves in another short flight. Once we were past the landing we could see a bright rectangle of what looked like daylight at the top of the stairwell. Gen ran the last few steps, and gave a cry of delight. ‘Come on up, everyone! It's the gardens — the second storey of the temple!

The whole second floor of the temple was a lush, tropical jungle. A rambling pathway of pink and white paving stones wound its way through the luxuriant planting, with small fountains here and there, and an ornamental stream, which I suspected ran down through the floor to form the waterfall below.

A wall just over waist high ran right round the perimeter, with creepers and ivy cascading over it. Pillars rose at regular intervals from the balustrade to support the solid weight of the rest of the building, looming overhead. One thick pillar, far more substantial than all the rest, rose up in the very centre. I remembered noticing a similar one on the floor below. I reckoned it must have some kind of structural, load-bearing purpose, probably running right through the centre of the entire building like a spindle, top to bottom.

Nets as fine as gossamer were strung from the ceiling, and birds of every imaginable size, colour and shape flitted, fluttered, perched and swooped. ‘It's like being inside a gigantic aviary!' breathed Kenta.

It felt so good to be out of that claustrophobic room with the serpents that we almost forgot why we were there. The girls scampered round, exclaiming over the different birds, and admiring the flowers. Jamie flopped down on a bench and opened a packet of peanuts. Richard wandered off along the path with the studious air of a visitor to a horticultural centre, but his gaze strayed to the perimeter
wall more often than it did to the birds. I suspected that, like mine, his thoughts were still bent on finding a way down. As for me, I made my way quietly back to the stairway. I thought I'd noticed a small antechamber at the top, and wanted to check it out.

There was a small, open cubicle at the top of the stairs, with a shelf identical to the one in the room below, even down to the staff leaning against it. In addition to the racks of phials and the beaker, it had a couple of woven igloo-shaped baskets stacked at one end, and a coil of twine.

As I'd suspected, another staircase led upwards, identical to the one on the floor below. But where the entrance to the downward stairway had been only minutes before, there was now a solid wall.

‘At least we don't have too many decisions to make,' said Richard cheerily. At least, I assumed his tone was meant to be cheery: it was pretty hard to tell through a large mouthful of potato crisps. ‘The only way out seems to be up.'

‘I have a feeling we've been set on a track, like an electric train,' said Jamie. ‘We have to follow a predestined course or something. I have this feeling of … inevitability.' He was lying on his back with his arm over his eyes, so it was difficult to see his expression. His words were brave, though, and I could tell he was doing his best to disguise the slight tremor in his voice.

‘Let's have a look at the parchment again, Kenta,' I suggested.

Kenta hauled it out and unrolled it. Instantly, she gave a little squeak. ‘The magic — it's happened again! The first clue has disappeared, and now it says …'

Looking over her shoulder, I could understand why she'd been hesitant about reading out what it said. Frowning, I stumbled through it in my mind:

‘Oh, yeah, right: I get it,' said Rich sarcastically. I glanced over at him. I had a hunch that, like me, he didn't feel confident with this kind of thing.

Someone — Jamie, I think — heaved a gusty sigh.

But Gen spoke up, sounding excited. ‘Hey, guys, I've had a thought. Forget this
trbirdap
stuff for a sec. Look at the poem again: the way it's written. Remember what Kai said about things being a certain way for a reason? Well, see how the poem goes in circles, each one smaller than the one before? Does it remind you of anything?'

‘A doughnut?' asked Jamie hopefully.

Gen was grinning, like someone with a secret. ‘You're on the right track. Go on!'

‘A maze?' suggested Kenta.

Gen shook her head.

I put my chin in my hands and stared glumly at the poem. It reminded
me
of something, all right: every single lesson we'd ever had at school; every single time I'd battled to come up with an answer and drawn an utter blank. To me, the lines of the poem didn't even look like words. As far as I was concerned they might as well be stone walls, for all the sense they made …

Suddenly I saw what Gen was driving at. I felt my face split into a grin, and she beamed back at me.

‘Oh, come on, you two, stop smirking at each other and share the secret,' grumbled Richard.

‘The lines of the poem are in circles, like the temple walls,' explained Gen. ‘The first line tells about the first floor of the temple, with the pillars like trees of stone,
where the Serpents of Healing were. And just like the second floor of the temple is smaller than the first, the second line of the poem is smaller, too. And it says …'

‘
Guardian of Inner Voices has whispering leaves as home
,' finished Kenta thoughtfully. ‘Each line of the poem tells us which potion we should expect to find on each level of the temple. And that means all five potions are right here! We can get all five, and take them back to Q!'

‘And I'm prepared to bet a new clue will appear on every level,' I finished up triumphantly, ‘telling us what we have to do to get hold of each potion!'

‘Yeah,' grumbled Rich, ‘and all we've got to do is figure out the clue each time! What could be simpler?'

I gave him a sideways glance. ‘Hey, c'mon, we cracked it last time, no problem. Why should the others be any different?'

We crowded round the parchment and gazed at the clue, as if its jumbled letters might suddenly rearrange themselves and reveal their meaning.

‘Maybe it works the same way as the last one,' said Gen eventually. ‘Maybe this one is: bird
in
trap.'

‘And then an arrow,' mused Kenta. ‘meaning,
go to
or
head towards
?'

‘Hang on a minute: that sign has a mathematical meaning,' said Jamie. ‘It means
greater than
. Say you had the number five, and then that sign, and then the number three. Five is greater than three.'

‘So what have we got so far?' Gen was frowning fiercely. ‘
Bird in trap is greater than …
'

‘3
in
tree,' said Rich unexpectedly, and blushed.

Gen beamed at him. ‘Go, Rich!
Bird in trap is greater than 3 in tree.
'

‘That reminds me of something,' said Jamie. He scrunched up his eyes, and we watched him expectantly. At last he opened his eyes again, and shook his head. ‘It's
a saying — like
on the tip of my tongue
. Only this one's to do with
birds
…'

‘A bird in the hand …' said Kenta slowly.

‘Is worth two in the bush!' yelled Jamie triumphantly. ‘That's it!'

‘But it isn't,' objected Rich. ‘The clue doesn't say that.'

‘Yeah, but this is Karazan. Think of Kai, and all his weird sayings. I'll bet you my
sword arm
—' Jamie gave Rich a meaning glance — ‘that if Kai was here, he'd be going
A bird in the trap is worth three in the tree
, or something like that.'

There was a short silence while Jamie's words sank in.

‘I think you've got it, Jamie,' said Gen respectfully. Jamie looked down modestly, and Gen jumped to her feet. ‘Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go trap ourselves a bird!'

Richard remembered seeing some of the igloo-shaped baskets upended in the undergrowth, and he and Gen went off to check them. The rest of us fetched the other baskets from the storeroom. But first, we took our backpacks off and stacked them at the foot of the stairway. Tiger Lily was wriggling and meowing inside mine. ‘I reckon she can hear the birds,' I told Kenta with a grin. ‘Tough luck, Tiger Lily: we can't have you scaring them all off.'

Catching a bird turned out to be a lot harder than we'd expected. Gen and Rich drew a blank with the baskets in the gardens: though they seemed to have been carefully positioned, they hadn't caught anything.

We had plenty of basket traps but not a clue how to go about using them. Eventually Jamie came up with a plan: a basket, upside-down, with one edge resting on a tall stick. Twine tied to the stick; stale sandwich crumbs scattered temptingly under the basket. And Jamie himself,
concealed behind a dense, leafy bush, ready to tweak the twine and snap the trap over the unsuspecting bird.

We settled down a little way away to watch. As we waited for a bird to notice the crumbs, Gen whispered to me, ‘Adam — do you think this time the potion will be from a bird? Like a feather, or something?'

I didn't. I'd seen the beaker, the forked stick and the rack of phials. And I had more than a suspicion that catching a bird wasn't going to be the end of the story.

Half an hour later we were hot, sweating and discouraged. Jamie's trap hasn't even looked like working. The birds had been interested in it: they'd perched on branches all around and twittered merrily to one another, but that was all.

So eventually we'd taken a basket each and leapt round the garden trying to catch one with a mixture of speed, stealth and sheer desperation … and we hadn't even come close. Jamie was first to give up, red in the face and dripping with sweat. At last even I had to admit we were wasting our time, and slouched off to release Tiger Lily before she ripped my backpack to bits.

It wasn't five minutes later that we heard a frantic alarm call … a sudden flurry of birds fluttered skyward like flung confetti … and Tiger Lily came stalking towards us, head proudly erect, and a tiny, bright green songbird in her jaws. She crouched a little way away and watched us, slit-eyed with self-satisfaction.