by S. K. Holder
A mixture of fear and excitement welled up inside him, causing him to break his stride. He stumbled into some undergrowth and grunted loudly in pain. This was not the time to lose his concentration or his bearings. Not that he had any bearings. Luke could be anywhere.
He shot through the shadows. The night breeze brushed against his face. His keen eyes did not fail him.
He took a short-cut down by the cobbler’s yard, hurrying past the honeysuckle-coloured and cream painted shops. He raced to the brick houses, circling Whitley Park. The flock of geese gliding across the large pond hissed and flailed their wings.
He knocked on arched doors and frosted glass windows, calling his brother’s name. Curtains twitched and doors creaked open. Those who answered claimed they had not heard of him, those who didn’t, put out their lights or shouted into the night, ‘Stop that bloomin’ racket!’
He flew on, taking plunging strides across paving stones. A child running unaware and he did not care if he anyone saw him. But no one saw him. He ran at lightning speed back to the village proper, down the Gallion Road, where the market traders came once a month to sell their wares. The bare, rickety stalls were ripe with the smell of sour fruit and rotting vegetables.
The sight of a stray guard, ambling along the road towards him, stopped Connor in his tracks. The guard wore a crimson leather tunic under his breastplate. He also wore metal-capped boots and the sloppy grin of a man who had downed too much cider. An empty sheath hung from his braided belt. The drunk guard wheeled his sword in his hand. He sliced the air, chortling gaily.
Connor felt the ghostly stab of the sword in his chest. He rushed into the nearest alley. His head was pounding. If Luke were in Undren, where would he go?
‘Hurry,’ said the Authoritative Voice, ‘time is of the essence.’
His empty stomach gave a noisy grumble. When wasn’t time of the essence?
Once the guard had passed, he came out of the alley and walked swiftly along the streets, keeping close to the shop and house doorways. He checked over his shoulder every now and again to make sure he was not being followed. He felt considerably cooler after all that running, and the chilly night air was beginning to bite him. A thin mist clung to the air and two slivers of moon lay in wait behind the trailing clouds.
Connor walked until he came to a row of fields. The fields were unkempt and swollen with weeds. He took up a long twig and used it to thrash his way through the host of thorny plants that overran the dense field where an old mill stood dismal in the distance, its one dilapidated sail churning sorrowfully in the night breeze. He had seen the Old Getty mill in the game. The mill’s hexagonal tower was built on a base of brick and craybine. He had no idea what lay inside it. It might be full of critters and booby-traps. Then again, it could contain a secret portal. All he had to do was throw a stone through one of the broken windows. That would give him a good indication as to whether or not it was safe.
The tangle of weeds and nettles determined his pace. He could not run. His first twig snapped in half. He had held it too tight. He had to stop and forage around for another. He found one, not much thicker than the last, gathered three more and bound them together with crisp blades of grass.
When he drew close to the mill, he crouched low in the grass. He swallowed the lump of fear lodged in his throat and stared into the undergrowth. Listening. Watching. He felt a tugging in his forehead and rubbed it fiercely with the heel of his hand. He thought he glimpsed a dim light in one of the windows, but it was only the light of the moons.
He charged toward the mill. When he reached it, he snapped his twigs in half and pushed them through a jagged hole in one of the blackened windowpanes. Once he was satisfied, there was nothing sinister inside, he pushed the mill doors open.
A draught swept in from the roof. The mice and Ticket shrews that had made their home in the nooks and crannies began to stir. Outside an owl hooted.
A broken narrow stairwell led all the way up to the top of the tower where a rusty brake wheel was a few windstorms off from becoming detached from its wooden shaft. An old sack-hoist rope hung down through an open trap. An assortment of cogs, hubs, timber and corn sacks, littered the floor.
Someone had been here. They had left a single oil lamp burning on the floor. Connor squatted near the lamp and warmed his hands on what little heat it generated. The timber walls creaked and sighed around him.
If he couldn’t find Luke in Undren, then he would go to the next village and look for him there. He would search for him in the Bleak desert if he had to.
‘Folly,’ said the Authoritative Voice. ‘Stay here for a while, where it’s safe and warm.’
The Authoritative Voice was talking nonsense. The Old Getty was neither safe nor warm.
Connor threw down his bag and yawned. He was going to fall asleep if he wasn’t careful. He stood up, grabbing hold of a frayed rope dangling above his head. He thought about the world he had left behind and the life that went with it. He had a simple life in a modest home and his mum and brother took good care of him. Now he had messed it all up.
He gave the rope a tug. It spiralled to the ground. He leapt out of its way. In amongst the coiled bundle of rope was a furry flat creature with wings. The creature slowly started to turn around, its eyes half-closed. It looked like the same creature he had glimpsed in the fortress. Connor didn’t like the looks of it. It was bigger than a rat, bigger than a bat. It had a grey ugly mouth and spooky grey eyes. The creature scurried over to a broken stone slab and disappeared beneath it. Connor followed it. He wondered what other creatures were lurking in the floors and walls. He noticed a piece of splintered wood sticking out from under the stone slab where the ugly creature lay hidden. He kicked it with his foot. The stone slab broke in two and a stream of light rose from between the two halves. Connor knelt down and dragged the stone slabs to one side. He had uncovered a trap door complete with a rusty bolt, which crumbled at his touch.
He lifted the trap door. It grated on worn hinges. He wiped his brow and peered in. He thought he could smell the ocean. There were steps, steep ones. He saw no rails to cling to, no walls to break his fall. It had to be a portal leading to another city or village. He had uncovered a few portals when he had played the game. Sometimes they were disguised as ordinary doors, but when you went through them, you were instantly catapulted into new territory.
A scratching noise rose from outside. Light pierced the cracks in the mill doors. Someone was coming!
Connor scrambled madly to put out the oil lamp. He retrieved his bag and swung it over his shoulder. A faint trace of tar and salt-water wafted to the surface. He swallowed, fighting to keep a clear head. He had found a way out just in time.
He lowered himself through the trap door, settling on the third step. He closed the trap door over his head. As he did so, he heard the clamour of guards smashing their way through the doors.
He was on his fourth step when he slipped and fell. He tasted soil and copper on his tongue. He felt as if someone was pelting his skull with rocks.
‘No one can teleport between worlds, not even the Gifted Ones,’ he heard Amelia say.
Little dots of green and yellow light flitted before Connor’s eyes. Saliva oozed from the corner of his mouth. He could do nothing to stop it. He cried out under his breath and sunk into the darkness.
THIR TY-THREE
The noise sounded like a hundred steel blades being dragged across stone. If he could just get up, out of the way...
The door to the Crocksford Arms had slammed shut the instant Skelos had entered. The entrance had evaporated. He should have known from the bars at the windows and the blob of red paint smeared on the door that the place was out of bounds. Full of danger. What appeared to be a tavern on the outside was, in fact, a muddy brown cave lit with a wall of luminous rock. Its floor was coated with sand.
He had run around for ten minutes clawing at the rock face, frantically looking for a place to hide. There was none.
; The boy had tricked him. There was no time for curses or plans of vengeance. Citizens couldn’t fly, but they could jump up to thirty feet in the air. Two elegant strides in one attempt should have been enough to cement him securely to the upper surface of any structure.
He stuffed as much of his belongings as he could into a leather pouch, which he tied around his waist. The roof of the cave rose some twenty feet above him. No specialist equipment was needed to assist his jumping, from the wall to the cave roof, unsupported within a matter of seconds. So why wasn’t it happening?
Skelos’s first defiant leap was pathetically low and lacking in co-ordination. With each attempt, and there were many, he found himself dropping from the cave roof, spinning like a dead fly. He had already set down the Avu’lore globe, not only for safe keeping; its weight was sure to drag him down.
But what about your own weight?
He descended from his sixteenth attempt, panting loudly. He had hoped he’d feel something more than a sense of dizziness and dread. His weight was not the problem, he swiftly concluded. There were probably some enchantments cast about the place, draining him of his strength.
A deafening screech rattled through the cave sending him into a fresh state of panic. His eyes skittered from one wall to the next. He wiped the sand-streaked perspiration from his face, rose twelve foot in the air and came crashing down, breaking his fall with his hands.
He was concentrating too hard that was the problem. He cracked his knuckles, counted to three, drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. He then leapt forward with all the brute force he could muster, tucked his legs into his chest and somersaulted, extending his body as he drew close to the roof. He spun around rather gracefully in mid-air, given his bulk, his robes swirling. He crossed his arms over his chest and flung them out at the crucial moment. He landed with his back pressed to the ceiling and his heaving chest pointing to the ground.
The Bolt-Shot whip crashed to the ground, its gems glittering in the sand. The sand rippled like silk caught in the wind and a writhing mass of heads, bodies, tails and limbs materialised from it.
Skelos squeezed his eyes shut.
The writhing mass scattered and decelerated.
Hundreds of creatures the size of otters, sniffed at the ground, seeming to whisper to each other in low watery breaths, ‘I smell Citizen.’ The hair on their bodies rippled with the colours of the rainbow. Lean and long, their low bellies swept over the cave floor. They had three short legs attached to either side of their body and moved along on high-arched claws. Each had six silver tails, which thrashed and hissed wildly with every scurrying movement they made.
Skelos opened one eye and then the other. He would have to jump. Fight his way out. But what was he going to fight with? His wits?
Several of the creatures gathered at the foot of the illuminated wall. Rising on their hind legs, they used their claws to dig out sizeable chunks of the stone, which they took between their teeth. He saw one had clambered onto a narrow ledge close by. It stared up at him with its six violet eyes. It bared its razor sharp teeth. A quiver coursed through the creature’s tail, sending out an ear-splitting hiss that bounced off the cave walls. The other Silver Tails inclined their heads, cast their eyes to the roof and then without warning, leapt against the wall in a maddened frenzy, coming together as they rose.
Skelos was appalled to discover the creatures almost matched him in speed. He soared onto the ledge, kicking at them. They tumbled down, biting at the air with teeth like iron. They hooked their claws into the ones below them to break their fall. Streams of violet blood ran from their shimmering coats.
The Six Tails turned on one another, biting and clawing, hissing and thrashing. The sight of disarray caught Skelos off guard. In a shot, one leapt onto his shoulder, dug its claws into his neck and pierced his skin with its teeth. He reeled in horror as it proceeded to launch itself at his head while another clambered onto his back. He screamed, struggling maniacally to tear them off. Their claws ripped into his hands. There was nothing else for it. Skelos shielded his eyes and jumped.
The Silver Tails rushed down after him. He smashed the tails and claws that came hurtling towards him, sunk his boots into their bellies at every obtainable chance he could get. He vaulted through the air, spinning and twisting like an acrobat while more of the creatures emerged.
He saw the Bolt-Shot whip jutting up from the sand. He tried to call it with the power of his mind. To his infuriation, nothing happened. He hastened towards the whip. He almost had it within his grasp, when a pack of Silver Tails went trampling over it. Skelos leaped in among the pack, booting them out of the way, determined to retrieve the only credible weapon he had. He swung his fist into the head of one the creatures, sending it howling into the cave wall.
He wrenched the weapon from one of the creature’s jaws. He attempted to activate it with his voice. ‘Expand!’ he cried. ‘Open!’
The Bolt-Shot whip did neither. Was it that he had spent too long in Narrigh? Or is this the Maker’s Will?
The Silver Tails were getting ready to pounce again. Skelos resorted to the device hidden partway up his arm: the Compulog. He put the device to his lips. ‘Holographic image.’ The Compulog screen lit up. At last. For a moment there, I thought I had lost my touch.
‘Which image are you requesting?’ said a male voice.
‘I don’t know - anything!’ A large enough image was sure to cause a distraction. The creatures were stupid enough to take the bait.
An image of a boy appeared on the screen. ‘Grow!’ he shouted into the device. ‘Expand!’ A miniature hologram of the boy materialised from the Compulog memory bank, a pathetic transparent hologram, the size of his little finger. ‘What good is that?’
Two of the Silver Tails were trying to bite off the tips of his boots. Another had sunk its teeth into his legs. If he wasn’t careful, the Silver Tails would have bitten and scratched him to pieces before he could expand the image to arm’s length.
‘Expand!’ he said again. The holographic boy doubled in height. ‘Request, fill vertical space. Request solid!’
He battled his way to a mantel of rock, launched himself from it and shot back up to the roof. ‘Request, fill vertical space. REQUEST SOLID! REQUEST SOLID!’
The Compulog grew hot. Skelos wrenched the device from his arm and sent it spinning through the air before it burned off his limb. A non-transparent image of a Citizen filled the cave. Skelos knew the Citizen by name: Vastra. He was dressed in a long-sleeved silver tunic. Plates of armour were trussed to his legs and upper body. With his arms folded and his gaze steady, he looked striking and menacing even in the tiniest of images.
The image held fast for ten seconds. It was enough. The Silver Tails shrieked in distress at the sight of the ‘giant man’. They dashed for the safety of their rotting limestone tunnel, their hissing tails flailing madly behind them. Skelos watched them stream over the bodies of the dead and dying, trailing blood that was more vibrant in colour than his own. He jumped down and retrieved the Compulog and the Avu’lore globe from behind the rock where he had hidden it.
The cave darkened quite suddenly, and Skelos looked up to see that the luminous rock had disappeared and in its place was a fresh tunnel. The mouth of the tunnel opened like the jaws of some great beast: jagged and deadly. He had opened a portal. Was it too soon to jump for joy?
‘And where do you lead, I wonder?’
He shuffled to the tunnel entrance, his boots crunching on the sand. He went a little way in, rested his foot on a pinnacle of rock and sniffed the air. He smelt sand, salt-water and something rotten. With his keen vision, he made out some malformed shapes further along the tunnel. The Compulog gave Skelos a yellow flashlight, which he shone directly onto the limestone-coated walls of the tunnel. The light then proceeded to bounce to the roof, where water and minerals had crystallised to form stalagmite drapes that compressed the tunnel’s height by some fifteen feet. From there, the light travelled like a fast train acr
oss a ground littered with decaying carcasses embedded in a thick muddy residue. Stalagmites sprung from rock beds like church spires, obscuring the tunnel’s length and trimming its width.
A hissing noise drifted eerily through the cave.
Without a second thought, Skelos bolted through the tunnel.
THIRTY-FOUR
Connor opened his eyes to a white mist. As his sight began to clear, he found himself gazing at a white ceiling. An orb of light shone down from it. It was a very faint light. The surrounding walls were dark and streaked with shade.
He lay in a large canopied bed covered with a flannel sheet. A heavy tapestry bedspread had been cast over him like a net. He had been stripped down to his underwear. His hair and his skin smelt of mint and honey.
He twisted his head and saw a man sitting on a chair not two paces away from him. He had a short-cropped beard and a head of rippling black and silvery-blue streaked hair. His prominent sideburns were silver.
Connor drew himself up on his elbows with effort, fighting against the weight of the bedspread and the groggy feeling in his head. He heard vague noises coming from outside his room, unidentifiable noises. Where was he? Not in his bedroom, he was certain of that.
He sat upright and stared around the room. It had a great bell-shaped window. Someone had shut the blue drapes, so he couldn’t tell if it was night or day.
A crystal jug, filled to the brim with water, sat on the bedside table. A solid white wardrobe stood at the opposite end of the bed. Next to the wardrobe was an elongated piece of cushioned furniture he could not name. It was too small to be a bed and too comfortable looking to be a chair.
His gaze shifted back to the man who sat stiffly with one gloved hand perched on a glossy cane. He wore woollen trousers and a shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His eyes were different shades of blue: one a pale crystal blue, the other a dark Sapphire-blue. The man fixed him with his pale blue eye. The pupil expanded and contracted quite independently of the sapphire-blue eye, which appeared to be looking across the room.