The Black Amulet

by J. R. Wallis

  Ruby and Jones took a few steps back and then ran together, jumping over the channel, landing heavily on the other side beside Thomas Gabriel. As they stood up slowly, they felt a rumble beneath their feet. The ground in front of them collapsed and all three of them fell forward as the earth gave way.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Jones realized the burrow had been built close to the surface even before he landed on the black sláwyrmas below.

  Their bodies were hard and slippery, making it difficult to stand up. The pit that had formed from the collapsing earth was so wide and deep he had nothing to cling onto. His hands and face were coated in a thick slime that covered the creatures. Standing up was impossible.

  He tried looking around desperately for Ruby and Thomas Gabriel, but he couldn’t see them among the mass of black slippery bodies as the sleepy creatures started to move.

  A pair of jaws snapped at him, just missing the tip of his nose, and he slipped his hands inside the pockets of his overcoat, wary of losing a finger or a thumb.

  It took him a few panicked moments to realize it was the sunlight that was making the sláwyrmas move. They were barely interested in him at all as they started sliding out of the burrow and down the network of dark tunnels that led out of it to escape the light. But some of the creatures still snapped at him as they slithered past, clearly angry at being woken, and Jones covered up as well as he could.

  Bodies slithered past his face and ears. Some of the creatures were large enough, and moved so fast, that Jones was carried along until he slid off their bodies. It was in this way that he reached the far side of the pit and managed to grab hold of a tree root to stop himself slip-sliding down one of the dark tunnels.

  His hands were slimy and it was hard work levering himself up. He wiped them on the soil, coating them in brown earth, and then climbed quickly, hand over hand, his fingers digging into the soil wall. The pit was about five metres deep and, when his hands felt cold, wet grass, he heaved himself out. He scrambled to his feet. The channel of water he and Ruby had jumped across was just beyond the far wall of the burrow as he looked back at it now.

  In the pit below, he saw Ruby and Thomas Gabriel. They were sitting inside a white protective sphere, watching black bodies slither round them as the creatures retreated from the sunlight.

  Jones could see now that many of the sláwyrmas were fairly small, most of them no bigger than his arm. The occasional one was a lot longer and thicker, although they seemed to be more sleepy and moved slowly, without the wriggly panic of the smaller ones.

  But, as the mass of squirming bodies disappeared, it became obvious there was one very big sláwyrm, the female, lying underneath them all. Its body was thicker than a tree trunk and was gathered into large coils, one resting on top of the other. As the smaller creatures vanished into the tunnels leading off the burrow, Ruby and Thomas Gabriel were left sitting on the huge sláwyrm.

  It didn’t seem entirely happy about this. Its large forked tongue flicked out between two large fangs and stuck to the protective sphere. And then the creature uncoiled itself in one slippery movement which sent Ruby and Thomas Gabriel rolling across the burrow inside the ball. Before they hit the far side, the creature came after them, sliding fast. It opened its mouth wider. And wider. And then Jones heard a loud click as its jaw unhinged, allowing the sláwyrm to grab the whole sphere in its mouth. The fangs at the front were curved like thorns so there was no chance of it losing its grip. It bit down hard and the skin of the bubble trembled. Then it started to swallow the ball.

  Thomas Gabriel was conjuring white sparks round his fingers, but with every jolt, as the sláwyrm swallowed, he lost his balance and went crashing against the wall of the bubble. It was the same for Ruby as she tried to aim the gun.

  Jones already had his catapult raised and he fired a silver ball bearing at the creature’s head, but it pinged off the skull with little effect. He took aim and fired again, aiming for a green eye this time, with its black pupil the target. He hit the eye right in the centre and the ball bearing disappeared through it. The sláwyrm began to writhe, its tail thrashing and taking great chunks out of the burrow wall. The far side of the burrow nearest the channel of water bisecting the island broke apart, allowing water to rush in.

  The bubble was still snagged on the tips of the creature’s fangs and, as the sláwyrm tensed and shuddered one last time, the ball began to flex from the amount of pressure being applied. And then it popped.

  Ruby saw the bubble burst before she heard it. The force sent her flying out of the mouth of the sláwyrm. Its jaws snapped shut behind her and she felt a blast of hot breath on the back of her neck as she landed in the river water filling the burrow. The water level rose quickly and she splashed her way to the side where Jones was ready with a hand to pull her up. She stood there, shivering, and looked back to see where Thomas Gabriel was.

  The other boy had been less fortunate. His coat had snagged on one of the fangs and, although the sláwyrm was dead and floating, Thomas Gabriel was stuck with it as long as the jaws remained shut. The creature kept rolling from side to side like a log, submerging the boy and then popping him back up out of the water.

  ‘Take your coat off!’ shouted Jones.

  But Thomas Gabriel flapped a hand as if waving him away and then conjured some sparks round his fingers that turned into a sharp blade which he used to cut away at the material. He set himself loose, and swam, hauling himself onto the bank. As Jones helped him up, he noticed a rip in one of Thomas Gabriel’s wet trouser legs and a cut in the skin.

  ‘How bad is it?’ he asked, pointing to the injured leg.

  Thomas Gabriel pulled apart the rip to get a better look. His thigh had a narrow cut in it about the length of a finger. It was bleeding heavily.

  ‘It’s deeper than I thought,’ he said.

  ‘We need to disinfect it,’ said Jones. He rummaged in his pocket and took out a small leather bag and loosened the drawstring. He shook out what looked like small black balls into the palm of his hand, which uncurled like woodlice, each one revealing an undercarriage of busy black legs and a red crown of springy antennae at the front end.

  ‘I’m not using those,’ said Thomas Gabriel. ‘A city Badlander wouldn’t let those wibban anywhere near his body.’

  ‘There’s no time to flush the poison out of you any other way.’

  ‘I’ll use the antidote I brought along, thanks.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Jones turned to Ruby and rolled his eyes as Thomas Gabriel reached into his pocket and took out a glass vial.

  ‘A bite from an adult sláwyrm is poisonous,’ said Jones. ‘That’s why I brought these wibban along’ he said, ‘just in case. The poison’s so quick-acting that, unless you use the antidote straightaway after being bitten, you’re in big trouble.’ He paused as Thomas Gabriel started to shake. ‘As you’re about to see.’

  Thomas Gabriel had managed to remove the stopper from the vial, but he was struggling to drink the antidote. He kept missing his mouth. Jones bent down and guided the vial between Thomas Gabriel’s lips and then tipped it up. Thomas Gabriel glugged greedily, but he didn’t seem to be able to swallow and the antidote dribbled out of his mouth and down his chin. Thomas Gabriel grinned.

  ‘Shh-ee,’ he said slurring his words. ‘All I nee-cched wasshh she antiii-dothe.’

  Jones and Ruby raised their eyebrows at each other as Thomas Gabriel looked at them with big sleepy eyes. ‘No need for liccle beetle-y like youuuuve gottt.’

  ‘Is that right?’ replied Jones. He leant in to Ruby. ‘If you ever suspect you’re going somewhere there might be a sláwyrm then take some wibban with you.’ He pulled apart the rip in Thomas Gabriel’s wet trousers and dropped the beetles into the cut. They burrowed down into the wound and disappeared.

  Thomas Gabriel didn’t seem to mind. He giggled and lay back on the ground, his wet clothes creaking.

  ‘He’s not gonna be much use for a bit. Let’s go and see if we can find what we
came for,’ said Jones. But Ruby crouched down beside Thomas Gabriel. She lifted up his floppy arm and studied the Black Amulet.

  ‘I think we should take it off,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s evil. You heard what Drewman said.’

  ‘Thomas Gabriel’s been taking his bitter potions. He was doing it in the van. Anyway, it’s working for him, isn’t it, helping him do magic?’

  Ruby bit her lip.

  ‘Yesterday, at your parents’ house, I saw something. It was . . . It was like a dark part of him came alive and jumped out at me. I think it was protecting the amulet because I wanted Thomas Gabriel to take it off.’

  Ruby stretched out her hand to touch the amulet, but, when one of the snakes’ heads on it came alive and hissed, her fingers crumpled like they were made of tissue paper.

  ‘See?’ she gasped. ‘I don’t think the bitter potions are working. The amulet’s evil, Jones. I wonder what it’s doing to him.’

  Jones crouched down beside her and reached out to touch the amulet, but heard a noise and looked up.

  The water all around the adult sláwyrm was rippling and starting to froth as hundreds of hatchlings began to attack the body. The water was turning red.

  ‘It’s the blood in the water. They can’t resist it. They won’t stop now till everything’s eaten. We need to leave or they’ll come for him too because of his wound.’

  Jones stopped as something black slithered up the bank and made a beeline for Thomas Gabriel. It bit the boy on the hand and Thomas Gabriel yelled as Jones aimed a kick at the creature, but it dodged and reared up and bit Jones on the leg.

  He heard the phut of a dart and the sláwyrm went limp and fell from his leg.

  ‘We need to go, Jones,’ said Ruby, putting the gun back in her waistband. ‘And we’re not taking the boat back this time.’ She poured out a ring of Slap Dust round all three of them as Jones kept an eye out for more black bodies slithering up the bank. His leg was hurting terribly and he knew the bite was deep, but at least it wasn’t infected by poison because it had been a young sláwyrm that had bitten him.

  When all three of them arrived back in the field by the van, Thomas Gabriel giggled.

  ‘That wa-sh fun,’ he said. ‘Le’tsshh do it again.’

  Ruby and Jones managed to get him into the van and lay him on the floor, removing most of his wet clothes and dumping them in a pile with Ruby’s, before wrapping him in a towel. He stopped giggling after a while and began to moan and groan as he partly came to his senses.

  ‘The High Council meeting’s tomorrow,’ he said in a panic, trying to get up, but collapsing back to the floor in a state of ever-increasing delirium. ‘I’ll never pass if we don’t get those other two golden boxes in time. And if I’m punished by the High Council then you’ll lose the cottage, Ruby, because they’ll take all my things away, because I gave you that cottage, Ruby . . . and . . . and they’ll even take my æhteland so Jones will be found out too . . . and . . . and . . . punished for Commencing with a girl.’

  He paused as he tried to catch his breath. ‘But . . . but you know what’s worst of all? If the High Council finds out about me then it means we’ll have failed to find those last two boxes and allowed Drewman to fix our Commencements, meaning we’ll never be who we want to be.’

  Thomas Gabriel raised his arms and howled. ‘Oh, I won’t be a Badlander then and Ruby, you won’t be one either if you can’t do magic and prove to the Order you’re good enough to be one . . . and Jones . . . oh, Jones . . .’ Thomas Gabriel licked his lips and swallowed hard. His voice was hoarse and croaky now. ‘Jones, you’ll always have magic in you, even though you don’t want it.’

  As Thomas Gabriel flung his head into his arms and sobbed, Ruby looked at Jones and shrugged. ‘I’d say he’s pretty much right about everything there.’ She sighed. ‘How’s the leg? You look pale. Jones, are you—’

  ‘The lotion I put on is healing it,’ replied Jones. ‘But I think . . .’ He paused. ‘I think that sláwyrm bite might have had a trace of poison in it because the creature bit Thomas Gabriel first.’ His head started to sag. ‘I think I might need to rest a little . . .’ His head lolled forward onto his chest and he started snoring.

  ‘Oh, great,’ muttered Ruby. ‘That’s just great.’ She looked at one boy and then the other, one sobbing inconsolably and the other fast asleep. Then she stood up and pulled out the gun. ‘You and me are going to sort this out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re going to get that second golden box.’ She put on her army camouflage jacket, which was still rather damp despite being hung up outside in the sunshine, and set off.

  *

  She ran back across the fields towards the river, stopping every so often to pick up a stone that took her fancy. By the time she reached the riverbank, she had twenty or so in her limitless pockets.

  A grain or two of Slap Dust made her vanish from the riverbank and she reappeared on the shoreline of the island near the dinghy which was still tied to the tree.

  She unhooked the rope. Stepping into the boat was like standing on a seesaw, but she managed to sit down and then set off. She paddled the short distance round the island and then upstream, alongside it, until she saw the channel bisecting the island and steered the boat into that.

  The pond that had formed from the collapse of the burrow was larger than she remembered and Ruby wondered if more of its muddy sides had dropped into the water. There was no sign of the dead sláwyrm. The hatchlings were gone too. She drifted around a little, paddling here and there according to her memory, and then she tried to stop as well as she could, using the plank of wood. As she sat there, the boat bobbing gently, she took out the bottle of ascan she still had in her pocket and threw clouds of it into the air. It didn’t take long for her to find the small black hole she was after. Paddling towards it, she stood up and took out the vampire’s tooth. When she slipped the sharp end into the hole, she held on tight to the root and managed to keep the boat fairly still. Then she started cutting.

  It was even harder to open up the secret compartment than before, with the boat wanting to move all the time, and her legs braced to keep her steady. But Ruby stuck to the task, cutting a circle three quarters of the way around the hole as she had done before. This time she inserted the stones she had collected at intervals, to ensure the air she had cut through didn’t heal over again.

  Finally, when she had cut a circular flap, she hooked her fingers into the bottom and, with the stones falling all around her, heaved it up far enough to see the golden box shining back at her. With much huffing and puffing, she managed to slide in an arm and grab hold of the box. After pulling it out, she let go of the flap and it slapped shut. The air she had cut through started healing almost immediately.

  Ruby held the box close to her chest like a secret she had sworn never to tell anyone. She could have been holding her heart such was the golden glow. She sat down in the dinghy and started paddling back out of the channel and towards the riverbank.

  When she arrived back at the van, the two boys were sleeping, but they were looking much better. The bites on both their legs had healed, although she wasn’t quite sure what had happened to the beetles that had been placed in Thomas Gabriel’s wound.

  Ruby put the golden box down on the counter and the two boys woke, blinking in the sunshine. It was almost midday and the sun was quite strong.

  They could barely believe what she had done. But, however much they wanted to hear all about it, they had to get going. The High Council meeting was tomorrow and, not only did they need to find one more golden box before Thomas Gabriel was due to attend, they also needed to take all three of them back to Drewman.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Appletree Eyot, the last of the islands, was upriver from Old Windsor. It was about twenty-five miles or so by road so it didn’t take more than an hour to get close to it in the van. Jones drove as fast as he dared along the stretch of motorway th
e satnav took them on.

  The eyot was on the outskirts of Reading so it meant driving through parts of the town, negotiating busy junctions and roundabouts.

  When they crossed over the river, Ruby checked the map laid across her knees and pointed left, upstream.

  ‘The eyot’s a few miles up that way.’

  Jones nodded.

  He missed a turning a mile on from the bridge, having approached it too fast with a car tailgating him, and cursed. It took him another couple of miles to find somewhere to turn, in the sweeping gated entrance to a golf club. They came back down the road and he made sure he didn’t miss the turning a second time. The road took them out of the suburbs and along a quiet lane. They seesawed down a bumpy old track and parked in a field with a rickety gate that Ruby had to open, the bottom of it scraping the ground.

  They waited as long as they dared, until it was only just dark. In the distance, they could see the lights of Reading and the silhouettes of tall office blocks and apartment buildings. The night sky above them was the colour of burnt orange. As they set out towards the river, bits of the town bobbed up over the hedges. The office blocks and buildings grew taller and Ruby started wondering how frightening it was that monsters could live so close to people, right under their noses, without ever being seen. And then her mind turned to more practical matters and what sort of creatures might be on Appletree Eyot, as well as something else.

  ‘Jones,’ she hissed. ‘How are we going to get across the river? This eyot’s right in the middle of the water according to the map.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied and for the first time Ruby saw that he was stumped. He looked tired and drained. And a little worried.

  Thomas Gabriel coughed. ‘ “Be prepared” – that’s the Badlander motto, isn’t it?’ He wiggled his wrist, jiggling the amulet, and the green eyes of the snakes’ heads caught a little bit of moonlight. ‘We will be.’

  With a flourish, he cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair.