Continuing to whisper, they reassured each other, and kept close enough to feel and see, knowing that not one of them had fallen, or been lost. Then their shuffling and careful distrust proved both helpful and necessary, for as they saw another opening before them, indicating a room or new corridor with increased light in a reddish glow, they began to hurry, taking less hesitation over each step.
“Stop,” Nathan yelled, turning around. “There’s a great open strip, like a pit, and wide enough to fall into.”
They peered down. “Heaven help us,” mumbled Peter. “It’s all ice and cliffs and it goes down and down and down.”
“Can we jump it?”
Alfie considered. “Reckon I can, and John too. Nat surely can. Not so sure ‘bout the rest of you.”
“Of course I can,” said Poppy crossly. “Look.” Nathan reached out to stop her, but she took a running leap, easily sailed over the huge crack, and landed with a dance of pride and success on the other side. Then suddenly she stopped, gazing ahead into an angle which the others, still on the other side of the pit, could not see. Very slowly and sadly, she turned back and spoke directly to Nathan. “We’re here,” she said softly. “It’s Granny.”
Nathan jumped quickly and joined his sister. Then they stood together and stared.
In the vast circular chamber before them, once again the floor was patterned in multi-coloured mosaics, but this time there were no arrows. The ceiling was high, and arched, too shadowed to see clearly. But it was the walls that held the attention. They were made either of glass or of ice, and frozen within them were many people, standing paralysed as though frozen both in place and time. They did not move but stood staring out at those that stared back. Their eyes were open and glazed, their hands stretched out before them as though pleading, and their clothes as still as themselves.
Alfie and John had jumped the pit and had helped Sam and Peter across. Now they walked into the room of horror and gazed around, shocked.
Sam stepped forwards and stretched out one hand, smoothing it along the wall before him. For a moment, he snatched his fingers away, saying, “Too cold. It’s ice. All ice. Solid.” But then he pressed his palm once more to the ice, as if to wipe away the vision. “Are they real?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Nathan, his voice very small. “And one of them is my grandmother.”
Granny Octobr stood, golden hazel eyes wide, still in her blue checked dress and white apron, her grey hair in a short cut, pulled back behind her ears, and her purple rimmed glasses on the end of her nose as though about to slip off. Her expression was puzzled, and disappointed, as though the sudden end to her life came unexpectedly when she had, instead, been expecting something pleasant. Her hands, like those of the other figures, were stretched before her as though in supplication. Her mouth, just slightly open, seemed to be speaking, but no words could be heard. Nathan felt the tears hot on his cheeks. Beside him Poppy dropped to the ground and sobbed loudly.
It was Alfie, with one sympathetic hand to Nathan’s shoulder, who said, “We ain’t given up, is we? You got the knife. Reckon we could try breaking through this.”
John tapped the ice wall. “I counted,” he said. “There’s ten, just like me toes. Four is females, ‘cluding yer granny. Six is men. You start wiv yer granny, and me, I’ll start wiv the fellows, for once they’s free, if they comes alive and don’t just crumble away, then reckon they can ‘elp.” And with a huge kick to the ice wall, he began to hammer, finally hurling himself at the wall, his shoulder to the barrier. But nothing happened, not even a faint shudder nor a vibration. Alfie had started trying to release a tall woman, gazing out from beautiful hazel eyes, and wearing a long white gown, and both Sam and Peter were punching and kicking as hard as they could. Nathan and Poppy were furiously attacking the ice that imprisoned Granny Octobr. Using feet, fists and elbows, they both continued in desperation, and Nathan attempted using the point of his knife. Afraid of blunting the blade, he soon stopped and admitted that not one tiny crack nor split had been caused.
“Tis not working,” John glowered.
Nathan held up his knife again. He pointed it towards the ice wall, and spoke loudly. “I am the Lord of the Knife of Clarr, and I command this ice to melt and the prisoners to be released.”
Everyone stood back, excited, waiting for what might happen. Poppy wiped her eyes, and gasped. But it appeared that nothing was happening at all. Nathan and his group were as unmoving as those trapped in the wall, waiting, and hardly daring to breathe. Eventually a few drops slithered down the ice, slopping into tiny puddles, but this was no major melt.
Bitterly disappointed, Nathan believed that the knife had been unable to help, but then he realised that a haze had begun to swirl in the very middle of the room. Puzzled, he waited. The haze thickened, and it felt as though the whole room began to tremble. Staring into the mist, Nathan began to see shapes, as though watching a television through a blurred window. Then he saw himself. He could see the whole group quietly and carefully exploring the long dark passage, with only the light of the knife to guide them.
Poppy, standing beside him and clutching the hem of his doublet, was watching with equal fascination. “Look,” she whispered, “that’s the big crack in the floor just outside this room. Why are we being shown that? We don’t have to climb into it, do we? That would be terrifying.”
Nathan knew he would do anything to rescue his grandmother, but certainly climbing into a bottomless pit was the most horrible possibility. Then he realised he was being shown something else. Right in the centre of the wide open hole was stretched a fine red cord. It was so thin it could hardly be seen, but as he stared, Nathan saw that this was red from blood. Blood dripped from the cord down into the abyss, and where it landed could not be seen at all. The cord itself could barely be noticed, so fine and thin, and so dark, clotted with blood. He blinked, testing his vision. Then he blinked again, and the whole haze and the pictures he had been shown had all totally disappeared.
Hurrying quickly back to the doorway, Nathan, with Poppy close behind and everyone else behind her, stared down into the actual pit which they had managed to jump. And there, exactly as the picture had shown them, right in the centre and stretched tight across its length, was the red cord, clotted with dark dripping blood. Nathan felt sick, but he looked up, saying, “We’ve found it, haven’t we? The Eternal Chain.”
“Quick, quick,” yelled Sam, jumping up and down. “Cut it with the knife.”
“It’s what Ferdinand said,” Nathan mumbled, just as excited. “This could free everyone and turn the frogs back to humans.” No one except Poppy understood what he was saying, but this worried nobody. They watched with avid interest.
Nathan reached out with the knife. The cord was so thin he believed it would cut easily, but as the blade came close, the cord fell away. Looping downwards, it flopped into the centre of the pit, spinning like a guitar string. So, waiting until the cord settled once more, Nathan lay down flat on the ground, with his arms outstretched across the pit. “Hold my feet,” he begged the others. “I’d hate to fall in.”
They ran to grab his ankles, and Nathan reached out again, extending the blade towards the cord. But once more, with a slight buzz as though laughing, it dropped from sight.
“Sneaky,” said Alfie. “But tis attached both ends, ain’t it? So don’t cut the middle. Cut one o’ them ends.”
Nodding, Nathan crawled to the edge of the pit beside one of the walls, and once again leaned down and over while Alfie and John held tight to his legs, Sam and Peter grabbed at his waist, and Poppy grabbed at the neck of his shirt.
With a deep breath, Nathan sliced at the cord where it was firmly knotted to the ice wall. For just one brief moment he thought he had succeeded, but then saw the cord spring back and knew it had once again evaded him.
“Too clever by half,” complained John. “Try t’other end.”
Nathan was furious with himself, the cord and the knife too. He didn’t thi
nk the other end would be any easier, and he wondered what he was doing wrong. But he shuffled to the opposite wall, ready to attempt another cut.
But this time the failed attempt was caused by something entirely different. As Nathan knelt and prepared to lie down by the great open crack in the floor, there was a triumphant hooting, a cackle of laughter, a whizz as of something flying above, and a jab of pain in his back where something with sharp nails had poked him hard.
“Well now, Bumble-Bee Head,” laughed the shrill voice, “can’t cut one little bit of string, eh? What a shame, what a mess, what a failure.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Fools,” screeched another similar voice. “Didn’t know you were all tricked, did you?” Both Brewster and Wagster leapt and hurtled, knees bent to spring into the air as though on motor-powered stilts. With persistent shrieks of laughter and repeated flying jumps, both on the ground and above in a whizz of erratic speed, they raced around Nathan and his friends.
‘Tricked. How tricked?” demanded Nathan, “I was stopped from cutting the eternal chain. But I hold the knife. How did you stop me?”
“It’s not the real chain,” chortled Brewster. “We knew you were coming and so we changed it.”
Alfie, John, Sam and Peter, utterly dismayed and completely confused, stepped back and pressed against the ice wall. Poppy ran after the Hazlett twins, attempting to hit them as she jumped and tried to pull their long thin noses but she could not jump high enough and didn’t catch anyone.
Nathan stood still, pouting. “How did you know I was coming?”
Wagster scratched behind his ears, dislodging his hat. “What a flea-brain, Bumble-Bee Head. Poor topsy-turvy waspy-tottle. Can’t do a thing right. What a shame. Got it all wrong as usual.”
Annoyed, Nathan glared. “You’re cruel and you capture people and put them in ice prisons and that’s far more stupid than anything I’ve ever done. So,” he said, “how did you know I was coming?”
“The great Yaark, Warden of the Key of Clarr” said Brewster, coming to rest beside Nathan, “told you where your silly little granny is. Then, when you fluttered that useless knife of yours, he pretended to disappear, leaving you oh so eager to come and rescue the poor old woman. We changed the eternal chain, and waited for you to get your little heads around all these sticky-wicky puzzles. You managed in the end, though it took you long enough and most of them you got wrong anyway. And here you are, trying to cut the cord of destiny. And no one can ever cut that. Not until they die, of course.” Still cackling, he pointed to the pit. “You cut the cord of destiny, and you drop oh so very dead, without any more destiny left to live. So think yourself lucky the cord refused to be cut.”
“Stuff him with rice pudding,” called Wagster from the ceiling, and, “strangle the little pest,” from back on the ground as his leap landed, bent kneed, beside them, spider-like. Curling their fingernails, both stabbed out, and Wagster scraped his thumb along Nathan’s forehead, laughing with delight as the cut started to bleed. He leapt again, zooming like a helicopter around Nathan’s head.
Alfie and John both ran forwards, now infuriated and determined to rid the tower of these two dangerous creatures threatening their friend. Wagster lashed out, pointing his claws and jumping over their heads. Disorientated, it was impossible to know up from down, and where to expect the next spring.
“Stuff them down the privy,” Wagster cackled. “Rip their ears off and make them eat the gristle for supper.”
Laughing with the echoes of an emptying drain, Brewster settled and stood, leaning against the ice wall in front of Granny Octobr, pointing and sniggering at her frozen prison. But Wagster was changing once again. From the high ceiling, he gazed down, gone from human shape to shadow, and from shadow to serpent. The coils swelled, fat as tree trunks and long as rivers, wrapped around Nathan’s feet, holding him utterly still. The snake eyes were scarlet slits, its mouth an open jaw that spread wider and wider, extending its throat into a fathom of gnashing teeth as sharp as splinters, and a black gleaming tongue as long as an arm, forked into dark curling prongs. Within the throat, crawling through bubbles of thick slime, were the exploring bodies of fat maggots and thin white worms.
Watching the transformation of his brother, Brewster turned to Granny behind the ice wall. “Say goodbye to your heir, queen of failures,” he laughed. He had watched Wagster, Nathan and Granny. He had not watched Alfie nor John.
Peter yelled, “Get out the knife,” and as Brewster’s attention was snatched back, the other two ran at him from opposing sides, each with a closed fist, punching at the same moment, one to Brewster’s left temple and one to his right. More in surprise than injury, the wizard blinked and slid down the ice wall, tumbling at Granny’s feet.
The serpent hissed and reared. Nathan held up his knife and called, “From the Lord of Clarr to the Knife of Clarr, send flames to burn the serpent and set me free.”
The vast snake’s scales were interlocking and luminous in purple and black, but now fire rippled through them as though it had ignited within and was burning outwards. The huge flames could be seen rippling from inside until they licked every coil.
The serpent howled.
But it was as the fire burst around the rearing scales, and as Nathan jumped from the remaining coils, that everything shrank back into the shadows once more, the fire blew out in a tiny hiss, the arched doorway seemed to shiver, and the tiger Yaark padded slowly into the chamber. Already freezing, the chamber now turned arctic.
Brewster woke, crawling quickly aside. Wagster’s tongue was alight. With a suck and a grimace of pain, he swallowed the flames, and was himself again, cringing against the ice wall. “Put your knife away, fool,” Yaark told Nathan. “It has no effect on me, for I hold the key, and the key opens, closes and locks.”
“The lord must out rank the warden,” whispered Nathan, shivering.
“The warden guards,” Yaark said, solemn as a statue. Even his whiskers seemed solid as ice. “While the lord plays, travels far, fails to learn or to stay at his post, so the warden remains, guarding what is precious to all the land. I do not claim lordship as the Octobrs do. I claim power, and that is what I hold. And my power, discover at your own peril, is greater than any other.”
Face to face, the tiger’s head reared over Nathan’s, its eyes like hooded halos, and Nathan could not look away. “But the lord commands,” he mumbled, trying desperately to summon his pride and his courage. “When the lord orders the warden, then the warden should obey.”
Yaark sneered. “Not when the warden knows the lord to be a fool. And if I disobey, how do you retaliate, lord of fools? How do you dismiss me? How do you snatch back the key? You know nothing at all.”
Alfie, John and Poppy stood close to Nathan, supportive and protective. But still dancing behind them and whizzing overhead, the Hazlett twins continued to cackle and snort. Yet they avoided Yaark’s sinuous ambush, and did not come too close. Nathan noticed this, and turned to Brewster. “The tiger frightens you?”
But it was Yaark who answered. “With my own feline power, I can kill any one of you. I can leap, and in an instant death will snap your cord of destiny. Before I leave the tower, I shall take my feast. One of you will suffice. The little tow-headed child at your back, perhaps? Or the plump girl, her hair almost as striped as I am in the colours of the sunset.” Standing in the doorway just beyond the great pit, the tiger seemed to grow and its fur dazzled without light. Its back was arched high. “I am the lord of beasts and master of the jungle,” it continued, voice calm and expressionless. “I am the cat which takes what it will, ‘But,” and its eyes once again narrowed, “as the great tiger I may choose to eat a human, and tear it limb from limb, rip out its belly and crush its skull. Or I may choose to change that human into a pleading worm, a pathetic string of flesh which I can pierce with one claw until it writhes in agony, awaiting death.”
No one answered. They stared. Then Poppy whispered, “I loved the tigers –
in the films.”
Yaark raised its head. “But,” it continued, “I am more than cat. I am the great Yaark. You do not yet know me for I am the beast of hellfire. With the Key of Clarr I have even greater powers. I can hurl any one of you into the ice and keep you imprisoned there for evermore.”
“And so you can also release anyone already there,” mumbled Poppy, glaring.
“Naturally,” said the tiger. “Or swap one for the other. And easy skill.”
“Then swap Wagster for Granny,” muttered Poppy.
As the pounce of the predator from ambush, the tiger leapt the pit without warning, coming to the inner chamber, and gazed back at those trying vainly not to tremble at its feet.
“So,” said Yaark, and the deep gravelly voice became harsh, “who sacrifices himself – or herself – for the others? Which human do I feast on first? Or shall I devour you all?”
Nathan stamped, and marched forwards. “If you try to kill your own lord, you’ll be cursed,” he said, as loud as he dared. “And all my friends are under my protection. You will not touch any of us. And I demand you free my grandmother. She comes from the ruling house, and you do not.”
The shadows moved back, as though cautious and fearful. Even Brewster and Wagster quietened and shrank against the ice wall. But Yaark snarled, curling back his lips over his huge yellow stained canine teeth. “Free the Octobr queen? Offer yourself in her place, then. As a free sacrifice, I shall release the old fool, and send you to the ice grave in her place.”
It was John who spoke, very softly, into the following silence. His voice quavered, saying, “Reckon I could offer, Nat, if you likes. I ain’t got naught ta lose and me life ain’t worth a scrape o’ salt. Take me and get yer granny back if you wants. I ain’t afraid of a few years asleep in the ice.”
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