by Michael Kerr
CHAPTER SIX ―
LABYRINTH OF THE SPIDERS
Being the thinnest of the group, Speedy tried every which way he could to squeeze between the bars, but couldn’t.
“It’s no good,” he said. “We aren’t going anywhere in a hurry.”
“At least the chalice might be safe here,” Fig said. “I doubt that anyone will ever find it, after Sharlo seals this underground part of the temple up.”
“If whatever this devil you call the Dark One is, finds out that Sharlo is alive again, he’ll want to know how that could be,” Sam said. “For all we know he has spies nearby in the shape of birds or animals that have already told him that we’re here.”
Tommy felt more afraid than he had ever been in his life; a hundred times more than when the stone gargoyles attacked them, or even when he had fallen from the bridge and nearly drowned. His legs buckled under him and he sank down against the bars. There was a scream forming in his throat, but he gritted his teeth and swallowed hard, believing that if he started to scream, he might never stop.
Fig and Speedy joined forces to try and magic the bars apart, which would have been an easy thing to do nearer home, but was impossible so far away from the oak palace. Nothing happened.
Ben could hear Tommy making a strange whimpering sound, and could also feel him next to him, shaking. He knelt down in the darkness, felt about with his hand for his friend’s shoulder, and put his arm around it.
“Hey, Frog, don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find a way out of this place.”
“Y-yeah, and pigs can f…fly,” Tommy stammered.
“They can where I come from,” Gorf said, sitting down at the other side of Tommy, hugging him so tightly that he thought his ribs would snap. “And we will get out of this place, if only so that I can tear that ungrateful sack of feathers and drummins’ arms and legs off.”
Tommy could feel Gorf’s hot breath on his face, and the smell of the blistergut the troll had eaten made him gag.
Sam felt something similar to how the warmth of the sun on her back would feel. And yet it had to be her imagination, for the dark corridor they were trapped in was damp and cold.
THE CHALICE! Sam removed the bag from her back, put it down on the floor and opened it. Even through the covering of dried mud and leaves, she could see a faint glow. She lifted the chalice out and raked the crusty shell off it with her fingers, and the cage was immediately illuminated in a soft, golden light.
“That’s better,” Ben said. “At least we can see each other now.”
Sam lifted the chalice up by its handles and pressed it against one of the bars.
Help us to be free from here, she thought. We need to continue our journey and return you to the keeper.
A ball of bright light formed inside the cup, to rise up and drift in mid-air. It then bounced from one bar to another, to circle them in a curtain of crackling, electric neon-blue.
From being blinded by darkness, they were now blinded by the light, and closed their eyes until the brightness against their eyelids faded. When they looked again, the bars of the cage were completely melted, to form a ring of liquid metal around their feet.
“Now that’s what I call magic,” Ben said.
Sam stepped over the smoking pools and walked across to where the slab of stone blocked the way out. Once more she held the chalice up, against the wall, and felt a tremor run through her hands as large cracks appeared and spread out from behind the cup. Within seconds the barrier crumbled into a pile of sand.
“Sharlo is going to be as sick as a parrot when we find him,” Tommy said.
“I don’t think we should try to find him,” Sam said. “The chalice has stopped glowing. It feels...drained. I think it might need to recharge, like a battery.”
“I agree,” Fig said. “We don’t know what the priest is capable of doing. And what could we do against someone who has returned from the dead, and wasn’t harmed by Gorf’s arrow.”
“Let’s just get out of here and put as much distance as we can between us and this temple,” Speedy said.
The others nodded their agreement. Being curious had almost cost them their lives.
Sam put the chalice back in the bag and led the way along a narrow passageway. At the end of it was a door, and behind the door, a spiral staircase.
“Let me go first,” Gorf said, using his bow like a walking stick to tap the steps, before putting his weight on them, wary of another booby trap.
After only a dozen steps, his caution paid off. Just the touch of the bow triggered a large axe to sweep down from a slot in the brickwork. Its heavy blade bit into the stone where Gorf would have been, sending up a shower of sparks.
“Sharlo is a tricky devil,” Gorf said, stepping over the weapon and carrying on.
They came back up into the light at the other side of the temple, to leave the building by a rear door and hurry down the weed-covered steps, not slowing until they reached the cover of the jungle. None of them spoke until the temple of Kadu was at least a mile behind them.
“What do you suppose Sharlo will do now?” Tommy said. “He’s all by himself back there.”
“I don’t care what he does,” Ben said. “As long as we don’t ever meet up with him again.”
It took them until almost dawn the next morning to make their way to the southern fringe of the jungle oasis. They stayed within its shelter for the day, and ate, slept, and gathered more fruit and fresh water before setting off back out into the desert.
All went well for two days and two nights. It was on the third day, as they found what cover they could in a shallow gully, that the Desert of Storms was hit by a hundred mile an hour gale force wind that churned the sand up into thousand-feet-high clouds of fine, abrasive particles. The rushing, stinging sand swept over them, almost tearing them from the ground. They huddled together, covered their heads, and breathed as best they could until the winds died and the desert was left with new formations of dunes that formed an ever-changing landscape with no points of reference to ever map it, apart from the far-flung oases that were the only features to break the ocean of eternally shifting sand.
They rinsed out their eyes and mouths with water, and blew their noses. Only Gorf was unworried by the sandstorm. His thick covering of fur prevented the skin underneath from being stung or cut. And his usually wide nostrils could close in the same way as a camel’s or cactus sloth’s did. He could even see in the storm. Both of his eyes had the addition of secondary, tough transparent lids that moved across to protect them from harm. And his big, flat feet were well adapted to the hostile environment, having three wide toes on each, connected with skin, allowing him to walk on the soft surface with them splayed, which prevented him from sinking into it.
Night came, and after a few hours of trekking, and with leg muscles and backs aching from the heavy going, they reached the top of a high dune and sat down on the ridge to take a breather. The three moons lit a welcome sight. In the distance they could see a mountain range beyond the desert.
“Tomorrow night we will be out of this furnace,” Fig said. “The Valley of Mist should make a pleasant change from blistering heat and burning sand.”
“Don’t count your chickens until they’ve hatched,” Sam said. “Who knows what we might run into?”
“What exactly are chickens? And what would counting them have to do with anything?” Fig asked her.
“Chickens are birds, Fig. And counting them before they’ve hatched is just a saying. It means, don’t take anything for granted.”
“Then it sounds like a wise proverb, similar to one we use: Beware the elf who offers you his brother’s shoes.”
“And we have one,” Gorf said. “Keep the sun to your back and your bow ready.”
“Can we go now?” Tommy said. “Sitting in the middle of the world’s biggest sandpit swapping silly sayings won’t get us out of here before morning.”
“Don’t be such a pain in the
backside, Frog,” Ben said. “We need to try and keep cheerful.”
“Cheerful!” Tommy said with a scowl on his face. “What have we got to be cheerful about?”
“I thought you didn’t want to go back home, now that you don’t need your specs or leg iron anymore,” Sam said.
Tommy had forgotten about that. Now that Sam reminded him, he didn’t feel so bad. Funny how he had so quickly got used to having keen eyesight and a leg that was now a lot more use than ornament. It was hard to remember how he had been until so recently. “You’re right,” he said. “I should count my blessings.”
“Is that like not counting chickens before they hatch?” Speedy asked.
They all laughed until their stomachs ached and tears rolled down their cheeks. The more they tried to stop, the worse it got. The fits of laughter seemed to wash away the horror of all that had happened since leaving the oak palace.
Tommy opened his bag and reached inside it for the wooden water gourd, but it had changed back into the plastic Coca Cola bottle it had originally been. His calliper was steel again, and his specs had lenses, and the frames were no longer made of wood.
“Look,” he said to the others. “How can this have happened?”
“Obviously not everything stays the same in different zones,” Ben said. “Remember the bars of that cage, and the axe head in the temple. They were made of steel. We must be moving across invisible borders, where the rules of how things are, alters.”
They set off again across the rolling, hill-high dunes, having to rest more and more frequently as the climbing exhausted them.
The glow of first light was staining the sugary sand pale pink when they staggered down the last dune onto an arid plain dotted with twisted, mushroom-shaped cacti, and black bushes that smelled of creosote.
Gorf heard the sound first. He stopped, knelt on all fours, put his ear to the ground, and then jumped up and looked all around. They were out in the open, now crossing flatlands with only a thin layer of wind-polished gravel and a few tumbled boulders. To the west were ranges of sandstone mountains that rose vertically for thousands of feet. At their base, the rock had been eroded back by the wind and gravel, undercutting it to create overhangs and caves in the cliff face.
“What is it, Gorf?” Ben asked. “You look scared.”
“I am,” he said. “The most dangerous creature in the desert is the beaded scorpion. It grows to the size of a spadefoot targ, and kills anything with a pulse. From the clicking noises their legs make, I think a herd of them are heading our way.”
Soon after, they heard what could have been the click-clack of a thousand needles at a Women’s Institute knitting marathon.
“Here they come,” Gorf shouted. “Run for the caves at the bottom of those cliffs, it’s our only chance.”
The creatures looked like an oil slick rushing up a beach.
As they ran, Ben glanced back over his shoulder and saw the black tide turn in their direction and increase speed.
The group covered half the distance to where they hoped to find safety, but the sound of the beasts’ approach was growing louder, and the ground shook. Only a second or two would be the deciding factor between whether they would live to fight another day, or become scorpion food.
Without his powers, Fig was feeling his great age. He could hardly breathe, and his heart was racing so fast he thought it might explode. He tried to keep up with the others, but was lagging behind. He stumbled, tripped up and fell to the ground. He tried to stand, but his ankle was in some way damaged, and he felt pain that, being a fairy, he had never experienced. He glanced behind him and screamed out. There was an army of huge, black, shiny creatures bearing down on him. They blocked out the rising sun as they snapped their huge crab-like pincers open and shut.
Gorf heard Fig scream. “Keep going,” he shouted to the others, and turning back, raced to where Fig lay, to pick him up and carry him.
Reaching the cliff face, the others squeezed into a crevice and looked out.
“They aren’t going to make it,” Speedy said.
Gorf ran like the wind, not pausing as he ducked down just in time to avoid having his head snipped off by pincers that sprang together above it with the force of a crocodile’s jaws. A second later, he dived into the crevice, still holding Fig in his arms.
“We all made it,” Tommy said. “I can’t believe it.”
The scorpions were the size of tanks, and their metallic-black armoured shells were covered in large red blobs, which Ben supposed was why Gorf had called them ‘beaded’.
“They are soooo ugly,” Sam said, backing up into the shadow of the crevice.
“But we outran them,” Tommy said. “We’re safe.”
“No, Frog, we’re not,” Gorf said. “They have a brain no bigger than a pumpleberry, and will probably wait out there for weeks if need be. We’re trapped.”
“Maybe not,” Sam said. “This isn’t just a crevice. It leads back into the cliff, and the walls are smooth.”
Ben ran his hand across the cool, smooth surface. “I think water ran through here once,” he said.
“Let’s hope it leads to another way out,” Gorf said, making off into the canyon, or whatever it was, as one of the more persistent scorpions began to nibble the soft rock away with pincers as sharp as garden shears.
The ground sloped down, and after following the winding trail for over an hour, with brief glimpses of sky high above them, they entered the mouth of a cave. They went farther, along a tunnel that led down into a majestic grotto. Stalactites the shape of icicles hung down from the ceiling, and below them, stalagmites grew up from the rock floor. There were columns and eroded limestone shapes resembling all manner of things that a crazy sculptor might have carved. Most importantly, they could see, due to a luminous green light that seemed to leak out of the rock.
“It’s beautiful,” Speedy said. “I think that King Ambrose would make a fine palace of this, if it was nearer the oak wood.”
Pausing to rest, they were sitting and talking, considering whether it was a bad idea to continue on in the hope of finding another way out, when something very large dropped down out of the shadows, snatched Speedy from amongst them, and hauled him up towards the roof of the cave.
They all looked up, stunned by Speedy’s sudden abduction.
“What happened?” Tommy asked. “What was that thing?”
“It looked like a giant spider,” Ben said. And even as he said it, another plummeted down on a thick silken thread and tried to grasp Sam, who rolled away from it, but felt a hooked claw rip through her shorts and rake her leg open.
Gorf fired an arrow the instant after Sam dodged the bristly legs that had attempted to ensnare her. The pointed, razor-sharp tip hit the spider in the centre of where its eight glistening eyes were located above a pair of long, curved fangs. A nerve-shredding screech echoed through the rock maze of caverns and tunnels, and the beast shuddered and fell to the ground on its back, legs twitching, before they curled inwards towards its body and became still.
Gorf approached the dead spider, put one foot on its plump body, grasped the shaft of his arrow and twisted and ripped it free. A milky yellow fluid flowed from the wound.
Shouldering his bow and gripping the dripping arrow in his mouth, Gorf climbed up the sticky line that the spider had spun.
Ben helped Sam to her feet. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“I’m fine”, she said, but was trembling with fear. She hated spiders.
“Form a circle, facing outwards,” Fig said. “There might be more of them.”
Without another word they linked arms and searched the gloom above for movement.
Meanwhile, Speedy struggled to be free of the hideous creature, but became instantly paralysed as it sank its fangs into his shoulder and injected venom that caused a burning sensation as it mixed with the blood in his veins.
Carrying him up on to a wide ledge, the enormous
spider used two of its front legs to hold Speedy and turn him round and round while it spun more silk to wrap him in a gummy, white cocoon. He was more helpless than he had ever thought it was possible to be, and could not move a muscle, or even blink, only watch as he was lifted up and pushed into a thick wall of silken mesh, to be left hanging next to other bundles. This was the spider’s larder, where he imagined he would be kept immobile and fresh, to be eaten alive at a later date.
Gorf pulled himself up hand over hand, gripped the edge of the ledge and heaved himself up onto it. The giant spider turned to face him. It made a strange hissing noise, and reared up on its back legs.
“I don’t normally kill something I have no intention of eating,” Gorf said. “But you seriously need to be done away with.”
Gorf raised his bow, but was not quick enough. The spider squirted a stream of almost liquid silk from its body, which hit the bow, wrapped around it, and pulled it from his hands.
The black beast scuttled forward, and Gorf charged at it, grabbed hold of a leg and twisted and wrenched the hairy limb from its socket. Avoiding the darting jaws that snapped next to his face, he quickly pulled a further four of the legs off, and kicked the disabled spider out over the ledge, to hear it thud wetly on the rock floor far below.
Tearing the gauzy web away from Speedy’s face, in case he was suffocating, Gorf then pulled the fairy free from where he was hanging, to drape him over his shoulder like a rolled carpet. He found his bow, climbed back down the gummy thread and gently placed the limp fairy on to the ground.
“Speedwell, can you hear me?” Fig asked, staring into Speedy’s wide amber eyes.
“It bit him,” Ben said, pointing to the two bloody holes in Speedy’s tunic. “He might be all right when the effects of whatever junk it injected him with wear off.”
“I’ll carry him,” Gorf said. “But let’s stop dallying and get as far away from here as we can.”
“Do we go back, or see what’s up ahead?” Tommy said.
“We know what’s behind us,” Sam said. “Scorpions that want to eat us. I vote we go on.”
They all agreed. Chances were they would only get lost in the tunnels they had come through if they tried to retrace their steps. Keeping close together and looking up nervously, expecting more spiders to drop down on them, they made to set off, intending to explore the unknown depths of the labyrinth. But leaving wasn’t going to be that easy.
―
