by Michael Kerr
Gorf waited for the reanimated corpse to drop, but it remained standing and showed no sign of having been shot.
The man, for that was what he now was, grew long black hair and a beard. His rags became a knee-length white costume trimmed with beads, feathers and gold. And he also wore a feathered head-dress that, to Tommy, was just like the war bonnets worn by Red Indian chiefs.
“You have come to the Temple of Kadu with the Chalice of Hope, and returned me from eternal sleep,” the ‘Chief’ said to them. “The power of the chalice has given me the strength to reform and be whole again. I thank you, strangers.”
“Who are you?” Sam asked him.
“I am Sharlo, the high priest of this temple. And you are a human. What brings three humans and other assorted creatures to Kadu?”
It was only then that Sam realised that she, Ben and Tommy were no longer small and green. She reached up, ran her fingers over the tops of both ears, and found them to be rounded again. The spell cast by Fig was broken, now that his and Speedy’s powers were finally gone.
“We found the chalice in our world,” Sam said in answer to Sharlo’s question. She then went on to quickly tell him everything else that had happened.
“The chalice was here at the temple for a very long time,” Sharlo said. “And then the Dark One’s army of Horgs, imps and psychopomps attacked Kadu. I managed to open a portal in time and hurl the chalice through it, before we were all put to death.”
“What are psychopomps?” Tommy asked.
“Unworldly beings,” Sharlo explained. “They appeared to us as bird-shaped shadows and escorted the souls of the others to a place of torment, wickedness and misery. The power of the chalice saved my soul from the same fate, but I was trapped in Limbo, which is a region bordering hell. I was doomed to stay there for eternity, until the strength of goodness from the chalice you carry reached out and touched my decaying body. Now I am whole again, and with the chalice returned I will be able to restore the temple to its former glory.”
“We can’t leave it here,” Ben said. “It has to be returned to the Keeper at Iceworld.”
“It was stolen from a Keeper in the first place,” Sharlo said. “Kadu is as safe a place as any for it to be lodged for the rest of eternity.”
“No,” Sam said. “You want it to serve your own selfish purpose. We’re leaving now, and taking it with us.”
Sharlo held out his fisted right hand, opened it, and in his palm was a dazzling crystal the size of a large plum. Laser beams of red light shot out towards them from the facets cut into its surface, and the group were at once set in place, unable to move. And from above them, thick steel bars slid out from holes in the ceiling, to drop down and imbed in the stone floor, forming a circular cage, inside which they were imprisoned.
They could move again, but were trapped. Gorf seized two of the bars with his hands, and with muscles bulging, straining and rippling, he pulled, shook and heaved with all his might, but the bars neither moved nor bent a fraction of an inch.
“Let us out,” Tommy said to the grinning priest. “This isn’t a very nice way to treat people who have returned you to life.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Sharlo said. “It was fortunate for me that you decided to explore the temple, but it was the chalice that brought me back from Limbo. Now, you can turn to dust where you are. The chalice will be safe down here. I shall seal the catacomb from above, so that no being will ever be able to enter it again.”
“But we’ve done you no harm,” Sam said. “We came in peace.”
“Your furry friend tried to kill me with an arrow. That was not what I would call a peaceful gesture. Better that you take the secret of where the chalice is to wherever you creatures go to in the after world.”
Without another word, Sharlo walked out of the chamber, and a huge block of stone slid noisily across the doorway, leaving them entombed in total darkness.
“I think we just ran out of luck,” Ben said. “I’ve got the feeling he won’t be back.”
“We’re all going to die,” Tommy whispered with more than a trace of panic in his voice.
― CHAPTER SIX ―
LABYRINTH OF THE SPIDERS
Being the thinnest of the group, Speedy tried every which way he could to squeeze between the bars, but couldn’t.
“It’s no good,” he said. “We aren’t going anywhere in a hurry.”
“At least the chalice might be safe here,” Fig said. “I doubt that anyone will ever find it, after Sharlo seals this underground part of the temple up.”
“If whatever this devil you call the Dark One is, finds out that Sharlo is alive again, he’ll want to know how that could be,” Sam said. “For all we know he has spies nearby in the shape of birds or animals that have already told him that we’re here.”
Tommy felt more afraid than he had ever been in his life; a hundred times more than when the stone gargoyles attacked them, or even when he had fallen from the bridge and nearly drowned. His legs buckled under him and he sank down against the bars. There was a scream forming in his throat, but he gritted his teeth and swallowed hard, believing that if he started to scream, he might never stop.
Fig and Speedy joined forces to try and magic the bars apart, which would have been an easy thing to do nearer home, but was impossible so far away from the oak palace. Nothing happened.
Ben could hear Tommy making a strange whimpering sound, and could also feel him next to him, shaking. He knelt down in the darkness, felt about with his hand for his friend’s shoulder, and put his arm around it.
“Hey, Frog, don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find a way out of this place.”
“Y-yeah, and pigs can f…fly,” Tommy stammered.
“They can where I come from,” Gorf said, sitting down at the other side of Tommy, hugging him so tightly that he thought his ribs would snap. “And we will get out of this place, if only so that I can tear that ungrateful sack of feathers and drummins’ arms and legs off.”
Tommy could feel Gorf’s hot breath on his face, and the smell of the blistergut the troll had eaten made him gag.
Sam felt something similar to how the warmth of the sun on her back would feel. And yet it had to be her imagination, for the dark corridor they were trapped in was damp and cold.
THE CHALICE! Sam removed the bag from her back, put it down on the floor and opened it. Even through the covering of dried mud and leaves, she could see a faint glow. She lifted the chalice out and raked the crusty shell off it with her fingers, and the cage was immediately illuminated in a soft, golden light.
“That’s better,” Ben said. “At least we can see each other now.”
Sam lifted the chalice up by its handles and pressed it against one of the bars.
Help us to be free from here, she thought. We need to continue our journey and return you to the keeper.
A ball of bright light formed inside the cup, to rise up and drift in mid-air. It then bounced from one bar to another, to circle them in a curtain of crackling, electric neon-blue.
From being blinded by darkness, they were now blinded by the light, and closed their eyes until the brightness against their eyelids faded. When they looked again, the bars of the cage were completely melted, to form a ring of liquid metal around their feet.
“Now that’s what I call magic,” Ben said.
Sam stepped over the smoking pools and walked across to where the slab of stone blocked the way out. Once more she held the chalice up, against the wall, and felt a tremor run through her hands as large cracks appeared and spread out from behind the cup. Within seconds the barrier crumbled into a pile of sand.
“Sharlo is going to be as sick as a parrot when we find him,” Tommy said.
“I don’t think we should try to find him,” Sam said. “The chalice has stopped glowing. It feels...drained. I think it might need to recharge, like a battery.”
“I agree,” Fig said. “We don’t know what the priest is capable of doing. And wha
t could we do against someone who has returned from the dead, and wasn’t harmed by Gorf’s arrow.”
“Let’s just get out of here and put as much distance as we can between us and this temple,” Speedy said.
The others nodded their agreement. Being curious had almost cost them their lives.
Sam put the chalice back in the bag and led the way along a narrow passageway. At the end of it was a door, and behind the door, a spiral staircase.
“Let me go first,” Gorf said, using his bow like a walking stick to tap the steps, before putting his weight on them, wary of another booby trap.
After only a dozen steps, his caution paid off. Just the touch of the bow triggered a large axe to sweep down from a slot in the brickwork. Its heavy blade bit into the stone where Gorf would have been, sending up a shower of sparks.
“Sharlo is a tricky devil,” Gorf said, stepping over the weapon and carrying on.
They came back up into the light at the other side of the temple, to leave the building by a rear door and hurry down the weed-covered steps, not slowing until they reached the cover of the jungle. None of them spoke until the temple of Kadu was at least a mile behind them.
“What do you suppose Sharlo will do now?” Tommy said. “He’s all by himself back there.”
“I don’t care what he does,” Ben said. “As long as we don’t ever meet up with him again.”
It took them until almost dawn the next morning to make their way to the southern fringe of the jungle oasis. They stayed within its shelter for the day, and ate, slept, and gathered more fruit and fresh water before setting off back out into the desert.
All went well for two days and two nights. It was on the third day, as they found what cover they could in a shallow gully, that the Desert of Storms was hit by a hundred mile an hour gale force wind that churned the sand up into thousand-feet-high clouds of fine, abrasive particles. The rushing, stinging sand swept over them, almost tearing them from the ground. They huddled together, covered their heads, and breathed as best they could until the winds died and the desert was left with new formations of dunes that formed an ever-changing landscape with no points of reference to ever map it, apart from the far-flung oases that were the only features to break the ocean of eternally shifting sand.
They rinsed out their eyes and mouths with water, and blew their noses. Only Gorf was unworried by the sandstorm. His thick covering of fur prevented the skin underneath from being stung or cut. And his usually wide nostrils could close in the same way as a camel’s or cactus sloth’s did. He could even see in the storm. Both of his eyes had the addition of secondary, tough transparent lids that moved across to protect them from harm. And his big, flat feet were well adapted to the hostile environment, having three wide toes on each, connected with skin, allowing him to walk on the soft surface with them splayed, which prevented him from sinking into it.
Night came, and after a few hours of trekking, and with leg muscles and backs aching from the heavy going, they reached the top of a high dune and sat down on the ridge to take a breather. The three moons lit a welcome sight. In the distance they could see a mountain range beyond the desert.
“Tomorrow night we will be out of this furnace,” Fig said. “The Valley of Mist should make a pleasant change from blistering heat and burning sand.”
“Don’t count your chickens until they’ve hatched,” Sam said. “Who knows what we might run into?”
“What exactly are chickens? And what would counting them have to do with anything?” Fig asked her.
“Chickens are birds, Fig. And counting them before they’ve hatched is just a saying. It means, don’t take anything for granted.”
“Then it sounds like a wise proverb, similar to one we use: Beware the elf who offers you his brother’s shoes.”
“And we have one,” Gorf said. “Keep the sun to your back and your bow ready.”
“Can we go now?” Tommy said. “Sitting in the middle of the world’s biggest sandpit swapping silly sayings won’t get us out of here before morning.”
“Don’t be such a pain in the backside, Frog,” Ben said. “We need to try and keep cheerful.”
“Cheerful!” Tommy said with a scowl on his face. “What have we got to be cheerful about?”
“I thought you didn’t want to go back home, now that you don’t need your specs or leg iron anymore,” Sam said.
Tommy had forgotten about that. Now that Sam reminded him, he didn’t feel so bad. Funny how he had so quickly got used to having keen eyesight and a leg that was now a lot more use than ornament. It was hard to remember how he had been until so recently. “You’re right,” he said. “I should count my blessings.”
“Is that like not counting chickens before they hatch?” Speedy asked.
They all laughed until their stomachs ached and tears rolled down their cheeks. The more they tried to stop, the worse it got. The fits of laughter seemed to wash away the horror of all that had happened since leaving the oak palace.
Tommy opened his bag and reached inside it for the wooden water gourd, but it had changed back into the plastic Coca Cola bottle it had originally been. His calliper was steel again, and his specs had lenses, and the frames were no longer made of wood.
“Look,” he said to the others. “How can this have happened?”
“Obviously not everything stays the same in different zones,” Ben said. “Remember the bars of that cage, and the axe head in the temple. They were made of steel. We must be moving across invisible borders, where the rules of how things are, alters.”
They set off again across the rolling, hill-high dunes, having to rest more and more frequently as the climbing exhausted them.
The glow of first light was staining the sugary sand pale pink when they staggered down the last dune onto an arid plain dotted with twisted, mushroom-shaped cacti, and black bushes that smelled of creosote.
Gorf heard the sound first. He stopped, knelt on all fours, put his ear to the ground, and then jumped up and looked all around. They were out in the open, now crossing flatlands with only a thin layer of wind-polished gravel and a few tumbled boulders. To the west were ranges of sandstone mountains that rose vertically for thousands of feet. At their base, the rock had been eroded back by the wind and gravel, undercutting it to create overhangs and caves in the cliff face.
“What is it, Gorf?” Ben asked. “You look scared.”
“I am,” he said. “The most dangerous creature in the desert is the beaded scorpion. It grows to the size of a spadefoot targ, and kills anything with a pulse. From the clicking noises their legs make, I think a herd of them are heading our way.”
Soon after, they heard what could have been the click-clack of a thousand needles at a Women’s Institute knitting marathon.
“Here they come,” Gorf shouted. “Run for the caves at the bottom of those cliffs, it’s our only chance.”
The creatures looked like an oil slick rushing up a beach.
As they ran, Ben glanced back over his shoulder and saw the black tide turn in their direction and increase speed.
The group covered half the distance to where they hoped to find safety, but the sound of the beasts’ approach was growing louder, and the ground shook. Only a second or two would be the deciding factor between whether they would live to fight another day, or become scorpion food.
Without his powers, Fig was feeling his great age. He could hardly breathe, and his heart was racing so fast he thought it might explode. He tried to keep up with the others, but was lagging behind. He stumbled, tripped up and fell to the ground. He tried to stand, but his ankle was in some way damaged, and he felt pain that, being a fairy, he had never experienced. He glanced behind him and screamed out. There was an army of huge, black, shiny creatures bearing down on him. They blocked out the rising sun as they snapped their huge crab-like pincers open and shut.
Gorf heard Fig scream. “Keep going,” he shouted to the others, and turning back, raced to where Fig lay, to pic
k him up and carry him.
Reaching the cliff face, the others squeezed into a crevice and looked out.
“They aren’t going to make it,” Speedy said.
Gorf ran like the wind, not pausing as he ducked down just in time to avoid having his head snipped off by pincers that sprang together above it with the force of a crocodile’s jaws. A second later, he dived into the crevice, still holding Fig in his arms.
“We all made it,” Tommy said. “I can’t believe it.”
The scorpions were the size of tanks, and their metallic-black armoured shells were covered in large red blobs, which Ben supposed was why Gorf had called them ‘beaded’.
“They are soooo ugly,” Sam said, backing up into the shadow of the crevice.
“But we outran them,” Tommy said. “We’re safe.”
“No, Frog, we’re not,” Gorf said. “They have a brain no bigger than a pumpleberry, and will probably wait out there for weeks if need be. We’re trapped.”
“Maybe not,” Sam said. “This isn’t just a crevice. It leads back into the cliff, and the walls are smooth.”
Ben ran his hand across the cool, smooth surface. “I think water ran through here once,” he said.
“Let’s hope it leads to another way out,” Gorf said, making off into the canyon, or whatever it was, as one of the more persistent scorpions began to nibble the soft rock away with pincers as sharp as garden shears.
The ground sloped down, and after following the winding trail for over an hour, with brief glimpses of sky high above them, they entered the mouth of a cave. They went farther, along a tunnel that led down into a majestic grotto. Stalactites the shape of icicles hung down from the ceiling, and below them, stalagmites grew up from the rock floor. There were columns and eroded limestone shapes resembling all manner of things that a crazy sculptor might have carved. Most importantly, they could see, due to a luminous green light that seemed to leak out of the rock.
“It’s beautiful,” Speedy said. “I think that King Ambrose would make a fine palace of this, if it was nearer the oak wood.”