Conclave

by Murray, Lee

  Ari clearly agrees because he points his stick and dives into the passageway.

  Sometime later, they emerge from the labyrinth, blinking in the bright sunlight. Ari allows them just enough time for their eyes to adjust. Before them, another plateau looms, the mirror image of the one they had stood on at the outset of the challenge. Intuitively, Rowan knows that plateau is where they need to get to, and fast, because coming from the hills behind them is the unmistakable sound of clicking.

  “Run!” Ari shouts and they do, Ari and Tonya out in front with Rowan playing sweeper. Mathilde stumbles on a stray rock, letting out a yelp of terror. Rowan drags her to her feet. There’s no time to worry about grazed knees: they’ve all seen the talons on those Clickers. Tonya’s comment about every last beastie being out to kill them repeats in Rowan’s mind. It sure as hell feels that way.

  “Rowan!” Mathilde calls, her voice desperate.

  “Come on, Mathilde!”

  “My knee—I’ve wrenched it.”

  “Keep going. We’re nearly there,” he coaxes.

  But as he looks up the slope, Rowan’s courage almost fails. The uppermost part is practically vertical—only a couple of metres—but with a small rocky overhang that will make it a difficult climb, and Mathilde is injured. Tonya and Ari are close to the top. Rowan hopes they can find a way to get up on the plateau. He chances a look back down the slope. The Clickers have reached the base. There are two of them, their half-metre talons flashing in the sun. The spider was impaled on one of those talons, and the spider was huge. By comparison, Rowan would be little more than an hors d’oeuvre…

  He pulls up.

  Immediately, Mathilde slows too, puzzled. “Rowan, are you okay?”

  “Keep running,” he commands.

  “But—”

  “Go!” he roars.

  Mathilde runs on doggedly. Rowan checks the slope. The Clickers are closing the distance. Rowan wishes he had a gun, he could pick them off. They’re big enough targets that even a klutz like him couldn’t miss. Hang on, targets…

  Suddenly inspired, Rowan grabs the nearest boulder—the biggest he can lift—and grunting with the strain, hurls it at the Clickers. The creatures duck for cover, and Rowan’s projectile rolls away harmlessly, but not without slowing them down.

  So, how do we feel about a nice game of Dodgeball?

  Rowan squats then, and using all the strength in his legs, and ignoring the scrapes to his forearms, he scoops up as much shale and rock as he can, sending it all skittering down into the valley. He takes another look. The Clickers have ducked for cover again, but Rowan realises that the small stones won’t hold them off for long. Soon enough, they’ll realise a few bruises hardly compares to the oppression of their species for the next millennium. Rowan’s eyes scan the stony ground around him. What he needs are some rocks small enough to fling, but large enough to dislodge the rubble on the slope. He scrambles up a bit farther, losing time, but finding what he’s looking for. A rough cairn of perfect rocks! Rowan doesn’t stop to question how the cairn came to be there, instead, he scoops and hurls again and again and again, until his legs are burning from lunging and his arms and nails are chipped and bleeding. For a while, his strategy works, the Clickers dropping to the ground to avoid the pummelling, but now, as Rowan feared, one of them has decided to brave the blitz. Rowan’s legs tremble with exertion, but he forces himself to carry on, sending another hailstorm of rock down the mountainside. Then, finally, the Clicker on its feet wobbles, unbalanced by the moving stones underfoot. It puts a talon out to steady itself, when another boulder, thrown from higher up the hillside, hits it square on the back. The Clicker spills headlong down the slope, its own talons slicing at its body as it tumbles. Rowan pauses to watch it fall.

  And then there was one.

  Above him, a hundred metres away, Ari gives Rowan the thumbs up.

  “Get the girls up on the plateau, Ari,” Rowan shouts. “I’ll hold this one.”

  He redoubles his rock-throwing efforts, but the last Clicker is determined. It keeps coming, and nothing Rowan can do will stop its march.

  “Rowan!”

  He turns and runs, in time to see Tonya use a gymnast move to pull herself onto the plateau: facing outward towards the valley, she swing her legs up onto the cliff-top, and engages her core strength to pull herself over the lip. Still on her stomach, she puts her hand out to Mathilde, while Ari scrambles up the bank beside her.

  But they have forgotten Mathilde’s injured knee. She isn’t going to be able to get herself up without help.

  “Give her a leg up, Rowan.”

  Racing to the cliff-face, Rowan makes a step with his hands, which Mathilde promptly places her foot into. Rowan heaves, propelling Mathilde into Ari and Tonya’s waiting arms. They hoist her onto the cliff top.

  “Come on, Rowan!”

  “Give us your hands!”

  Rowan makes the mistake of looking.

  Twenty metres…

  He steps back and back again, closing the space to the Clicker, then takes a running leap for the overhang, his arms outstretched. But, exhausted from scooping shale, his leap falls short. His fingers rake the rocky outcrop, then slip slowly backwards off the ledge. Suddenly, Ari and Tonya are there, hauling him up to safety. They don’t stop there either, dragging him away from the cliff before they set him down. It’s just as well they do, because in the next moment the cliff collapses, the last Clicker swallowed in the debris. In that instant, the rumble of rock is overwhelmed by the roar of the crowd as the sky explodes with colour. Immediately, they are surrounded by iSplay feed from the stadium.

  “The team from Induran has been eliminated from Conclave,” the announcer booms. “As the losers of the first amphitheatre, Indura will be excluded from Conclave Eight. Their species will not be represented on the League of Governors for the next one thousand years.” The crowd erupts, the sky a flutter of betting slips and pennants, as the feed fades out, leaving the stunned Terreans alone and silent on the ridgetop. If Mathilde is concerned about the loss of the Clickers, she doesn’t say a word.

  “So, Tonya…” Rowan says eventually. He raises his eyebrows.

  “What?”

  “Gymnastics, aye?”

  Tonya lifts her chin. “So my mother made me do gymnastics. You got something to say about that?”

  “No, not me.”

  “It got us up here, didn’t it?”

  “I didn’t say a word…” He’s about to grin, but a swift black wind sweeps across the plateau as the amphitheatre changes again...

  10

  Rowan looks around. They’re on a stunning beach, the ocean stretching out before them, jungle behind them, and alongside, emptying into the ocean, is a small stream.

  Fresh water! Rowan drops to his knees in the sand. He fills his hands and takes a small sip. It tastes like nothing, just cool and clear. Like water. Relieved, he drinks deeply. Beside him, the others do the same. After all that running, it’s so good! Rowan splashes the liquid on his face, letting the droplets roll into the neck of his tunic, savouring the tickle of it on his skin. He drinks again. Finally, he plunges his arms into the water, letting the current soothe his ragged nails and battered arms. Time to check out his injuries. The cut on his palm has broken open at one edge, and his arms are etched in scratches from scooping shale. Still, if those Clickers had reached him, he might not be here right now. He washes away the remaining dried blood, cleansing grit from the wounds. Then he stands and shakes his arms about to dry them off. As far as first aid goes, that’ll have to do. They’ve nothing else.

  “Hey, look. Over here. Bananas!” Ari shouts. A few metres away, under some palms, Ari holds up a hand of waxy yellow-brown bananas.

  “Awesome, I’m starving!” Rowan is the first to dash over. He yanks one away from Ari, tearing it off the bunch.

  “Not me,” says Tonya warily. “We don’t know anything about this place.”

  “Bub dey tait wike bananas,” says Rowa
n, his mouth already stuffed full of fruit.

  “Rowan, stop! Spit that out. It could be dangerous,” says Mathilde, her expression one of alarm. “They might be poisonous.”

  Rowan gulps, accidentally swallowing the mouthful he’d been chewing. What if the girls’ suspicions are true? He’s already wolfed down half of one banana. What if it kills him?

  Instantly, he starts to sweat. He brings his hands to his throat, the remains of the food slimy in his mouth. Is he going to die? Talk about irony. Surviving colossal spiders and a band of angry Clickers, only to be taken down by a banana?

  “Rinse your mouth out, Rowan. Then drink some more water. If the fruit is toxic, there’s a chance you could… er…flush it through,” Mathilde says. She nibbles on her thumbnail.

  It’s a good idea. Sobered, Rowan staggers to the water’s edge like a man lost in the desert. Only Ari doesn’t seem concerned. “I read about this before we came,” he says. “When I found out about my Spartacus connection. Seems in those days, poisoning was a good way to take over a person’s property or position, so important chieftains would have people test their food. The tasters would take a tiny bite, then wait about twenty minutes.”

  “Wait twenty minutes to see if they died?” Tonya asks.

  “No, to see if they lived.”

  Rowan stops drinking, water dribbling from his cupped hands. “Guys! You’re freaking me out!”

  Ari gives Rowan a hearty clap on the back. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, Rowan. They’re probably just your common garden variety bananas. But since you’ve already done the tasting, the rest of us may as well be on the safe side. We’ll suss out the challenge while we’re waiting to see if you cark it or not.” The bunch of bananas in one hand, Ari extends his other hand to Rowan.

  “Thanks very much,” says Rowan, partly for the hand up, but also for the levity. Ari’s breezy optimism has lifted his spirits. If the bananas are poisonous, there’s not much more Rowan can do about it, and if they’re not, at least they’ll have made a start on what to do next. On his feet now, he asks, “So, what do you think the challenge is?”

  Ari scratches his chin with his free hand. “Realistically, there’s only two things it could be: the jungle or the ocean.”

  Mathilde peers into the darkness of the jungle, where the vegetation is packed as tight as a starlet’s wardrobe. “I hope it’s not in the jungle. I don’t like trees. I have hylophobia.”

  “Hilo-what?”

  “Hylophobia. I’m afraid of trees. It’s quite common.”

  “Afraid of trees? That’s ridiculous,” Tonya says, offhand.

  Mathilde sighs. “It is pretty ridiculous. I wish I could help it, but it’s not rational. My doctor thinks something traumatic happened to me when I was little, and I’ve repressed it…”

  “Hey,” says Ari. He cocks his head to one side. “Did you hear that? I thought I heard something. Like a balloon popping.” Rowan can’t hear anything over the sound of the breakers. “It came from over this way,” Ari says. Cautiously, they creep around the curve of the beach. A Fhage has made it out past the breakers and is bobbing about on the surface like a huge grey-white jellyfish.

  “What’s it doing?” Mathilde asks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was hungry? Maybe it went in there to swallow some fish?”

  Ari shakes his head. “Well, if it did, it made a big mistake.”

  “Yeah,” says Rowan. “The fish could be poisonous.”

  “Not just that,” Mathilde says wistfully. “Without limbs or fins, it’s going to be impossible for it to get back to the beach. The poor thing will be at the mercy of the current and the waves—it could be bobbing out there for days.”

  “Not days,” says Ari. “The sea’s salty, which makes it a hypertonic solution.”

  “Oh my God, you’re right, Ari,” says Tonya, interrupting. “And the Fhage is a semi-permeable membrane. It must be—right?—because it ingests its food through its outer membrane.”

  “Uh-huh, and since water moves from a high solute concentration to a low one—”

  “So, what is it? Is the inside of the Fhage a low solute concentration or a high one?” asks Mathilde.

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Tonya says. “Eventually, it’ll either shrivel to nothing or swell up and burst.”

  “It’ll burst,” says Ari. “I think one already did.”

  “Oh, no,” says Mathilde, her eyes fixed on the Fhage. “What a horrible way for any creature to die.”

  Rowan shakes his head. Mathilde is sad about the Fhage. How can anyone feel compassion for those ugly shambling plastic bags? Its team member certainly didn’t stand on ceremony when it chomped down on the Taikarion earlier.

  “I wish…”

  Tonya cuts in. “We can’t save it, Mathilde. And even if we could, it wouldn’t return the favour. It’d probably devour us on the spot.”

  “Oh, I know. It’s just this Conclave. That Fhage probably didn’t want to be here any more than we do. We’re, all of us, just fireflies in a jar, while the spectators wait to find out which of the lights go out first.”

  Rowan is surprised to see Tonya reach out and give Mathilde’s shoulder a squeeze, the action over almost before it begins.

  “What are you looking at?”

  Rowan puts his hands in the air. “Nothing.”

  “But what I don’t get, is why it went out there in the first place?” Ari says, obviously thinking out loud as he gazes at the ocean beyond the Fhage. “Because it must have known it couldn’t swim. Which suggests that the challenge is in the sea.”

  “Where, though?” Rowan strains his eyes. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Whatever it is, it must be a long way off. Hang on,” says Tonya. She runs back up the sand towards the jungle and sits down next to a tall palm where she begins to tie her shoelaces together.

  “What’s she doing?” Mathilde, says, puzzled, as they follow her up the beach, leaving the Fhage foundering in the waves.

  “I think she plans to climb the tree. To take a look from height.”

  Rowan sees Mathilde shudder as Tonya, her laces spliced, stands and jumps herself to the tree in a bizarre one-person sack race. Then, after spitting on her hands, she grasps the tree trunk and begins shimmying upwards, bunny hopping her feet in small leaps and using the tension between the laces to prevent herself from slipping.

  Rowan shades his eyes as he watches her ascend. After a few minutes, Ari calls to her. “What do you see?”

  “There’s definitely some white water out there. I can see large patches of white in two, no, make that three, places.”

  “What do you think?” Ari calls back. “Are those white areas markers or monsters?”

  This time it’s Rowan who shudders. After the spiders, he doesn’t have the stomach to face another oversized monster. Not in the water.

  “I can’t really tell,” Tonya calls. “Even from up here, it’s too far out. But I’m pretty sure that’s where we need to get. There are already a few craft out there.”

  “Can you see anything else?”

  Tonya scans the area, looking up and down the beach, and even twisting around for a glance over the jungle.

  “Just trees.”

  “Come down, then.”

  She shimmies down, and wipes her hands in two long strokes down the front of her pants. Then she sits on the sand and picks at the knot holding her trainers together, her brow wrinkled. Seeing her struggling, Mathilde hunkers beside her. “Here, let me get that,” she says.

  “So, if there are other teams beyond the surf, where do you think they got the boats?” Ari asks.

  “Maybe they found them on the beach and then scuttled what was left,” suggests Rowan. “It’s what I would’ve done. Slow the other teams down.”

  Ari nods. “Yes, it’s a good strategy.”

  “But we haven’t seen any boats, broken or otherwise,” Tonya says. “I looked along the beach. I definitely didn’t see anything. Nothing
half-submerged along the shoreline either.”

  “Well, we can’t swim out there. It’s too far. We’re going to need some kind of vessel.”

  Suddenly, another team bursts out of the trees to their right, hurrying down the beach towards the waves. It’s the Crons—the remaining three team members—their silver manes glinting against the white sand. Between the three of them, they’re carrying a crucible. With their eyes on the beach, the shaggy beasts don’t see the Terreans, who automatically step back into the trees and out of sight. Rowan notes that Ari takes Mathilde’s hand to calm her as they crouch amongst the trees. Her eyes are wide and she has covered her mouth, obviously frightened of the trees, but not wanting to give away their location.

  Rowan turns his attention back to the Crons, who are now manoeuvring their vessel through the foaming breakers. When they’re about waist deep, one scrambles into the little boat, clumsily dragging the other two afterwards. The overgrown teddy bears disappear from view for a while, then reappear, each holding a misshapen oar. But while they’ve been retrieving their oars, a wave has buffeted the craft, turning it sideways. A swell is coming; if they can’t turn their boat in time, it’ll be swamped…

  “They’re going to capsize,” Tonya whispers.

  Rowan holds his breath hopefully, but the biggest Cron, fathoming the danger, leans out and, pushing an oar into the foam, uses its massive strength to turn the little craft and its occupants towards the wave. All it takes is a single deft movement. Rowan releases his breath as the vessel bobs over the crest and slides into smoother water. Immediately, the Crons strike out, making good progress with their rudimentary oars as they make their way to the second challenge.

  Ari turns away from the beach, staring at the trees. “They came from the jungle. They must have got their boat from in there.”

  “They did,” says Tonya. “And I think I might know where from: there’s a stand of massive trees about a kilometre in. I’ve never seen trees so tall. They’re positively humungous, towering over the rest of the forest. They reminded me of Jack and the Beanstalk. I didn’t think anything of it before. I mean, they’re just big trees, aren’t they? But did you see the Crons’ oars? They were weird-looking, like stiffened leaves. And the boat looked odd, too. It makes me wonder if it was some kind of giant seed pod.”