by Alex Bell
Kala cleared her throat, stood up a little straighter and raised her voice so that the toffs goggling at them from the veranda would be able to hear what she said. ‘The current Gaming champion, Lady Luck, has graciously allowed me the privilege of choosing the first round.’ She paused dramatically for a moment before saying loudly and clearly, ‘For the first round, then, let it be dead ships!’ There were excited mutterings from the crowd and then Kala went on. ‘There is one shipwreck down at the base of the volcanoes that, because of the peculiar way in which it was built, has quite a lot of air pockets left in it. In a moment you will all be sent down there by your respective Gods. The first one to return the captain’s medallion to me, wins.’
Lex was wary, and he could tell that Jeremiah was, too. Lex knew from experience that they all had good reason to be. The first round in the last Game had involved the seemingly simple task of finding and fixing a broken mirror, but it had soon become apparent that the castle in which they were searching had a number of rather horrible traps − including minotaurs and medusas.
‘In order to avoid shrill, hysterical accusations of cheating,’ Kala said, with a dirty look at Lady Luck and Thaddeus that made Lex suspect they had already had words about this, ‘you will all be put in the same part of the ship at the same moment. Ready?’
She was talking to the other Gods rather than the players, who barely had time to take in what was being said before she was counting, ‘One, two, three!’
On the exact count of three, Lex and Jesse, and Jeremiah and Lorella with their companions, all disappeared into thin air, and found themselves hundreds of feet below the surface of the sea in the old galley of one of the sunken ships on the seabed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SQUEALING BLUE-RINGED OCTOPII OF SCURLYSHOO
The air was cold and damp and old and musty. It smelled funny − of salt and seaweed and fish. It felt even funnier when Lex took a breath and inhaled the cold air into his lungs.
Of course, being so many fathoms under the sea, the ship should have been in complete darkness, and would have been had it not been for the starfish. They were all over the place − both inside the ship and stuck to the portholes outside, as well. These were sunrise starfish and Lex knew them at once because of the way they were glowing − although it was more of a luminescent greenish-blue than the colour of the sun. He’d seen them before, although never alive. The midnight market back at the Wither City sold a vast array of food on sticks − most of which consisted of the creepy-crawly, long-leggedy, beasty variety − but they also did sunrise-starfish kebabs, and you could always tell what area of the market they were in for, even dead, the starfish still emitted a greenish glow. Lex thought it was gross, himself, but some people seemed to really love munching away on starfish, and they were even considered something of a delicacy back in the city.
The soft green light emitted by them was just enough to illuminate the large room. There were four long rows of tables with a lot of wooden chairs nailed into the floor, all covered with copious amounts of thick, slimy seaweed. There were several paintings on the wall, all depicting a huge, monstrous octopus. Everything was damp and the portholes looked straight out at the cold, black sea. It was a weird feeling to know they were so far under water.
After the six of them appeared in the galley, there were a few odd moments of almost embarrassed uncertainty, for no one was too sure what to do next − not even Lex, who’d done this all before. After all, in the previous Game, for various different reasons, the players had all started the rounds at slightly different times or in different places. They had not all been dumped at the starting line at exactly the same moment like this, in each others’ pockets, as it were, and getting under each others’ toes. It seemed to be a toss-up between making a mad dash for it or trying to knock the other two over the head with something really heavy. Indeed, it looked like Jeremiah was already reaching for the sword at his belt when his little sister piped up. ‘There’s three doors out of here and three of you. Why don’t you each just pick one?’
‘Shut up, Tess!’ Jeremiah snapped. ‘What did I tell you about talking during the Game?’
Tess pulled a face at him but said nothing. It seemed that Lorella wasn’t prepared to stand around discussing the matter and strode away in the direction of the nearest door. She pulled it open, walked through and was gone. Lex decided to do the same. He picked up a starfish that was resting on the floor − just in case there weren’t any in the next room and he needed the light − then turned and walked in the direction of one of the other doors at the same moment that Jeremiah turned to walk in the direction of the last one.
Jesse was close behind Lex as he pulled the door open and stepped through, drawing it shut behind them. And immediately something wet and slimy fell from the ceiling, landed on Lex’s head, and wrapped long slippery things around his neck. And that was the moment that Lex first discovered that he did have a phobia after all. It transpired − most unfortunately − that Lex was absolutely terrified of octopuses.
Of course, he didn’t realise that it was an octopus at first. He just started screaming and staggering around, dropping the starfish in his panic, knocking into things and causing them to fall over. It was most unlike Lex to lose his head in this manner. But, even before he knew that the thing on his head was an octopus, he detested the cold, slimy feel of the tentacles wrapped around his neck, squeezing his throat, making his skin prickle with revulsion. When he lifted his hands in an attempt to drag it off, he detested the soft, slimy, squidgy feel of the thing latched on to his head. And he detested the weird smell of it and the horrible high-pitched noise it was making.
He couldn’t see where he was going and, somehow, managed to fall over on to his back on the floor. No matter how he tugged and hit and pulled, he didn’t seem to be able to get the thing off. There was nothing he could do to stop it from choking him to death. The horrible, dreadful, awful, ghastly, horrific, unimaginable thought crossed his mind that perhaps he − he − Lex Trent! − was the one who was going to die in the first round this time, when suddenly a strong hand shoved his shoulder back hard on to the floor, pinning him there. A split second later there was a squelching noise and then a sort of wheezing and the grip around Lex’s neck suddenly went slack. Then the thing on his head was gone and both his hands clutched at his throat as he gulped in air.
The first thing he saw was Jesse standing over him with a little octopus − a pale fleshy colour with blue rings all over it, about the size of a cat − impaled, long tentacles dangling, on the knife the cowboy held in his hand.
‘Poor little sucker,’ Jesse said, looking at the octopus sadly.
‘What about me?’ Lex choked indignantly.
‘You’re still alive, ain’t you? No dead thing I ever came across made as much noise as you.’ Jesse shook the knife and the dead octopus slid off it and landed with a splat on the floor beside Lex, who drew back from it in panic, scrambling across the salty, wet boards.
‘What the heck is that thing?’ he asked, staring at it. ‘And are you certain it’s dead?’
‘Sure it’s dead,’ Jesse replied, shaking blue blood off the knife. ‘The rest of ’em ain’t, though.’
‘The rest of them?’ Lex repeated, horrified.
It was only then that he realised the long corridor they were in was absolutely crawling with little octopuses − on the walls, the floor and even clinging to the ceiling. And, for the very first time, playing the Game was not one hundred percent fun for Lex. For the very first time in his life, he felt some faint glimmer of sympathy for Lucius when he caught sight of a spider in the bath and trembled in fear just at the sight of it. Lex tried to tell himself that a spider couldn’t hurt you and these octopuses obviously could, but he couldn’t lie to himself, no matter how well he could lie to other people. The simple fact was that the octopuses could have been utterly harmless and he would still have felt horrified at the very sight of them. It was something about their squi
dgy heads and long, slimy tentacles − no living thing should look like that; it was just unnatural! They had squidgy heads for Gods’ sake!
‘Do you think they’re all over the ship?’ Lex whispered.
The cowboy shrugged. ‘Seems likely, don’t it? Probably been attracted by the air that’s still in here. But if we move quietly and don’t do anything to startle ’em, hopefully they’ll just stay where they are.’
Just the thought of an octopus dropping on to his head again like that made Lex want to flee the boat and take his chances in the sea outside. But, with a great effort of will, he pulled himself together. All right, so he was unused to this horrible, prickling sensation of fear crawling along his skin; he was unused to feeling irrationally repulsed by something; and discovering your fear of octopuses for the first time when you’re in a sunken ship that’s full of the little suckers is exceptionally bad timing. But that was what had happened just the same and there was nothing Lex could do to change it. He would just have to grit his teeth and bear it. Nothing − but nothing − was going to stop him from winning this round. If anything, Lex’s success in the previous Game had made him even more competitive than he’d been already, for he had a record to keep now. In the last Game he had won every single round. He’d never lost one yet and he did not intend to start now. The competition was tougher this time, for both Lorella and Jeremiah were bound to prove themselves formidable opponents. Lex could not allow anything to distract him. So he thrust his new-found phobia deep into the back of his mind, stood up, picked up another glowing starfish, cleared his head and tried to think.
‘Kala said we need to retrieve the captain’s medallion,’ he said. ‘So the chances are that if we find the captain’s skeleton, we’ll find the medallion.’
‘So what part of the ship will we find the cap’n in?’
Lex thought for a moment and then said, ‘It depends what sort of man he was. If he was a brave man, he would have been in his rightful place on the bridge when the ship went down. If he was a coward he’d have been hiding in his quarters—’
‘And if he was a greedy man, he would’ve been hiding in the galley!’ Jesse cut in.
Lex glared at him. ‘Don’t be absurd! No man, no matter how greedy, is going to rush down to the galley whilst the ship is sinking to stuff his face one last time. Besides, we just came from there.’
Jesse grinned. ‘I was only kidding.’
‘Well don’t! There’s no time for that!’ It was important to Lex to win the Game but it probably didn’t matter much either way to Jesse. Lex realised then for the first time that he probably should have offered the cowboy some sort of incentive earlier. ‘For every round we win, I’ll pay you fifty pieces of m-gold.’
Jesse crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Make it a hundred.’
Lex scowled at him. It was on the tip of his tongue to remind the cowboy that if it weren’t for Lex’s timely intervention, Jesse would still be rotting in prison, or else on his way back to the hangman’s noose that was waiting for him in the Wild West. But he didn’t have any more time to waste so he just snapped, ‘Fine!’
They could argue about it once the round was over. And Lex could always go back on his word later if it suited him. His offer of a reward seemed to have the desired effect, though, for now Jesse replaced the knife in his belt, rubbed his hands together gleefully and said, ‘So are we going for cowardly or courageous?’
‘Courageous,’ Lex replied. ‘They don’t tend to give medallions to cowards. We need to find the bridge.’
So they set off down the corridor, moving slowly, trying not to make any noise and tiptoeing carefully around the octopuses on the floor. Most of them were clinging to the walls but there were a few on the ceiling as well. Here, too, hung several paintings all showing the same octopus. There even seemed to be a large mosaic of one beneath the seaweed on the floor. Lex couldn’t help thinking the sea monster a strange choice of décor for the ship. He would have preferred beautiful mermaids, himself, or at the very least a few sleek, silver, friendly dolphins.
Lex was relieved to discover that Jesse seemed to be right − as long as they made no sudden, threatening movements, the octopuses seemed content to leave them be. Unfortunately it all went wrong when they reached the end of the corridor and opened the door, because a lot of water rushed out. It seemed that not all of the ship’s rooms were dry, after all. It poured out at them, knocking both Lex and Jesse off their feet and carrying them back a little way down the corridor. As sudden, threatening movements went, this seemed to be quite effective at frightening the octopuses who had been knocked into or swept off the walls. They latched on to Jesse and Lex anywhere they could get a grip.
Lex had one wrapped around his right ankle, one on his left arm, one slithering about trying to get a purchase on his chest and one dangling from his right wrist. They were all making that same awful high-pitched noise and it occurred to Lex − through his veil of horror − to wonder whether the little monsters might be poisonous. Surely Lady Luck would never put him in such a position, would she? But of course she would! This was a Game − death and danger were the point!
Suddenly, Lex felt angry. Falling gloriously to your death from a great height, or being dashingly killed by a ferocious, fire-breathing dragon, or getting heroically ripped apart by a band of werewolves was one thing. Getting squeezed and sucked to death by a bunch of horrible little octopuses was something else entirely. As Jesse seemed to be pretty thoroughly occupied with attempting to remove his own octopuses, Lex was going to have to save himself this time. He managed to get up, despite almost falling over again when there were more slippery octopuses getting in the way beneath his feet. The one that had been sliding around on his chest fell off but the two on his arms remained where they were and the one on his ankle actually started dragging itself up his leg!
Lex thought quickly. Unfortunately his knowledge of sea creatures was limited, to say the least. His grandfather had certainly never come across these octopuses − there was no mention of them in any of Alistair Trent’s chronicles. But Lex had read other chronicles, too. He was, in fact, always reading, whenever he got the chance. You could learn a lot from a book. And you could never be too well prepared for a Game. Not when a relevant piece of knowledge could make all the difference between life and death. This was the reason Lex had had an entire library installed on the enchanter’s ship before he’d left. It was also the reason he was currently carrying a book in his bag called The Mysteries of the Deep. He’d packed it as soon as he’d found out where the first round was to take place. It was quite a hefty thing and a great weight, causing the bag to dig painfully into his shoulders. Of course, there was no guarantee that the octopuses would be in there − one book couldn’t contain information about every sea monster, after all. But Lex was a lucky person and so he was sure that, if he could just get the book out, there would be some information in there that would enable him to deal with them.
Unfortunately, he needed to get into his bag first but, when he reached an arm around to try to swing it off his back, his hand came into contact only with more oily octopuses. There must have been four or five of them latched on to his bag. Jesse was doing even worse than Lex, for he seemed to have lost his knife and there were now a grand total of seven octopuses clinging to him.
‘You gotta weapon in that bag?’ Jesse asked, starting to look quite panic-stricken.
The water rushing in seemed to have set all the octopuses off, for now even the ones that weren’t actually on Jesse and Lex were making their way towards them, all making that horrible high-pitched whining sound.
‘No,’ Lex replied. ‘I’m trying to get to a book.’
‘A book?’ the cowboy said, staring at Lex aghast.
‘Yeah.’ Lex finally managed to swing the bag off his back, three of the octopuses flying off in the process to land on the floor at his feet with wet-sounding slaps.
‘What good will that possibly do? Is it big enough to squash �
��em with?’
‘No, I’m going to read about them.’
‘Read about them?’ Jesse repeated, staring at Lex like he was mad.
Lex ignored him and opened the book to the contents page. There was a whole section there about octopuses but the problem was that Lex didn’t know what they were called and, without a name, he couldn’t look them up. He was just about to start flipping through the relevant section, looking at the pictures, when a name caught his eye and he knew it had to be the right one: The Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii of Scurlyshoo. Even the name made him shudder.
He flipped the book open to the right page and straight away there was a photo staring up at him of one of the horrible blue-ringed octopuses. There was a large amount of text on the double-page spread but two equally unpleasant sentences leapt out at Lex instantly: The Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii is one of the most toxic sea creatures known to man. And: The Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii carries enough venom to kill twenty-six adult humans within minutes.
When there are four or five of the little suckers clinging to you, whining frantically, that sort of thing is really not what you want to be reading. And to think that Lex had had one on his head! Why, if Jesse hadn’t stabbed it right when he did . . .