The Chalice of Hope (Adventures in Otherworld Book 1)

by Michael Kerr

  Inside, the tower was similar to a windmill. There were six floors, each reached by a wooden ladder bracketed to the wall and leading up to a trapdoor above it.

  Matamu led them up to the very top of the tower, from where they had an unrestricted view all around. To the west they could see the distant outline of a large castle that looked very similar to the one in the Magic Kingdom at Disney World in Florida.

  From below them came a loud roar, and flame hit the hard, heat resistant volcanic rock that the tower was built from, to shoot up in front of their faces.

  “You worry need not to,” Matamu said. “The dragons away soon will go. They know that get in here they cannot.”

  Matamu led them back down to the fifth floor. “Where from do you creatures come?” he asked them as they gathered round a table that had a small-scale model of the tower and dragon preserve on its top.

  “We have journeyed far,” Fig replied. “Through the Living Forest, across the Desert of Storms, and into the Valley of Mist, before reaching this place.

  “That impossible sounds,” Matamu said. “Thought I that the world beyond the Royal Preserve of the Dragon in a cliff edge ended in that direction.”

  “Thought you wrong,” Tommy said, adopting ‘Turtlespeak’. “You obviously travelled a lot haven’t.”

  “Don’t you start talking like Yoda,” Sam said. “I’m having enough trouble following what Matamu says.”

  “Do you know how far the Lake of Life is from here?” Fig asked.

  “The shiny sea five moons walk away be. Why go there would you?” Matamu asked.

  “To reach the Crossroads of Time,” Speedy replied.

  “A place of people vanished,” Matamu said. “No one who there ventures comes ever back. You wiser would be to where came you from return.”

  “We have to go on,” Sam said. “But thank you for giving us shelter from the dragons, and for your advice.”

  Matamu could not smile. His horny beak only opened up and down, and did not allow him to form any expression on his leathery face.

  “Welcome you are,” he said. “Please water and food have. On the floor below find it you will. I must my duty get back now to.”

  Going over to a window, Matamu opened the shutter and looked out, then opened others around the room, so that by walking in a circle he could see in every direction. After a few circuits, he returned to the table and moved small glass models of dragons to different parts of it. There were sixty of the little creatures in all. Tommy counted them. And they were all painted with a different combination of coloured bands, so that each individual dragon’s location was known at all times.

  “Let’s eat,” Speedy said. “I’m starving.”

  “I hope he has some pancakes,” Pook said, rubbing his tummy.

  They left Matamu to his job of dragon spotting, and climbed down the ladder to the fourth floor. There was a large round table made from a massive tree stump, with smaller stumps placed around it to sit on.

  Gorf sniffed out the food. There were chunky loaves of dark brown bread, full of some type of grain, and a large wedge of what looked to be Danish Blue cheese that smelled really terrible. From a hook in a stone fireplace hung a steaming pot of thick soup over a crackling fire.

  They ate some bread and cheese, and Gorf found some wood bowls and served them with the soup. There were no spoons that they could find, so they dipped the bread into the soup to soak it up.

  Tommy picked up his bowl and began drinking noisily from it, then cried out and dropped it, spilling the contents all over the table and down his trousers.

  “Eyes!” Sam said, pushing her own bowl away. “It’s got eyes in it.”

  Sure enough, the chunky, brown soup was full of eyes that might have been from birds or fish, or some other small creatures.

  “Wrong is something?” Matamu called down to them.

  “The soup is what’s wrong,” Tommy shouted. “It’s got eyes in it.”

  “Good is rats’ eyes for you,” Matamu replied.

  “RATS!” Tommy cried. “You mean we’ve been eating rats’ eye soup?”

  “And their tails and feet chopped up is also there in. Good soup make I, yes?”

  “Yes,” Gorf said. “I think it tastes almost as good as broth made from the brains of spadefoot targs.”

  Tommy swallowed hard and clamped his lips tightly shut, but could not stop himself from being sick. He turned sideways, away from the table, and threw up...all over Pook.

  “Oh, thank you very much,” Pook said. “That’s all I needed. If today hadn’t been bad enough already, you have to make it worse by puking on me.”

  “S...Sorry, Pook,” Tommy groaned. “It was an accident. I couldn’t help it. It was the thought of eating eyes and feet and...”

  ...and he upchucked again, and Pook used bad language that only a bear knows, as the parts of his fur that had not already been barfed on were coated in the hot, lumpy liquid.

  Gorf carried on eating. It was his kind of food. He was used to eating all sorts of animals, and never wasted any part of them that wasn’t poisonous.

  For the next three days, the others stuck to bread and cheese, and a flan that Matamu baked using some kind of eggs, cheese, and an orange vegetable that looked like a pepper but tasted oniony.

  It was on the fourth morning that the steel cart arrived. It was as big as a six-berth caravan, and was pulled by four horses that were harnessed inside the front of the vehicle, with no floor beneath them. And as the cart stopped next to the tower’s door, a dozen dragons appeared and bellowed at it from a distance.

  A large flap in the side of the ‘caravan’ popped open and dead animals as big as sheep but with black fur instead of wool were catapulted out into the air. The dragons belched fire on them, maybe to heat them up, or to burn the fur off them, or perhaps because they thought that they were still alive. And as they feasted, a door at the rear of the caravan opened, a ramp was lowered, and a trainee knight in armour rode a pure white stallion down it and into the tower. He carried a shield of burnished copper, and a long lance.

  “How can he kill dragons?” Tommy asked Matamu.

  “By very brave being,” Matamu replied. “His shield the fiery breath deflect will. And the tip of his lance with a swamp snake’s venom is coated. If the heart of the dragon the knight strikes, and to Lord Sylvester returns he its head to, then pass the test he will have, and proclaimed a knight proper he will be. Now go, in the cart get, and taken to safety you shall be.”

  They thanked Matamu for his hospitality, ran up the ramp and entered the strange vehicle. The door closed behind them, and they were greeted by a figure made of metal that appeared to be a robot.

  ― CHAPTER TEN ―

  LORD SYLVESTER’S CASTLE

  The only creature inside the vehicle, apart from the horses, was not a person, but made of some shiny metal. It was the shape of a man, but looked to be modelled from silver Plasticine.

  “Please sit down,” it said in a hollow, tinny voice. “The road is bumpy, and we may be attacked by a dragon or two before we leave the preserve. They like to charge at the cart.”

  They squeezed onto narrow benches at the rear. Most of the space was taken up by the harnessed horses and the large mechanical contraption that had catapulted the animal carcasses out to the dragons.

  “What...I mean, who are you?” Sam asked the silver man.

  “I am known as Proteus, because I am able to be whatever shape I choose. What are you warm-blooded life forms called?”

  “We are human beings,” Sam said, pointing to herself, Ben and Tommy.

  “I’m half troll and half goblin,” Gorf said.

  “And we are fairies, who can also change shape when we are in our own land,” Fig said, nodding to Speedy.

  “Don’t forget me,” Pook said. “I am a bear. Do you have pancakes and maple syrup wherever you’re taking us?”

  “I do not think so, bear,” Proteus said. “I am sure if we had such things
, I would know.”

  After journeying for perhaps ten miles scrunched up in the hot steel box, they were relieved when the horses stopped. Proteus opened flaps at the sides of the vehicle, then the back door, and they watched as he stepped down and walked over to a pair of towering gates set in a very thick, high wall that stretched for as far as they could see in both directions. He grasped hold of a handle and the gates creaked open as he cranked it. The horses walked through and stopped again. Proteus followed, closing the gates behind them by turning another handle.

  “We are outside the preserve now,” Proteus said, climbing back inside with them.

  The rest of the trip was more pleasant. They could look out at the countryside, which was now very much like the area surrounding Grassington, with green fields and trees and hedgerows.

  Soon after, they crossed a bridge over a wide moat and passed through an arched gateway into the cobbled courtyard of an enormous castle. The horses’ hooves clattered like coconut shells on the stones, and a boy with long blond hair and wearing a short leather jerkin and green tights appeared from what they supposed were stables, ran over to where they rattled to a stop, and opened the door.

  “Welcome to Chimera,” the boy said. “Wherever did Proteus find you?”

  “We were trapped at Matamu’s tower,” Fig said.

  “You mean you crossed the land where dragons dwell?” the boy asked with a look of disbelief on his face.

  “Yes,” Sam said, and proceeded to tell him their names, and asked him who he was.

  “I am Peter the page,” he said. “I am in the service of Sir Havalot. I polish his armour, sharpen his sword, look after his horses and do many menial chores.”

  “Page...PAGE!” A muffled voice shouted. They all looked towards the stables as a tall man staggered out through a door and spun around like a top, gripping the sides of the gleaming steel helmet that covered his head.

  Sam giggled. The man had a long bony body, but a potbelly that her father would call a beer-gut. He was dressed in a bright pink one-piece garment that looked the same as ‘granddad’ underwear. The top of it was long-sleeved and buttoned up to the neck. The bottom clung to thin, knobbly-kneed legs, and there was a square flap in the seat of the pants. Sam knew what that was for.

  “What’s happened, sire?” Peter asked as the knight came to a panting stop in front of them.

  “Are you blind as well as stupid, young oaf?” Sir Havalot said. “This new helmet is too small. When I get it off, I will go directly to the smithy and run the groat-grabbing blacksmith through with my sword.”

  “Let me help,” Gorf said.

  Sir Havalot lifted up the helmet’s visor to get a better look at the strangers who were standing next to Peter.

  “And what might you be?” he asked, looking up into Gorf’s face.

  “I am part hairy troll, and part goblin,” Gorf said. “Now, do you want me to remove your helmet, or would you rather wear it till the sun fries your brains?”

  “I don’t think I like your tone, troll,” Sir Havalot said. “But yes, I would be relieved to be rid of this head-crusher.”

  With Tommy, Ben and Speedy holding the knight firmly in place, Gorf grasped both sides of the helmet, and with one mighty jerk pulled it off. For a second he thought that the old man’s head had come off with it, but it hadn’t.

  “Aaghh! That hurt,” Sir Havalot cried. “But thank you, one and all. I thought I might have to be cut free by that blundering maker of horseshoes.”

  Sir Havalot studied the group, and they studied him. The top of his head was bald and shiny, but the long grey hair at its sides hung down to his shoulders. He had a very large, hooked nose, and a thick white moustache below it that was twisted and waxed at the ends and turned up. His eyes were so light a blue that they were almost no colour at all. And he had no eyebrows.

  “You all look and smell worse than the stable does before Peter has mucked it out,” Sir Havalot said. “Are you scared of soap and water? Or do you like to offend people?”

  “We don’t have any other clothes,” Sam said.

  “And it’s Pook that smells so bad,” Speedy said, inclining his head in the bear’s direction.

  “Only because Tommy was sick on me,” Pook explained.

  “Then you must all have a hot bath,” Sir Havalot said. “My page will show you where to go, and will burn those rags you are wearing and provide you with new outfits, before I introduce you to the Lord Sylvester.”

  “No need, for that,” Fig said. “We need to be on our way south to the Lake of Life.”

  “Nonsense,” Sir Havalot said. “You must stay the night, at least. We always have a big feast on Malmday evening, with music, dancers, jugglers and jesters. And tomorrow there will be a grand tournament, with jousting, sword fights, and many other competitions. Maybe you could enter our archery contest, Gorf. If you are proficient with that long bow you carry.”

  “I can knock out the eye of a swamp hawk on the wing,” Gorf boasted.

  “Then it is settled. And the day after the tournament, young Peter and I shall escort you to the Land of the Vampires, which you must pass through to reach the lake.”

  “Things just get worse,” Tommy said. “I really don’t want to meet any vampires. Isn’t there any other way to the lake?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Peter said, and led them across the courtyard and around the side of the castle to a side door. They followed Peter inside, along a corridor with food stores on both sides of it, and through a kitchen that was twice the size of the one at the school Sam, Ben and Tommy had attended. Dozens of cooks were preparing food, and the smell of it made all their mouths water.

  “My tummy’s rumbling,” Pook said. “I think I might faint if I don’t eat something.”

  Peter stopped in front of a large oven, from the front of which a very fat and red-cheeked baker was using a paddle-shaped spatula as long as a rowing boat’s oar to take out trays of golden-crusted pies.

  “May these guests of Sir Havalot sample your pies?” Peter asked the cook.

  “By all means,” the man said, giving them a cheerful grin. “Take one each, and be careful, for they are piping hot.”

  Thanking the baker, they took the offered pies and moved on, up some back stairs to a large changing room with wooden benches, lockers, and hooks on the walls to hang clothes on. There were also stacks of white towels, all embroidered with a crest and the words: PROPERTY OF THE LORD SYLVESTER.

  “When you’ve finished eating, help yourselves to towels and go through that door,” Peter said, pointing towards the end of the room. “I’ll go and find you some new clothes.”

  Gorf had eaten his pie in two bites. He picked up three of the towels and went through to a corridor with a dozen cubicles along its length. Each one contained a cast iron bath. After he had bathed and dried himself, his thick hair was three shades lighter and all fluffed up, making him look twice his normal size. He felt much better, but would have preferred to roll around in hot sand, which was his usual method of getting rid of dirt, and any mites that had crawled into his fur.

  One by one, after eating their pies, they went to bathe, and then returned to the changing room to find clean clothes neatly laid out on the benches.

  All dressed in similar clothes, apart from Gorf, who had kept his leather tunic, they waited for Peter to return.

  “You smell a lot better,” Ben said to Pook.

  “So do you,” Pook said back.

  “I could eat a horse,” Gorf said, using his fingers to try to comb the knots and tangles out of his thick fur.

  “That’s what we might be given,” Sam said.

  “As long as we don’t get offered any more rat eye soup,” Tommy said.

  “If you’re ready,” Peter said, entering the room. “Follow me, and I’ll take you to your rooms, where you can rest until it’s time for the banquet.

  He led them up to a large apartment in a lofty turret. “I’ll be back at sundown,” Peter said,
before rushing away.

  They were not tired, and were so used to being together that they all gathered in one of the rooms. Gorf went over to a narrow, pointed window and looked out, while the others sat on plush, padded chairs and laughed at how silly Sir Havalot had looked in his underwear, dancing about with a helmet stuck on his head.

  “What do you suppose the two other things that Mephisto gave us are for?” Ben asked, taking the one he carried out of his bag.

  They studied the large, ornately fashioned door key. It appeared to be made of brass.

  “The lock it fits must be in the door of something we will need to enter,” Tommy said.

  “And what could this be?” Fig said, holding up a large teardrop-shaped piece of amber, that was the same colour as Speedy’s eyes. Trapped Inside it was a small blue insect, frozen in the material.

  “It’s fossilised resin,” Tommy said.

  “What is resin? Speedy asked.

  “Sticky sap from trees,” Tommy explained. “It runs out and then sets, and millions of years later it ends up like yellow, see-through rock that is called amber. Anything that got stuck in it is preserved forever.”

  “At least with the glass arrow, we knew what to do with it,” Gorf said, turning away from the window.

  “I think we’ll know what to use these for when the time comes,” Sam said. She went across to the window. Outside, she could see over the battlements of the castle. And in a field at the back of the stables was a giant red and white striped tent, which she supposed would be called a marquee, with many smaller tents clustered round it.

  Peter returned at dusk and led them down to the ground floor, along a hall lined with full suits of armour, and lit by candles in crystal chandeliers. Sir Havalot met them outside the banquet hall. He wore a large powdered wig, and a floor-length gold-coloured silk robe.

  “Go and see to the horses, Peter,” he said. “I’ll take our guests from here.”