The Serpents of Arakesh

by V M Jones

We all gawked at her, almost as horrorstruck as she was. What had she seen in the casket? My mind raced with possibilities: some kind of monster? Human remains? A curse? A message of doom?

  Richard was grinning, somewhat sheepishly. ‘Hey, Gen, keep it down, will ya?’ he grumbled, in a voice that sounded reassuringly normal. ‘Do you want that grey guy coming back to see what all the racket’s about? What’s the matter? What’s in the box?’

  Gen opened and shut her mouth like a fish, making little pushing motions with her hands. She didn’t take her eyes off the casket. Kenta moved over and put her arm very gently round her, murmuring something in her ear. Jamie edged closer to the smooth stone doorway. I looked at Rich, and Rich looked at me. Together we stepped up to the cabinet, and looked inside.

  We saw a sloping lid over a deep, sturdy wooden box. The lid was made of smooth, clear glass, with a wooden rim about the width of my hand. Under the glass was what looked like a miniature desert landscape: a bed of fine, greyish sand; a couple of pieces of dry driftwood; some grey rocks about the size of my fist, arranged in a kind of pyramid. A little pool of water over in one corner. And a tiny mouse, crouched over by the rocks, keeping as still as a stone, as if it was playing a very serious game of hide and seek. I felt myself start to grin. Surely it hadn’t been the mouse? Typical girl …

  And then I saw them.

  They were so well camouflaged they were almost invisible. One was stretched in front of the driftwood at the front of the cabinet. And I could see only the head of the other one, just visible on the far side of the rocks.

  Serpents.

  My heart gave a great, painful lurch in my chest, as if it had stopped beating and then kick-started itself again. I swallowed, and took a deep breath. I glanced over at Rich. He licked his lips, and gave me a pale, unconvincing grin.

  Over by the entrance, Jamie quavered, ‘What is it?’

  Richard and I both jumped. ‘Snakes,’ I said, but my voice came out in a funny kind of croak. I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘Serpents. Two of them. The Guardians of the Potion, I guess.’

  We all stood round the casket, peering in. Well, not all of us. Gen was still huddled against the wall, and didn’t look like coming any closer.

  ‘Leave her be,’ Kenta whispered. ‘Remember what she said at the very beginning, about worms? Well, this is a thousand times worse. For her, this is unspeakable.’

  Jamie and Kenta were up on their toes, their breath making misty crescents on the glass. The snakes — going by the one we could see clearly — were about the length of a ruler, and thicker than my finger. Their skins were a uniform silvery-grey, with a shovel-shaped head at one end and a thin, pointed tail at the other. Both were utterly motionless, watching us intently with their unblinking black eyes.

  I’d never seen a snake in real life. I wondered if they were poisonous. Not much point in being Guardians of the Potion if they weren’t, I guessed.

  Then Jamie spoke up. ‘Where’s the potion they’re guarding? All I can see in here is that little pool, and I have a feeling that’s just their drinking water.’

  It was true. There was nothing in the cabinet except for the serpents, the mouse, the rocks, the driftwood, the sand and the pool of what I had to agree was almost certainly water. So where was the potion?

  On the shelf above the cabinet? All I could see were three wooden racks of phials, ten in each, each phial the size of my little finger, with a cork stopper in the top. All empty. And the glass beaker. It had a transparent membrane, like plastic, stretched tightly over the top, tied on with silver thread. I could see a pouring lip through the cover. But it was empty.

  Then I noticed one of the forked staffs leaning up against the wall, and for a moment my heart leapt. But what good was a magical staff if we didn’t know how to use it?

  Desperately, I scanned the room. A narrow staircase led upwards over in the far corner, but the Curator hadn’t been anywhere near it. He had stood here, right where we were standing. He had opened the casket, brandished the staff, measured and poured, measured and poured. And he had taken something out of the casket. But what? And where was it now?

  ‘Maybe he took all the potion,’ said Richard bleakly. ‘Maybe it was in here, the serpents were guarding it and now there’s none left. Or maybe there’s more up those stairs.’

  Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm, cold as ice. It was Gen, her hair wild, her eyes red from crying and her skin as pale as snow.

  ‘You’re all so dumb! The serpents aren’t guarding the potion.’ She slid a glance at the cabinet, flinched, and looked away. ‘The serpents are the potion.’

  We stared at her blankly.

  ‘That’s what he was doing,’ she said tonelessly. ‘The Curator. He was milking the serpents. The venom of the serpents — that’s the Potion of Healing. And that’s what we’re going to have to do, too, if we want to save Hannah.’

  It all fell into place: the beaker; the membrane tightly stretched over the top; the forked staffs. Even the measured gestures of the Curator suddenly made sense. He had simply been moving with extreme caution.

  ‘I’ve seen people milking snakes on TV,’ Jamie was saying. ‘There’s nothing to it, really. The big thing is to grab the snake right behind the head, so it can’t twist round and bite you. The forked stick’s for pinning its head to the ground.’

  He sounded perky and full of confidence, but I noticed he’d moved a pace back from the cabinet. Kenta and Gen were holding hands. Rich was standing, arms folded, looking dubious.

  I looked down at the serpents again. They were the only things in the room that didn’t seem to have a problem meeting my eyes. I sighed, and picked up the staff.

  ‘Open the lid for me, Rich,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  With the lid open, I moved round to the side of the cabinet, planning my strategy. One of the serpents had just been milked, and would be dry. Jamie wasn’t the only one who watched nature programmes. But which one? What would I do if I was a snake and I’d just been manhandled? I’d go off and hide behind a rock. So my money was on the serpent stretched out by the driftwood.

  Snakes are just reptiles, after all, I told myself. And these are Serpents of Healing — the good guys. Give me the choice between meeting one of these or one of the Faceless on a dark night, and I know which I’d go for.

  I felt my thoughts reaching out to the serpent, soothing him, calming him with my mind, the way I always talked to animals in my head. Hey there, guy. Let’s make this easy on both of us, huh?

  Very slowly and carefully, the way the Curator had done, I raised the stick above the open cabinet, positioning the forked end above the snake. His tongue flickered. I took a deep, slow breath. As quickly and gently as I could, I plunged the end of the staff into the sand, pinning his head in the fork.

  Instantly his body writhed, and his tail lashed. Instinctively, I reached down with my other hand and grabbed his body in my fist, just above the tail.

  ‘Rich,’ I breathed, ‘hold the stick for me — I need another hand.’

  I felt Rich’s hand above mine on the staff, steady as a rock. I let go, and reached my free hand into the casket. I slid my curled index finger under the snake’s neck, just below his head, and put my thumb firmly on top. I nodded to Richard, and slowly, carefully, he moved the stick away.

  I lifted the serpent out of the casket, strung like muscular rope between my hands. I could feel him flexing, testing my grip. But I had him. He felt cool and dry and I thought I could feel his pulse beating against my finger. Rich had the beaker ready and held it out, resting it against the edge of the cabinet.

  I held the snake’s head just above the thin membrane. This was it. I loosened my grip fractionally, and instantly, like lightning, the snake struck. His mouth made a solid thunk as his blunt snout hit the tight drum of skin, and there was a thin, squirting sound of liquid hitting glass under pressure. He was clamped onto the top of the beaker; I could see his fangs, curved and deadly, through the glass. An
d out of them, like liquid squirting from a syringe, spurted twin needles of milky venom.

  I held him there until he was spent. Then, as gently as I could, I prised his mouth free and lowered him carefully into the casket, where he slithered away behind the rock.

  Richard closed the lid and held up the beaker. The venom lay in a shallow pool at the bottom, gleaming with a silvery phosphorescence, like mother-of-pearl. It was infinitely wonderful.

  ‘Are you OK, Adam?’ Kenta’s voice sounded dim and far away.

  My hands, so steady moments before, were shaking uncontrollably. There was a strange lump in my throat. I nodded, and tried to smile at her. I wasn’t seeing Kenta, though … I wasn’t even seeing the potion. All I could see, as clearly as if she was standing in front of me, was Hannah, in her fairy headgear, smiling at me with sparkling eyes.

  Kenta poured every drop of the potion into one of the delicate crystal phials. It only just fitted. Without thinking, I pulled my shawl out of my pack and handed it to her. ‘I reckon we should wrap it — to protect it. So it doesn’t get broken.’

  Jamie’s eyes darted from me to the shawl, and back again. Slowly, he started to smile. ‘What’s that, Adam? Funny thing for a guy to have in his backpack …’

  I felt my face flame. ‘It’s nothing … it’s something … I just …’

  ‘Drop it, Jamie,’ said Rich flatly. ‘That’s cool, Adam — let’s wrap it. Good thinking.’

  Kenta flashed me a smile. ‘Thanks.’

  She stashed the precious phial safely away in her backpack, with my shawl wrapped snugly round it for protection.

  Richard rubbed his hands together, with a broad smile. ‘Now what?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Home?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Kenta hesitantly. ‘Except … how are we planning to get back through that wall?’

  Whispering leaves

  We prodded and poked and tapped and pressed and heaved and shoved, but it was no use. The stone wall was immovable, and deep down I knew the only thing with any hope of opening it was the Curator’s magic pass. And he’d taken that with him.

  ‘How about we hide under the waterfall again, and wait till he comes back?’ Jamie suggested. ‘Then we can sneak out the same way we came in.’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Rich dubiously. ‘He had ten phials of potion with him, and at the rate he was handing them out, that could last the rest of the morning, easy. And we know the temple closes at noon. I don’t fancy being locked in all night.’

  There was a gloomy silence, before Gen finally spoke up. ‘There’s light coming down that staircase. I don’t suppose that could be a way out?’

  ‘It can’t do any harm to look,’ said Rich. ‘If it turns out to be a dead end, we can always come back.’

  Gen led the way up the stairway, with Jamie close behind. The stairs rose steeply upwards to a small landing, then doubled back on themselves in another short flight. Once we were past the landing we could see a bright rectangle of what looked like daylight at the top of the stairwell. Gen ran the last few steps, and gave a cry of delight. ‘Come on up, everyone! It’s the gardens — the second storey of the temple!

  The whole second floor of the temple was a lush, tropical jungle. A rambling pathway of pink and white paving stones wound its way through the luxuriant planting, with small fountains here and there, and an ornamental stream, which I suspected ran down through the floor to form the waterfall below.

  A wall just over waist high ran right round the perimeter, with creepers and ivy cascading over it. Pillars rose at regular intervals from the balustrade to support the solid weight of the rest of the building, looming overhead. One thick pillar, far more substantial than all the rest, rose up in the very centre. I remembered noticing a similar one on the floor below. I reckoned it must have some kind of structural, load-bearing purpose, probably running right through the centre of the entire building like a spindle, top to bottom.

  Nets as fine as gossamer were strung from the ceiling, and birds of every imaginable size, colour and shape flitted, fluttered, perched and swooped. ‘It’s like being inside a gigantic aviary!’ breathed Kenta.

  It felt so good to be out of that claustrophobic room with the serpents that we almost forgot why we were there. The girls scampered round, exclaiming over the different birds, and admiring the flowers. Jamie flopped down on a bench and opened a packet of peanuts. Richard wandered off along the path with the studious air of a visitor to a horticultural centre, but his gaze strayed to the perimeter wall more often than it did to the birds. I suspected that, like mine, his thoughts were still bent on finding a way down. As for me, I made my way quietly back to the stairway. I thought I’d noticed a small antechamber at the top, and wanted to check it out.

  There was a small, open cubicle at the top of the stairs, with a shelf identical to the one in the room below, even down to the staff leaning against it. In addition to the racks of phials and the beaker, it had a couple of woven igloo-shaped baskets stacked at one end, and a coil of twine.

  As I’d suspected, another staircase led upwards, identical to the one on the floor below. But where the entrance to the downward stairway had been only minutes before, there was now a solid wall.

  ‘At least we don’t have too many decisions to make,’ said Richard cheerily. At least, I assumed his tone was meant to be cheery: it was pretty hard to tell through a large mouthful of potato crisps. ‘The only way out seems to be up.’

  ‘I have a feeling we’ve been set on a track, like an electric train,’ said Jamie. ‘We have to follow a predestined course or something. I have this feeling of … inevitability.’ He was lying on his back with his arm over his eyes, so it was difficult to see his expression. His words were brave, though, and I could tell he was doing his best to disguise the slight tremor in his voice.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the parchment again, Kenta,’ I suggested.

  Kenta hauled it out and unrolled it. Instantly, she gave a little squeak. ‘The magic — it’s happened again! The first clue has disappeared, and now it says …’

  Looking over her shoulder, I could understand why she’d been hesitant about reading out what it said. Frowning, I stumbled through it in my mind:

  ‘Oh, yeah, right: I get it,’ said Rich sarcastically. I glanced over at him. I had a hunch that, like me, he didn’t feel confident with this kind of thing.

  Someone — Jamie, I think — heaved a gusty sigh.

  But Gen spoke up, sounding excited. ‘Hey, guys, I’ve had a thought. Forget this trbirdap stuff for a sec. Look at the poem again: the way it’s written. Remember what Kai said about things being a certain way for a reason? Well, see how the poem goes in circles, each one smaller than the one before? Does it remind you of anything?’

  ‘A doughnut?’ asked Jamie hopefully.

  Gen was grinning, like someone with a secret. ‘You’re on the right track. Go on!’

  ‘A maze?’ suggested Kenta.

  Gen shook her head.

  I put my chin in my hands and stared glumly at the poem. It reminded me of something, all right: every single lesson we’d ever had at school; every single time I’d battled to come up with an answer and drawn an utter blank. To me, the lines of the poem didn’t even look like words. As far as I was concerned they might as well be stone walls, for all the sense they made …

  Suddenly I saw what Gen was driving at. I felt my face split into a grin, and she beamed back at me.

  ‘Oh, come on, you two, stop smirking at each other and share the secret,’ grumbled Richard.

  ‘The lines of the poem are in circles, like the temple walls,’ explained Gen. ‘The first line tells about the first floor of the temple, with the pillars like trees of stone, where the Serpents of Healing were. And just like the second floor of the temple is smaller than the first, the second line of the poem is smaller, too. And it says …’

  ‘Guardian of Inner Voices has whispering leaves as home,’ finished Kenta thoughtfully. ‘Each line of the poem tells
us which potion we should expect to find on each level of the temple. And that means all five potions are right here! We can get all five, and take them back to Q!’

  ‘And I’m prepared to bet a new clue will appear on every level,’ I finished up triumphantly, ‘telling us what we have to do to get hold of each potion!’

  ‘Yeah,’ grumbled Rich, ‘and all we’ve got to do is figure out the clue each time! What could be simpler?’

  I gave him a sideways glance. ‘Hey, c’mon, we cracked it last time, no problem. Why should the others be any different?’

  We crowded round the parchment and gazed at the clue, as if its jumbled letters might suddenly rearrange themselves and reveal their meaning.

  ‘Maybe it works the same way as the last one,’ said Gen eventually. ‘Maybe this one is: bird in trap.’

  ‘And then an arrow,’ mused Kenta. ‘meaning, go to or head towards?’

  ‘Hang on a minute: that sign has a mathematical meaning,’ said Jamie. ‘It means greater than. Say you had the number five, and then that sign, and then the number three. Five is greater than three.’

  ‘So what have we got so far?’ Gen was frowning fiercely. ‘Bird in trap is greater than …’

  ‘3 in tree,’ said Rich unexpectedly, and blushed.

  Gen beamed at him. ‘Go, Rich! Bird in trap is greater than 3 in tree.’

  ‘That reminds me of something,’ said Jamie. He scrunched up his eyes, and we watched him expectantly. At last he opened his eyes again, and shook his head. ‘It’s a saying — like on the tip of my tongue. Only this one’s to do with birds …’

  ‘A bird in the hand …’ said Kenta slowly.

  ‘Is worth two in the bush!’ yelled Jamie triumphantly. ‘That’s it!’

  ‘But it isn’t,’ objected Rich. ‘The clue doesn’t say that.’

  ‘Yeah, but this is Karazan. Think of Kai, and all his weird sayings. I’ll bet you my sword arm —’ Jamie gave Rich a meaning glance — ‘that if Kai was here, he’d be going A bird in the trap is worth three in the tree, or something like that.’