The Tower of Bones (36 page)

There – something moved!

He glimpsed a creature with a gargoyle’s head and a huge sucker-like mouth – a mouth ringed by teeth as sharp as a snake’s fangs. He didn’t know what it was. An impression at the side of his vision, over to his left. But suddenly – another! There – just to the right! His heartbeat was racing and his back was pressed so hard against a jutting stone that it was burrowing into his flesh.

Something moved again … another shadow. But when he looked more closely there appeared to be nothing there.

‘What was that?’

One of the shadows, over to his right, crept several feet closer, rippling over the ground like an advancing edge of liquid. It was faintly glistening about its manifold advancing edges, as if it they were reflecting a glimmer of moonlight. Only there was something rancid too about that light as much as the shadow itself. Something greenish, glimmeringly so, the putrid rainbows you saw on rotting fish, or floating over the surface of stagnant water.

‘Oh, by the power of great A-kol-i!’

A shape was rising out of the pool of shadow. It was as if the shadow itself had taken substance. The shape had a roiling impression within it, as if vapours of that same darkling thing were twisting and turning in a tormented captivity, as it rose by degrees to something more than seven feet tall. A head, with two huge glowing eyes! Eyes of a pallid yellow, veined with red, and split from top to bottom, like the eyes of a serpent. Turkeya watched in dread as those eyes veered from side to side until they found him.

‘Aaaaaah!’

Turkeya’s legs had turned to jelly, yet he was flailing those very legs and running for his life. There was no rational thought in his head. He just ran in the opposite direction to the eyes, hurtling through clinging foliage and stumbling through boggy pools, pelting headlong through the very dangers he had negotiated earlier with such elaborate care.

Feelers tugged at the skin on the back of his neck. Turkeya knew it was his own voice in his ears, shrieking.

Even from a distance of several hundred yards Alan’s oraculum-enhanced senses heard Turkeya’s cries, followed by a gurgling hiss, as if some unfortunate creature had been taken by one of the man-eaters. Ainé heard it too. She lifted a hand for silence, attempting to locate the commotion. Then Alan heard what sounded like a husky voice call out: ‘Humanshhh!’

With weapons drawn, Alan, Qwenqwo and the Kyra hurried deep into the murk. ‘Turkeya! Turkeya!’ They called out, peering and probing amongst the tangles of plants and dense undergrowth.

‘I’m here – praise the powers!’

Turkeya fled out of the jungle, then whirled back to stare in the direction of frantic struggle.

‘What is it?’

Turkeya shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Some poor creature trapped by one of the man-eaters.’

‘Humanshhh!’ They heard the husky cry again, from very close. They moved cautiously towards the source, where something large and grey and extremely angular was trapped in a huge bell-shaped circle of fronds, its body already coated with a gummy kind of glue that was in the process of plastering down its limbs. Alan stared at the ugliest face he had ever seen, the creature three-quarters
freed by its own efforts, but still tethered where the jaws of the tendril were clamped onto one wing.

‘It’s a Garg!’

Qwenqwo laughed. ‘Looks like the man-eater has done our work for us!’

The creature’s head was tossing frantically from side to side, those yellow eyes wildly staring. A ratchet-like sound, like the warning of a rattlesnake, came from its throat, followed by a series of clicks. It took Alan several moments to realise that it was trying to communicate. Its eyes turned slowly towards him.

‘Killhhh!’

‘What did it say?’

The Garg emitted that ratchet sound again, its eyes wide with desperation. ‘Humanshhh – killhhh!’

The voice didn’t come from vocal cords, as normal speech. It came out of a throat perforated with a series of openings, like gills.

Turkeya held Alan’s arm and tried to haul him back a pace. ‘What’s the thing asking of us? Is it asking us to kill it?’

‘Humanshhh … Humanshhh – killhhh.’

‘Must have been one of those who were spying on us,’ muttered the Kyra, who stood next to Alan, observing the struggle with disgust.

‘Must have flown too close to the canopy,’ Qwenqwo agreed.

But it was making such a racket, it was sure to attract
other Gargs, and the company was in no position for a pitched battle. Turkeya surprised them all by stepping up close to inspect the trapped enemy. ‘Maybe we should try to rescue it. Even a Garg deserves better than to be eaten alive by a plant.’

Alan’s nostrils were overwhelmed with a sour odour, like sweaty armpits. The smell of fear.

‘What’s that?’ Turkeya exclaimed. ‘It’s holding something in one of its feet.’

‘A rat!’ Qwenqwo howled with laughter.

Alan frowned. ‘But that makes no sense – not if it was spying on us from above.’

‘Not unless it spotted a meal and risked a pounce.’ Qwenqwo was still chortling, while holding his nose against the stink.

Alan stared at the Garg, undecided. But the look on the Garg’s face was one that even a human could understand. It was utter panic. He said, ‘Ainé – maybe we can interrogate it. Get useful information about the way through?’

The Kyra looked doubtfully back at him, but then she darted close to the man-eater and with a slash of her green-bladed sword struck the bulbous head from the tendril, then sprang back. The Garg, with the plant head still attached to its wing, was thrown clear of the violently thrashing tendril, which was as thick as the bough of a tree. A group of a dozen or so Shee had now arrived, bringing firebrands, and they burned what remained of
the tendril head off the Garg’s wing, little caring if the flames singed the wing in the process. Several Shee formed a circle around the Garg, with javelins directed against its throat, even as it moaned, tearing itself free of the flaming shards, then beating out a flame or two before attempting to stretch its wings out full, as if to take to the air. The sight would have been pathetic, like dealing with a huge injured bird, had it not been for the fact they were dealing with a Garg that was more than seven feet tall and equipped with fangs and claws. It was still soaked in the digestive juices of the man-eater and its injured left wing dripped a green liquid that must be Garg blood.

Alan noticed a new smell, and he observed an oily secretion exude from the Garg’s skin before it tried flapping its enormous wings again. And then the Garg made a mewling noise through its dilated nostrils and more of the ratchet-like rattle in its throat.

‘Well,’ grinned Turkeya, ‘at least we know that Gargs experience fear.’

The young Garg stood on one splayed foot, then used the other to spread the oil over the parts of its skin that had been gummed up by the gluey secretions of the plant, and over the joint in his left wing where the bleeding had now stopped. Still hemmed in by the lances of the Shee it tried expanding its wings again, this time more successfully, each opening fully to the size of a small tent. Then, after expanding and closing them several times, the Garg
folded back its wings and then threw itself onto its knees before Alan, pulling back its head to an extreme degree so the grotesquely gilled throat was at his mercy.

‘What’s it up to now?’ Alan exclaimed.

Qwenqwo was beside himself with laughter. ‘My guess is he’s inviting you to cut his throat.’

Alan was bewildered by the creature’s behaviour, the closed eyes, the neck so tensed by the craven posture that he could see the scales parting, as if making it easier for him to slice through it with a blade. ‘Maybe your life is all you have to offer. But we didn’t save you from the maneater just so we could do the job ourselves.’

The Garg held its posture, if anything further tensing the blue-green skin of its throat, so the scales positively gaped.

Alan waved to the Shee to put their javelins down. ‘Hey – why don’t you get the hell out of here? You’re free! Don’t you understand?’

Suddenly the Garg stood erect on its powerful legs, looming over him, and those wings, even though still folded, swept round, complete with inch-long talons, to either side of Turkeya’s temples.

The Shee tensed javelins again, but the Kyra lifted a finger to observe what was happening. ‘I believe it wishes to communicate with the shaman.’

‘Well, I’m not sure I welcome the conversation,’ Turkeya muttered, ‘with an overgrown bat who talks in rattles and hisses.’

‘Arrhhhkkkuuusss!’

‘Now that’s a new rattle and hiss for us to puzzle over.’

‘Aarrhhkkkuusss!’ It was not a sound that could have been faithfully reproduced by human vocal chords. Yet it carried a meaning that was clearly important to the Garg, who swept its left wing fully round so the talon finger could touch its breast and then laid it gently against Turkeya’s breast.

‘What?’ Turkeya sneered. ‘Are we now exchanging hearts?’

‘Iyezzz …’ The Garg tapped his bony chest, then held out the rat. ‘Iyezzzz – aarrhhkkkuusss!’

‘Iyezzz – if that’s your name. Thank you for the generosity, which is no doubt very becoming, for a Garg. But you can keep your heart to yourself, and the same goes for the rat.’

‘Aarrhhkkkuusss!’

‘You stupid Garg! Don’t you understand what the oraculum-bearer has told you! You’re free. Go fly back to your cave, or roost, or wherever you want to go.’

‘Iyezzz!’ he touched Turkeya’s chest again with that dangerous looking talon.

‘Iyezzz, my foot?’ Turkeya, tiring of this hopeless attempt at communication, drew his sword and he pressed the point against the scaly chest of the Garg. ‘Well, maybe you had a better idea when you offered us your throat.’

Alan stepped forward. ‘Calm down, Turkeya. Here, let
me see if I can communicate. There’s a whole bunch of questions I’d like to ask it.’

Alan placed himself between Turkeya and the Garg. He pointed to the oraculum in his brow. The Garg stared at the oraculum, then brought his gaze round to Alan’s eyes. ‘I’m speaking to you through this crystal. My name is Alan Duval. The shaman, Turkeya, thinks that your name is Iyezzz. Is that true – is Iyezzz your name?’

The Garg looked at him with saucer eyes.

Alan attempted the same explanation all over again.

The Garg stared back at him. Then he blinked several times.

‘Perhaps,’ murmured the Kyra, ‘no communication is possible.’

‘No!’ It was Mo who contradicted her. ‘I saw something in him change. I think he understood Alan. It must be scary to hear somebody you think of as utterly alien suddenly talk to you inside your head.’

‘Okay, Mo. Then I’ll try a different approach.’ Alan pointed to his brow. Then he made a gesture, as if to demonstrate how he was addressing his words through it. ‘Do you know who I am?’

The young Garg fell onto his knees once more. Reaching down with a wing talon, he pried free a cylinder of ivory out of a scaly pouch in the skin of an ankle and placed it, with a reverential bow, on the ground at Alan’s feet.

‘You are Duval – bearer of the Oraculum of the First
Power. My prayers are answered. I thank the gods of ocean and air for this opportunity of meeting with you.’

The clarity of the communication took Alan by surprise. He made no attempt to pick up the cylinder of bone.

‘We’re communicating. But I don’t really understand what you’re saying. Let’s try a different tack. Is your name Iyezzz?’

‘I am Iyezzz.’

‘Okay – Iyezzz. So can you explain to me again? What does this word, Aarrhhkkkuusss, mean?’

‘It means “sacred”. This valley, which you desecrate with your presence, is sacred to the Eyrie People. Our Valley of the Spirits.’

‘Heck! Are you saying that this is some kind of graveyard – where you Gargs bury your dead?’

‘Our dead – yeshhh! But not to bury.’

Alan stared at the kneeling Garg, his mind racing. It suggested a very different reason for Gargs to be wheeling overhead. He also recalled what Turkeya had pointed out. The strange finding of the huge proliferation of the maneaters in this place, where there was so little food …

‘These plants – and the shadow creatures? They dispose of your dead?’

‘They consume the flesh so the spirit may be freed.’

‘Yet you’re here? You’re trespassing in this place of the dead?’

‘Iyezzz comes to the Valley of the Spirits to find Duvalhhh the slayer.’

Alan needed a moment or two to digest that. ‘What are you saying? You came here just to find me?’

‘I bring the sacred scroll.’

Alan stared at the cylinder of ivory still lying on the ground.

‘There is little time for explanation. Greeneyes has broken free of the Witch’s Tower. The Great Witch hunts far and wide for her.’

‘Greeneyes? Are you talking about my friend, Kate?’

‘Greeneyes – also oraculum-bearer. Oraculum of life, of rebirth. Greeneyes flees the Tower of Bones. She has healed the lands where there was no life.’

Alan blinked, unable to credit what he was hearing. ‘Now, hold on a minute! That’s the real reason you’re here? It’s because of Kate? You’re telling me that Kate has escaped from the Witch?’

The Garg exhaled, then retracted his eyelids so his eyes appeared to protrude from his head, as if to indicate incredulity. ‘Duvalhhh sees. Our people do not attack. I, Iyezzz-I-Noor, son of Zelnesakkk, King of the Eyrie People, have come here to help you save Greeneyes.’

‘What? You’re saying you want to help us?’

‘I speak the truth. I have risked all to find new hope in the Valley of the Spirits. Will you not accept the scroll – make treaty?’

Alan picked up the cylinder of ivory off the mossy ground, then unrolled it into a small, rectangular plaque.
He gazed, bewildered, at what turned out to be carvings and hieroglyphs that looked exceedingly old.

‘What is it?’

‘A blessed promise – sacred to our people. It was carved long ago from the tooth of a god, a fire-breather who sailed the wind.’

Alan let Ainé and Qwenqwo see the unrolled plaque. None of them could read the hieroglyphs but all could readily see the winged shape that occupied the central area of the sheaved panel.