The Rules. Book 1; The End

by Jon Jacks

  ‘A door up there?’ Gerry stared up at the ceiling despairingly. ‘You’re not expecting me to get up there, I hope!’

  Beth ignored her.

  Following Galilee’s instructions, she was rolling her hand around inside the stone, expecting at any minute to feel something solid she could pull on.

  Instead, the more she moved her hand around, the more insubstantial the stone became.

  Even the parts of the ceiling that had been solid only seconds ago now allowed her hand to pass through them as if they had all been vaporised.

  ‘This is really odd,’ she snapped in frustration.

  ‘No, it’s working!’

  Gerry, having partially turned around, was pointing back the way they had come.

  ‘The wall blocking the corridor has gone!’

  As Gerry happily started making her way back towards the opening, Beth prepared to jump down off Galilee’s back – but she stopped, abruptly feeling weirdly, dangerously unbalanced.

  All her weight seemed to have shifted into her shoulders, her head.

  Her hair wafted upwards, streaming annoyingly across her face as if caught in a fierce updraft.

  ‘Wait, I feel a bit strange.’

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Galilee, shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

  ‘The hole in the ceiling’s growing!’

  Just above Beth’s head, more and more of the ceiling was vanishing, like sand sinking into an endless hole.

  And suddenly, she and Galilee were falling into it.

  Falling upwards into the hole in the ceiling.

   

   

  *

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Chapter 70

   

  Beth and Galilee might have been travelling upwards, yet as they violently tumbled and rolled, it felt no different from plummeting from a great height.

  It was terrifying. They screamed and yelled.

  Sand fell around them in seemingly endless streams, as if they were tumbling down through a giant egg timer.

  There was nothing to stop their uncontrollable fall.

   

   

  *

   

   

  An abrupt change to intense brightness temporally blinded them.

  When their eyes adjusted, they saw they really were falling now, falling through a beautiful blue sky as if they had just been dropped from an aeroplane.

  The sand that had been falling with them drifted away, scattering on a brisk wind.

  They plunged through gloriously white clouds, gathering speed.

  The wind buffeted them viciously. It whipped them so hard as they cleared the clouds that their skin stretched and rippled painfully.

  Below them, an ocean stretched out in every direction.

  ‘We’ve got to slow ourselves down!’ Galilee tried to yell.

  Beth couldn’t hear him, but she could guess what he was trying to say.

  He had already stretched out his arms, pulling the wind into stronger yet more controllable gusts.

  With deft, careful manipulation, he set the gusts whirling, creating a supporting bed of spiralling air just beneath their tumbling bodies.

  It couldn’t stop them falling, but it would at least delay the moment when they would strike the ocean.

  Recognising the problem, Beth began to draw up a curling waterspout from the sea below.

  Willing it to grow, grow, grow, she twisted it into the coils of a vast corkscrew rushing up to greet them.

  ‘Look!’

  Galilee pointed down towards what could have been brightly coloured streamers and balloons, billowing out across the water.

  It was an effect similar to the way inks spread and entwine in lazy curls when dropped into a jar of water.

  Here, though, the curling strands expanded, creating vast, multi-tinted bubbles drifting high into the air. They pulled everything else along with them until they popped, whereupon they were replaced by a fresh collection of translucent spheres.

  ‘A boat!’ Galilee cried. ‘It’s a bo–’

  His voice was drowned out as the roaring, whirling funnel of water swallowed them.

  Skilfully angling the spout’s wide opening, Beth had drawn it towards them until they slithered down its insides, like slipping down a gigantic waterslide.

  They hurtled down its coiling bends in a terrifying rush.

  Water splattered and sloshed around them, washing over them, drenching them.

  They gasped for air whenever they could, shut their mouths whenever the waves swelled over them once more.

  But Beth retained enough sense to know she had to slow their descent by making the final spirals shallower and shallower.

  By the time they hit the ocean, it was with little more than a mild plop, as if they had jumped in from the side of a swimming pool.

  Yet the intense cold of the water was still a shock.

  The waterspout vanished, its intense roaring abruptly replaced by the rhythmic surging of waves.

  These waves were surprisingly massive, their steady rolling briefly lifting up Galilee and Beth high enough for them to get a glimpse of just how endless the ocean was. In the next second, they would be dropped down into deep gullies that completely blocked off their view.

  ‘The boat!’ Galilee spluttered between taking in mouthfuls of water. ‘We need the boat!’

  He called up the wind again.

  He directed his gusts into a gentle swirl that curled about them, pushing down so hard on the waters that it forced the small section of ocean beneath them into a concave depression. Galilee and Beth hovered on this cushion of air, rising above the waves.

  ‘There! The boat’s there!’ cried Beth, pointing off towards the whirling, vibrantly-hued patterns drifting across the surface of the water.

  From this lower angle, the flowing strands were more obviously part of a boat.

  It could have been an ancient Greek trireme, only one without oars or sails. In place of these it appeared to be being dragged along by the floating spheres and their connecting, fluctuating strands.

  Emanating from the centre of the deck where the mast would normally be, the gaily-coloured strands stretched out before the boat like gigantic strings of a ghostly bubble seaweed.

  The waves rippled beneath them, Galilee utilising his control of the air currents to send them floating across the surface towards the boat.

  With a calculated mix of Galilee’s power over the wind and Beth’s manipulation of the waves, they momentarily rose higher until they were safely swept up onto the ship’s deck.

  ‘I can’t see anyone on board,’ Galilee said, taking a quick glance around.

  ‘They could be below.’

  Beth looked for any hatches or doors that could take them to a lower deck.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be any way down. Unless we’re talking magical doors once again.’

  Galilee strode across the deck, checking for anything that seemed unusual, any noises that would hint at any life on board.

  ‘What’s powering this thing?’

  Beth stared out at the gloriously billowing colours extending out before them.

  Now she was closer to where the swirling streams had seemed to spring from out of the deck itself, she realised its base was actually more like a tree trunk. At this point the fluid streams were stolid, still and lifeless. It was only where the trunk first sharply bent then branched off that it gradually transformed into the ever-changing patterns.

  ‘Hmn, it’s probably a means of catching some form of energy.’

  Galilee turned to look behind them, as if looking for the wind filling out a sail.

  ‘It would be feasible for, say, a space ship to have what’s called a sun sail, picking up the energy given off by the sun.’

  ‘Isn’t that the sun?’
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  Towards the front of the ship, a small yet brightly glowing orb hung high in the sky. Spinning on his heels, Galilee stared at it as intently as he dared.

  ‘It’s too small to be the sun. It’s not yellow either. It’s odd; more like a large star. Or even some sort of immense precious stone.’

  ‘Do you think Gerry will be all right? I know the corridor wasn’t blocked any longer. But there wasn’t any way out from where we started, was there?’

  ‘I think she’ll be okay. I think all this has been prepared for you.’

  ‘Me? You mean us?’

  ‘Uh uh.’ Galilee shook his head. ‘I mean you. I’m just a bonus. Remember what he said? “You finally brought her to me.” No one knew I was there.’

  ‘Perhaps he meant Gerry. That I’d brought Ger–’

  Even as she was about to say it, she realised how ridiculous this sounded.

  She hadn’t brought Gerry to Horus! Why would she?

  Besides, she hadn’t even known he was there!

  She hadn’t known that Horus was Gerry’s shadow.

  And as Horus was Gerry’s shadow, he hardly needed Gerry bringing to him, did he?

  Naturally, though, he would have found it quite easy to have some sort of influence over Gerry. He could have used an unknowing Gerry to lead Beth into the trap.

  So, as ridiculous as it all sounded, Galilee must be right; she was the one Horus was after.

  Or, more likely of course, Lynese.

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ she said. ‘Why me? What would Horus want with me? Or even Lynese? Lynese, do you know why Horus would want you?’

  Me? Why indeed? What would the great Horus want with a pathetic little water fay?

  There was a frightened quiver in Lynese’s voice.

  ‘I don’t understand it myself,’ Galilee admitted. ‘But, think about it. We can now safely assume it was Horus who destroyed Argothoth – your friend Foley. He was protecting you, obviously.’

  Beth was about to protest.

  Thinking back, though, she realised this neatly explained how she had originally managed to escape the burning farmhouse when the wall had mysteriously collapsed.

  ‘Wait a minute – what about the odrad?’ she said suddenly. ‘How come he didn’t make much of an effort to save me from that?’

  ‘Perhaps he thought you’d be able to handle it. Perhaps he wanted you to draw more on your inner power, giving more release and freedom to Lynese. But he was certainly around at that point. Remember how the odrad originally escaped because someone was deliberately flat-lining all the energy?’

  ‘Soooo…as Gerry was hanging around at the time, do you think that could also explain why you lost it and came down so heavy on poor Drek?’

  There was still an accusatory note in Beth’s voice, even though she was giving him an excuse for his behaviour.

  ‘You know; just pushing you a little bit. Knowing you were already exhausted and just a little bit fragile?’

  Galilee shrugged, like he didn’t want to face up to either possibility; that Horus had indeed had some sort of control over him, or that he had just simply ‘lost it’.

  ‘Where are we?’ he said, making his way over to the ship’s rail.

  The ocean stretched out in every direction, with no sight of land.

  ‘We could do with some sort of chart.’

  He looked back to where either the steering wheel or the captain’s cabin would normally be. But the deck was flat and featureless.

  Where the elaborately carved wood curved high over the stern’s deck, however, something glittered. A small, sparkling instrument was suspended beneath it, hanging on a leather string.

  Galilee rapidly strode towards it. As soon as he recognised what it was, he cried out elatedly, ‘A sextant!’

  Unhooking it from the loop of string it was hanging on, he examined it excitedly and admiringly.

  A mix of wood, brass and glass, it was beautifully made. A long telescopic sight ran across its top.

  ‘I’m not quite sure how it can help us to be honest,’ he confessed to Beth as she approached. ‘But at least I can use this to get a better view of that star or whatever it is.’

  With a nod of his head, he indicated the glowing orb that the billowing streams appeared to be being drawn towards.

  ‘The ship seems to be taking its energy from it.’

  He brought the sextant up to his eye.

  The shifting strands reaching out before them instantly whipped back like startled snakes.

  The streams contracted, solidified, wrapping and snapping around Galilee.

  Roughly dragging him forward, they securely bound him to their own trunk.

  The ship lurched and rocked violently as the sea ahead of them began to abruptly dry up, rapidly transforming into rolling sand dunes.

  Only the ship’s incredible momentum continued to send it ploughing across waves that were increasingly solid.

  Wood cracked and splintered everywhere. Sand was thrown up in great, choking plumes.

  And the star began to drop down from the sky, rushing down towards them.

   

   

  *

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Chapter 71

   

  The ship shattered more and more with every bounce across the dunes.

  The planks rapidly unzipped as great holes tore their way through the hull. The timbers and even the keel disintegrated.

  As the hull swiftly vanished beneath him, the firmly bound Galilee plunged into a dune. The mound of sand exploded under the impact, his imprisoning trunk firmly embedding itself upright in the ground.

  The surviving decking rushed up from behind. Fortunately, it completely peeled around him.

  The last part of the ship to disintegrate was the stern deck, the remnants of the decking burying itself deep within a hillock.

  Already seriously unbalanced by the wrecking of the ship on the dunes, Beth was sent bowling across the sand.

  She let herself roll, absorbing most of the impetus of the crash. Using the last of the fall’s energy, she leapt lithely to her feet, keeping her eye on the rapidly descending star.

  The star – or whatever it really was – didn’t seem to be getting bigger as it drew nearer. It’s glow, however, grew ever stronger.

  It stopped abruptly, hovering in the air at the height of a large house.

  It was close enough, however, for Beth to realise it was a gloriously sparkling gem.

   

   

  *

   

   

  The ground directly in front of Beth erupted.

  It rushed up in a fountain of sand and earth towards the glittering jewel.

  Whirling, shifting, hardening, the sand began to rapidly take shape, forming the legs and heavily muscled torso of what could have been a lion.

  Last of all, there came the head, beaked and hawk-like, yet with the curling horns of a ram. It collected and formed around the gem, so that it became a luminous eye.

  Beth silently called on Hew. It slipped out of the scabbard on her back. It slid into her waiting hands.

  The gigantic creature lowered its head, observing Beth with its glowing eyes.

  The eye that had been the star glowed white, like a full moon. The one to its right was as bright as the sun.

  As it observed her, the beast began to rise on its hind legs, its body becoming more human with every flex and move of its muscles.

  ‘Why are you attacking me?’ the creature mocked. ‘And when I helped save you so many times too!’

  So what Galilee said was true; she had been magically saved.

  She glanced back at Galilee. He was still securely bound to what had effectively been the ship’s mast, the coloured strands binding him as tightly and as completely as a mummy’s bandages.

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nbsp; His eyes were covered, as were his ears. It seemed as if he were unable to move even slightly.

  He had been tricked into staring directly into the Eye of Horus.

   

   

  *

   

   

  ‘So, you’re Horus; right?’

  Oh, a big cuddly teddy bear for the girl who just got the highest score of the week!

  Shut it!

  ‘Ah, still putting on the pretence, I see!’

  As he slowly walked around Beth, continuing to observe her curiously, Horus began to shrink until he was the size of a large man.

  ‘I like it; there’s obviously still a part of you that doesn’t want to admit you’ve led poor Machal here into a trap.’

  He glanced over at Galilee. The straps covering Galilee’s ears had either vanished or moved.

  Galilee had heard Horus’s accusation that Beth had betrayed him.

  ‘I didn’t lead him here. You know that.’

   ‘Come come, Beth; you made sure he was attracted to you, didn’t you? Even changing your appearance to – as you would say – “hook him”.’

  ‘I didn’t do that to betray him!’

  The strap covering Galilee’s eyes had now disappeared.

  The eyes were wide. Did they look hurt, confused?

  ‘I wouldn’t betray him!’

  ‘Wouldn’t betray him? Like you wouldn’t betray anyone, eh? Yet here you both are! And I didn’t bring you here.’

  ‘It must be Lynese, not me!’ she screamed at him. ‘Isn’t that who you’re really after anyway? Lynese, not me! Lynese must have caused all this!’

  Yes! That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Lynese had betrayed Galilee, not her!

  That’s what Horus had meant by ‘bringing her to me’. It wasn’t anything to do with Gerry. Lynese had brought her here!

  No; Beth had brought herself here! She had betrayed herself!

  Horus smiled benignly.

  ‘Lynese? Poor, pathetic little Lynese? A water fay! How could she be capable of such a thing? But you, Beth; you’re capable of so much!’

  ‘Me? How can it be me?’

  Directly before her, a dark, vertical crack split the air.

  Part of the air was pulling back, opening as if it were a door.

  A door to the room full of treasure.

  ‘You could have any reward you want Beth.’

  The dragon moved languidly over its hoard. Its eyes were fixed on Beth with a glow that was inviting, not threatening.

  ‘Or, perhaps, you would prefer to establish your rule over the new kingdoms you will help me create?’

  A second door opened in the air alongside the first.

  Beyond it, the landscape that had seemed so small when she had viewed it in the second room now appeared as full-sized towns and cities. They rushed past her as if she were seeing them from a low-flying plane.