The younger wolves rejoined them just as Lord Shamash was leading Lem into the labyrinth of pits where the ice bridges were so fragile that they cracked as they crossed them. Lumps of ice fell into the nothingness below.
Finally they reached a bridge that Lord Shamash warned could only be crossed one at a time. He volunteered to go first, in case it didn't hold. But hold it did, so Lem followed, tiptoeing as softly as he could. Next came the pack, one at a time, stepping high-pawed on the fragile ice. The last wolf was halfway across when four Enkidu lumbered out of the darkness.
`Challenge them,' Lord Shamash said to Lem.
Lem stepped forward and yelled, `Heh! Over here.'
The first Enkidu made swiping actions but did not follow the wolf onto the bridge. Impatient to catch Lem, the following three Enkidu, including the one with the torn shoulder, pushed past the first and galloped onto the bridge. They had only gone half way before its thin span broke, hurtling them into the abyss.
By the time the first Enkidu leapt the void, the pack and Lem were deep inside the labyrinth and doubling back to find more Enkidu.
Four more times Lem and the wolves successfully led groups of hairy, skull-headed creatures across bridges that collapsed beneath their weight.
During their fifth run, an older Enkidu threw up an ice wall that blocked Lem and the wolves' escape.
`Use your magic!' growled Lord Shamash.
Lem opened a packet of Edith's snapdragon buds and threw a bud at the wall. Nothing happened so he threw a handful. As the buds hit the ice it shattered, and he and the wolves leapt through - closely followed by the Enkidu.
`Turn right and follow the stream!' yelled Lord Shamash, rounding on the older Enkidu, who were so close that Lem could feel their hot breath on the back of his neck. `We will hold them.'
Lem dived into a tunnel that was so low he had to wriggle through on his stomach. Behind him came the high-pitched yelp of a wounded wolf. He hoped it wasn't Lord Shamash.
Lem crawled faster until he reached a chasm lit by the watery rays of the afternoon sun. He raced along it until he found a stream flowing from deep inside the mountain. With his back aching and his hands and feet so cold he couldn't feel them any more, he followed the stream until he stumbled into a cavern twice the size of M'dgassy's Royal Palace.
Below its icicle-filled ceiling stretched an enormous dragon. Its huge arrow-shaped head, long blue-scaled body, bent hind legs, spiked tail and gigantic crumpled wings were frozen solid to the cavern walls.
Lem ran past its wings and climbed up the blue scales of one front paw. He stepped over the deep wounds and frozen blood that covered them, and moved towards the dragon's head.
`Dragon! Dragon! I am Prince Lem of the Royal House of M'dgassy. I have come to rescue you.'
As his brave words reverberated around the cavern Lem realised how foolish they sounded. How could a boy, no bigger than the dragon's eyeball, rescue it from so much ice? And if he did, how would he get it out of Tartik Mountain and off Tartik Island with its broken wings and wounded paws?
He stared sadly up at the dragon's horned head waiting for an answer to form in his mind, the way Lord Shamashs' words had. Then he remembered Edith's mirror. He retrieved it from his pocket, held it up to the dragon's eye and recited the words Edith had taught him: `Ecco narcisso dragonucus attractivae!'
The dragon sighed and the air from its one ice-free nostril almost blew Lem off its paw as a rumbling voice filled his head. `You've come at last, nephew.'
Joy mixed with disappointment flooded over Lem. The ice dragon wasn't his father; he was the father of Celeste and Chad. Lem had climbed the glacier, been chased by Enkidu, crossed ice bridges that had scared him silly, and his own father was somewhere else.
But then the dragon's words filled his head and he was glad he had found him. `How are my children? How is my Queen? How is the country of M'dgassy?'
Lem held the mirror higher. `Celeste and Chad are fine and healthy. I don't know where your Queen is, and the High Enchanter has conquered M'dgassy and all of Ifraa. Which is why I need your talisman so we can rescue you.'
A huge tear dropped past him. `Rescue is impossible unless you have all five talismans. If you don't, then it is hopeless.'
Lem waved the mirror in front of the huge eye. `No. It's not hopeless! We will find all five talismans I promise. Only we don't know what to do with them when we do find them. Do you know?'
His uncle, the dragon, took so long to answer that Lem was about to prod its scaly head to see if it had gone to sleep when a torrent of words filled his head.
`Place the five talismans on the moon dial in the Royal Palace's rose garden during the next three moon eclipse. One eclipse more and I will die of cold. One talisman less and we all die. My talisman is a blood red scale growing at the base of my throat. Hurry I hear the Enkidu coming.'
Lem pocketed the mirror, slid down the dragon's paw and ducked under its head. The red scale glowed like a hand-sized drop of blood. He reached high, sliced it off with his long sword and put it in his pocket.
A moment later two Enkidu slunk sniffing and snuffling into the cavern. They did not see him but by the way they were testing the air, Lem knew they soon would. He unslung Swift's bow, slotted an arrow into its bowstring and waited.
A triumphant boom from the lead Enkidu signaled to the other that he had the scent and they both turned towards him.
Lem let loose the arrow which sped across the cavern embedding its sharp head in the Enkidu's hairless throat.
The creature's bellowing and thrashing covered Lem's dash along the dragon's frozen body to hide beneath its broken wing. His next arrow hit the other Enkidu in the neck but its thick fur saved it. Another three skull-headed creatures entered the cavern.
Outnumbered, Lem made a run for the stream and the chasm, reaching it just as its entrance was blocked by a wall of ice. He felt for the snapdragon buds in his pocket, and threw a handful at the wall which shattered.
He leapt through just as a snarling Lord Shamash bounded past him. The blue-eyed wolf attacked the lead Enkidu, giving Lem time to fit another arrow into his bow. This one pierced the Enkidu's eye causing it to stagger backwards into a second Enkidu which tripped up a third.
`Run!' Lord Shamash ordered. `Take any tunnel to the left. The Enkidu will not follow you onto the glacier. Daylight hurts their eyes. Find your friends. And keep them out of the seagull caves; they do not all have dead ends.'
`Thank you,' Lem said, and then sprinted along a narrow tunnel. Somewhere behind him he could hear the Enkidu galloping along the same tunnel. Their hollow booming and angry grunts made his heart beat so fast he thought it would burst from his heaving chest.
Then he saw the ice pyramid which had formed from the tiny specks of ice falling through a crack so high up it looked like a pin prick in the glacier above.
He skidded to a halt and began digging into the side of the pyramid. His hands were soon numb but he kept burrowing. He then rolled into the hole and scraped ice across the opening, leaving enough space to breathe through. He clutched Chad's bow and arrows, and his bag with the precious dragon's scale inside. He hoped the Enkidu wouldn't smell him, or see him through the ice, and wouldn't hear his heartbeat.
Seconds later three male Enkidu lumbered past without giving the snow pyramid a second glance. Lem stayed hidden as long as his freezing body could stand it, then he burrowed out again.
He crept along a tunnel that he was sure was too small for an Enkidu, and suddenly found himself in the column-filled cavern where he had tied the end of the red string. He untied it, and followed it back until he reached the tunnel where he'd lost Chad and Swift.
Expecting to find them waiting for him in the cave, he came full pelt around the bend - and then to a skidding stop. Bent over and sniffing at the nest that Swift had stood in earlier, was a young female Enkidu. She reared up in surprise as Lem dodged beneath her outspread arms and slid out into the afternoon sun.
Fur
ther down the glacier he saw Swift outside a gull's cave.
`Swift, get away from the cave!'
Swift turned to see his brother leaping down the glacier. `Lem, you're back! We're getting more eggs.'
`Is that Lem?' asked Chad, appearing in the cave's entrance, his cape full of eggs and his ears full of indignant gull cries. He hadn't see the two Enkidu creeping out of the darkness behind him.
The Enkidu with the arrow in his eye slapped Chad so hard that he and the eggs flew across the cave and smashed into the far wall. The pain from the blow made him see double. Double monsters coming towards him with double the number of claws outstretched to rake the skin from his face. He slid unconscious onto the cave floor.
Swift barely had time to draw his sword before the second Enkidu lunged at him. Just as its paw swiped so close to his nose that he felt its white fur brush his eyelashes, a beam of bright sunlight lit up its bare skull. It slid to a stop. It blinked its small red eyes and shuffled backwards.
`They hate light,' yelled Lem, reaching Swift as Swift fell back onto the ice. `Be ready to drag Chad out the minute I distract them.'
Yelling as loudly as he could and swinging his sword, he charged the Enkidu that was bending over his cousin. Possibly recognising Lem as the cause of the pain in its eye, the creature stretched to its full height and, with an angry boom, swung at him.
Gambling that Edith's snapdragon buds would protect him, Lem threw the remaining buds at it and the second Enkidu which was shambling up on his left. For a moment it looked as if the buds would not work on the fierce becamed creatures but then, as if mortally wounded, their booming died in their throats and they crashed to the ice.
Lem dragged Chad out onto the glacier, heaved him onto his back then, bent double from the weight, and with Swift carrying all their weapons, the two boys staggered down the glacier. `Did you get the talisman?' panted Swift.
Lem sidestepped an ice hole while readjusting Chad's weight. `Yes. The dragon is Celeste and Chad's father and those creatures are the Enkidu becamed by the High Enchanter, the same as the Goch. They mock and attack the dragon every day and make it bleed.'
Swift was horrified. `Can't he breathe fire on them?'
`He's frozen and hurt.'
Swift was thinking about the dragon being his uncle and not his father, and Lem was thinking about how heavy Chad was, when an ominous rumble rocked the entire glacier from the edge of the sea to the top of Tartik Mountain. Rising and falling like a gigantic ice wave it knocked the boys over. The next rumble was so violent that before they could stand up again, they were sliding down the ice along with an avalanche of boulders dislodged from the mountain's peak.
`What's happening?' yelled Swift, clinging to a spike of ice to stop himself from sliding into an abyss that had appeared in front of him.
Lem dug his heels into the ice beside the spike and hung on to Chad, whose feet were hanging over nothing.
`The High Enchanter knows I have the talisman.'
Lem heard Lord Shamash's howl and passed on the wolf's words to Swift. `To get away, the wolf says we must slide into that hole.'
Swift's eyes widened as he stared into the black hole. `What wolf?'
`There's no time to explain. Just do it. I'll go first.'
Swift watched as Lem, hanging onto Chad, slid towards the abyss and with a yell disappeared over its edge. Swift took a big breath, let go of the ice spike and slid after him.
Somewhere under the glacier the walls of the abyss turned into a steep slope that finally, after what felt like forever, levelled out. They slid down it so fast they couldn't catch their breaths, but eventually came to an abrupt halt with their boots buried deep in an ice-drift. Waiting for them were four blue-eyed wolves.
`Follow us,' said Lord Shamash. `The High Enchanter would rather sink Tartik Island than let you escape.'
`Follow the wolves,' shouted Lem while trying to heave Chad out of the soft ice.
`What wolves?' groaned Chad, coming to and struggling to free himself from Lem's grip.
Lem let him go. `The ones that are saving us. Can you walk?'
Chad staggered to his feet to show that he could, then with Lem holding one arm and Swift the other, they followed the wolves.
The pack led them along one tunnel after another. Each sloped deeper into the ice and became darker as they spiralled down, until the only way the boys could tell which way to go was to follow the wolves' panting.
Suddenly, as if a huge knife had sliced the island in half, the mountain cracked open and in flooded the last of the day's sunlight. When their eyes became accustomed to the light, the boys saw behind them in the tunnel's ice walls, hundreds of frozen, open-mouthed, frightened-eyed men, women and children; all with their hands held up against the ice, either begging for help or trying to push the ice back.
`Are they dead?' gasped Lem.
Lord Shamash shook his white head. `These are the Walls of the Disobedient. They are simply imprisoned for disobeying the High Enchanter.'
`Can we help them?'
`He would destroy you first.'
As if the High Enchanter had heard the wolf's words, the ice beneath them began to ripple and the walls around them to crumble.
`Hurry,' urged Lord Shamash. `He has sent an avalanche. The beach is around that bend.'
`What about you?' cried Lem as they began to run.
The wolf's answer was swallowed up in a wave of powdered ice that lifted the boys and pushed them down the cliff face, across the ice pebble beach and out onto the bobbing floes.
10
The Merpeople
The girls watched with horror as the boys, followed by a large white shape, slid out of control down the glacier and into the abyss.
But they had no time to worry about them. They were too busy trying to control their boat as tons of ice surged into the sea and rocked the floes around them. The boat bucked against its anchor and filled with so much ice that they had to bail or sink.
Celeste was emptying a tin of slush when she caught sight of the boys leaping across the tossing floes. `They're alive, Lyla!'
Suddenly the anchor was ripped from the ice and the boat was thrown into white-crested waves which dragged them away from the floes. Lyla snatched up the boat's buoy and threw it as far as she could.
It fell short of the last floe on which the boys were standing. They were yelling, for the girls to bring the boat back, trying to be heard over the crashing ice.
Lyla hauled the buoy back and, through tears of frustration, tried again and again but she was throwing against the wind.
`Throw it again,' urged Celeste. `It has to reach them. You can do it, Lyla. '
Lyla threw the buoy as hard as she could even though her arm hurt so much she could barely lift it. When she screamed in frustration as it dropped into the water again, Nutty gave an excited bark and dived overboard.
`Oh no. He can't possibly make it, he's too small,' breathed Celeste, as Nutty's small head emerged on top of a white crested wave. `It's too rough. He'll sink.'
`Come on Nutty,' yelled Chad and Swift urging the pup on, while Lem's heart sank each time the little black and tan head went under water.
`He made it!' Lyla grabbed Celeste squeezing her so tightly Celeste had to wriggle free.
With the buoy's rope in his mouth Nutty paddled bravely on towards his friends.
The moment the near-exhausted pup's paws scratched against their floe, Lem snatched him out of the freezing water and hugged him close. Chad and Swift grabbed the buoy's rope and tried pulling the boat towards them but the waves dragged it away, and the rope slid through their cold hands burning their skin.
`We'll have to swim for it,' Lem said.
Swift stared at the churning water and the darkening sky. He did not want to swim for it. He was tired and it was too far, and somewhere out there were fierce sea lions. `What about our weapons?' he asked. `What about the sea lions?'
Lem ignored the sea lion question. `We'll tie the w
eapons to the buoy. I'll hold it while you and Chad pull yourselves along the rope. When you reach the girls, they can pull Nutty, the buoy and me to the boat.'
Swift looked at Chad's bruised face and Chad looked at Swift's frostbitten nose. They nodded at each other and Lem, then grasped the rope and jumped. Fighting the waves and fearful of the sea lions, they pulled themselves along as fast as they could, and kicked and kicked until they reached the boat. Lyla and Celeste dragged them over the side to safety.
Then, with Swift at the tiller and Chad lying on a bench exhausted from the pain of his head and shoulder, Celeste and Lyla hauled Lem and Nutty through the waves.
The cold waves washed over him and dragged at his boots. They tried to pry his fingers free from the rope and dislodge Nutty from the buoy. Lem was still only half-way to safety when he saw a thing so amazing he thought he was imagining it.
It was the snow leopard. The big white cat was struggling through the icy water about an arm's-length away, until a wave pushed it against him and Lem heard its voice in his head, `Help me. I am escaping too.'
`Come with me,' Lem thought back.
Seconds later Lem and Nutty were hauled into the boat. Lem was coughing up seawater unable to speak, when two huge paws grasped into the portside of the boat tipping it dangerously. The girls flung themselves backwards as Nutty started growling.
Lem held him back. `It's okay Nutty, it's a snow leopard. We have to help him. He's escaping too.'
So while Celeste, Swift and Lem leant on the boat's starboard side to stop it from capsizing, Lyla slid an oar under the snow leopard's belly and levered it up so that he could scramble aboard. He clambered over Chad and Swift's legs and into the prow where he lay snarling at Nutty, until Lem threw a sail over it.
Forced on by an easterly wind, the boat fought the waves all night until early the next day when the children were able to turn it in a north-easterly direction.
Lem told the others about Lord Shamash, the Enkidu, the dragon, and the Walls of the Disobedient. Then he gave the red scale talisman to Lyla to put into the casket.
Legend of the Three Moons Page 9