Zal and Zara and the Great Race of Azamed

by Kit Downes

  Before Zara could reply, Rip gave a sudden yap, catching their attention. He had wandered off to the far side of the room and was sniffing at the legs of a table. It had an old, fading scent spiralled around it that would probably get swept away the next time the room was dusted. But Rip recognized it. He’d smelt it not long ago in Qwinton’s room when Zara opened the chest.

  “What is it, boy?” Zal asked as he and Zara walked over. They saw that the table was actually a display case with a glass lid, and that inside…

  “Holy Stork!” said Zal. “It’s another fragment!”

  It was. Another torn section of rainbow carpet. It was older, more frayed and ragged than Qwinton’s treasure, but it had flown. The magic still glistened on the threads like tiny stars.

  “Amazing,” said Zara. “Qwinton has to know about this one as well. He must just have forgotten why he was telling us to look in the library.”

  “It’s unbelievable,” said Zal. “What’s this here?”

  He had stepped to the side and was examining the other part of the case. A large sheet of yellowed parchment, as dry and fragile as a fallen autumn leaf, was stretched out in it. Its surface was covered in writing in faded blue ink. The script and characters were alien to Zal. He had seen nothing like them before. But he had seen…

  “Aha!” Zara pointed to the small symbol printed in the top corner. “The seal of Caliph Rabo the First himself! This is it. Well done, Rip!”

  Zal was absorbed in the small drawings on the parchment. Blood, fire, flesh, plants, the sun, the sky, water … the physical incarnations of the seven colours, all sketched in ink at the parchment’s edges. There was also a drawing of a strange spider and some sort of cliff edge, a small section where a large crack appeared in the rock wall.

  “Hey,” said Zara. She pointed at the last sketch. “I know that!”

  “You know it?”

  “I recognize it,” Zara said, gazing at the drawing.

  “How could you recognize it? This scroll is a thousand years old!”

  “Trust me,” said Zara. “I know where that is, and it’s where we need to go. I’ll explain on the way. Come on.”

  Zal was about to follow, when something else caught his eye. A gleam from the other side of the room.

  “Hold on,” he said. “What’s that?”

  He led the way over to another table, which had a chair before it. An ink pot, a jar of quills and several rolls of blank parchment were arranged on it in a careless way.

  “It must be the Caliph’s writing desk,” said Zara.

  “Look,” said Zal.

  He moved one of the scrolls aside. Beneath it, in a small jewellery box, was the largest, most beautiful diamond ring either of them had ever seen. The stone was blue-white and the sunlight from the windows blazed on its corners and edges like tiny stars. A cooling light of its own seemed to glow from within it. It was mounted on a slim gold ring carved with a pattern of interwoven leaves.

  “That’s beautiful,” said Zara. “Holy Stork! I’m so tempted to try it on.”

  “I’m tempted to do something else,” said Zal.

  “What?”

  “Take it,” said Zal. He gazed at the ring, longing in his eyes. “Be honest. Our chances of finding this rainbow carpet secret are small. This is worth a lot more than ten thousand gold pieces.”

  He looked at Zara.

  “It would solve all our problems in one go.”

  There was a long pause. They both looked at the ring.

  “You’ve got a point,” said Zara. “It’s sure to be a lot easier than whatever lies ahead.”

  “We could rebuild and restock the shop in a few days,” Zal said.

  The ring sat there and whispered to them in a soft, tempting tone.

  Zal opened his hand. It was inches away. It would be so simple just to reach out…

  “The shop could be better than it was before,” said Zara. “Dad and I could get our kitchen decorated at last…”

  “There would be more than enough to share,” said Zal. His hand and wrist throbbed. The jewel stopped its whispering and began to sing – the most beautiful, seductive tune Zal had ever heard. Its lyrics were promises of possibility.

  “But I don’t know,” said Zara, biting her lip. Her hands were also aching. It was tempting.

  “It’s probably a present for one of his daughters, isn’t it?” Zal said. “And if I take it…”

  “There’d be hell to pay if we were caught,” said Zara. “We’d be ruined. Again. But I can use magic to cover up everything that proves we were in here. We could re-carve it before we sell it. I think we could get away with it.”

  “But we still wouldn’t be in the race,” said Zal.

  “And we’d be no better than the Shadow Society.”

  Zal shook himself and relaxed his arm. “No. I can’t do it.”

  “You’re right. Me neither.”

  “It was a stupid idea.”

  “Yes.”

  They stood gazing at the jewel for another minute.

  “Let’s go and find that place on the map.”

  “Yes.”

  They turned and walked purposefully away from the seductive stone and closed the library door behind them.

  “It was an easy way out,” said Zal.

  “Yes,” agreed Zara. “We wouldn’t have got anything from it.”

  “Let’s walk faster.”

  “Excellent idea.”

  They resisted the temptation to turn back and travelled, without discovery, through the palace, back the way they had come. The jewel’s song faded away with the sound of their footsteps in the empty halls.

  Blue

  They passed the same guard on their way out.

  “Oh,” he said. “Hello. Again.”

  “Hello,” said Zara. “Sorry we can’t stop.”

  “Yes,” said Zal, keen to join in. “The master now needs his butler, his blackmailer and his singlestick-maker. And I need some more tools.”

  “Please wish them luck,” said the guard, who was pondering early retirement.

  They left the gardens and Zara led the way round the crater’s rim. This was a circle of space between the city and the palace. The ground slope, ragged and tufted with grass, was far too steep for houses to be built on. It was a wasteland that nobody did anything with, save for the children who enjoyed it as a playground. Zal and Zara scrambled along the slope like crabs, using their hands as well as their feet. Zal stuck close behind Zara, who seemed to know exactly where they were going. She talked as they hurried along.

  “About two years ago,” she said, “some friends and I got into trouble at school.”

  “What for?”

  “We were all sick and tired of the headmaster’s cat,” Zara replied, vaulting over a boulder. “A huge, horrible black thing. It always took the best chairs in the common room and scratched anyone who tried to share. Hani’s still got the scars. So a few of us got together, and we decided to even the score.”

  “How?” Zal followed her over the boulder and Rip ran round it.

  “Well, when the cat wasn’t scratching or biting, it was catching mice. That was the one thing it was good for. So we used that against it.”

  “How?”

  “We caught a mouse alive and enchanted it so it could bite through steel.”

  “Wow!” said Zal.

  “The showdown was brilliant.” Zara smiled at the memory.

  “It must have been, by the Stork! I’d have loved to have seen it,” said Zal.

  “I did think about inviting you,” Zara said, “but it was the week after the Under 10s fencing contest, when we weren’t talking to each other. Anyway, the head didn’t think it was as funny as we did. We hadn’t learned enough magic to cover our tracks – they found out who we all were in five minutes. The punishment was to run fifty laps round here, casting as many basic spells as we could without stopping. Horrible, difficult and exhausting.”

  Zal slipped and sent a smal
l avalanche of pebbles and stones rumbling down the slope. He pulled himself up again.

  “Did you manage it?”

  “It almost killed us, but yes,” Zara said, looking around her. “And on the way round, we passed … this!”

  And there it was. A cleft in the lip of the volcano, just as it had been drawn on the parchment.

  “Brilliant!” said Zal. “But what’s special about it?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Rip got there first and pushed his nose through the bottom of the crack. He sniffed and yipped to say it was safe. Zal and Zara, of course, did not understand him and peered in with great caution.

  “Hmmm,” they said together.

  The crack was a narrow – possibly camouflaged – opening to three large stone steps that began to lead down into the volcano. The edge of the bottom step was jagged and crumbled. There had once been more steps, but they had collapsed long ago. Zara stepped through the crack and touched the top step with a careful foot. It didn’t shift or shudder.

  “It feels OK.”

  Zal stepped through beside her, then twisted to pick up Rip and lift him through. The three of them peeped over the bottom step. There was nothing but darkness to be seen below.

  “There was a way down,” Zal said. “To something.”

  “The secret of the carpet fragments?” Zara wondered.

  “Well, maybe. But something else as well. A staircase into the crater is a lot to build. I wonder what it was.”

  “You’ll soon find out,” said a voice behind them.

  Zal and Zara spun round so fast that they almost knocked each other off the edge. Rip barked in surprise.

  “Haragan!” Zara yelled.

  It was indeed him, wrapped in brown as always and seated on his carpet, which floated above the crack. He radiated triumph and smugness.

  “The very same,” he said. “And I continue to be amazed by your stupidity.”

  “Come down here and say that!” Zal started to draw his scimitar, then realized there was so little arm space on the steps that he was liable to cut himself.

  “Try following two people around all morning with neither of them spotting you, and you’ll reconsider.”

  “I know it was you last night,” Zara breathed, bubbling with fury. Her fists were clenched and even Rip could feel her magic building.

  “Of course it was,” said Haragan. “But do you really think I consider you such easy meat that I’d wreck your carpet and all your materials and then say job done? We know each other better than that.”

  Zal had managed to draw his scimitar and now faced the problem of how to swing it without hurting Zara. He stalled for time.

  “What do you want?”

  “To ensure my victory in the race before it has begun,” Haragan said.

  “I’m going to cut you out of the air, Haragon!” said Zal.

  “Haragan,” said Haragan. “And you’re not. But thank you for setting out on this quest. By following you, I’ve seen all the threats to my victory that still remain. I’m now off to neutralize them. You two, however, have some falling to do.”

  Zara shot up her hand and cast magic, but Haragan was ready. He deflected it with his right hand and used his left to shoot a separate bolt, aimed not at Zara but at the join between the steps and the volcano wall. The rock disintegrated in an explosion of dust. The steps broke free and plummeted downwards like a hailstone. Zal didn’t hear Zara’s scream. Filled with rage, he had launched himself forward, sword raised. He was ready to leap up to the level of Haragan’s carpet, but the ground vanished from under him. He fell short but succeeded in slashing a ten-inch cut into the carpet, causing it to lurch in the air. His other hand reached for Haragan’s neck. Haragan flinched backwards and Zal grabbed hold of his medallion. The chain went taut, broke, and then Zal was falling, feet first, into the darkness.

  Haragan scrambled backwards on his carpet and toppled off the back edge onto the crater ledge. Magic flying at his face was one thing. He was used to that. But a long, sharp scimitar blade was quite another. Haragan dropped to the ground, panting and trembling. The speed and accuracy with which the sword had moved … the gleam in Thesa’s eye… He had thought for an instant that he was going to be sliced in half. Haragan gripped a nearby rock to stop his hands from shaking. He tried to slow his breathing.

  He quickly offered a prayer of thanks to the Cosmos Vulture – something, he was ashamed to admit, he didn’t do as often as he should. He had been terrified … but … it was over.

  It was over at last.

  Haragan breathed out and found himself remembering how it had begun.

  Five years ago. A hot summer afternoon. There were two kinds of afternoon in summer: heavy ones, where the heat weighed down your limbs and made every movement difficult; and electric ones, where you could taste the charge and the sparkle of lightning in the air. The afternoon of the Under 10s magic contest had been an electric one for him and a heavy one for everyone else.

  The contest was being held on the flat grey flagstones of the eastern market square, a place filled with bright awnings over stalls of fruit and vegetables, and plenty of Azamed’s beautiful flowers. They, at least, with their dazzling colours, seemed to be cheering him on. If his life had been different, Haragan mused, a career as a florist – no, a gardener – would have suited him down to the ground.

  He was pulled away from his happy daydream by his opponent at the other end of the spell-casting diamond. The boy, a student from the Magician’s Guild who was plump and called Hani-something, flung a nervous, clumsy spell in his direction. Haragan did not even glance to see what the spell was. He batted it aside with one hand and fired back an Endless River spell with the other. It hit the other boy square in the face and he fell backwards with a moaning howl as he burst into tears. One of the Guild teachers ran forward to help him up and then led the sobbing boy over to a side bench to join three over contestants who were weeping with the same fury. Endless River spells, which made it impossible to stop crying for three hours, were Haragan’s trademark.

  The young Haragan was on a roll. The contest had been running for an hour, and he was one match away from victory. He’d been the first Shadow candidate to step forward. No one had yet needed to replace him, as he’d beaten every other contestant hands down. He’d avoided stun spells, blocked bone-stealing spells and thwarted three attempts to turn him into a gibbon. He’d responded with Endless River spells and blinding Sunbeam spells and had even turned one wealthy, home-schooled girl into an iguana. All those who’d faced him were now slumped, exhausted and beaten, in among the spectators, who clapped with tired politeness each time he won.

  The clapping filled him with grim satisfaction. Haragan loved magical contests. It was the only life he had outside the Society. He had no family save for his fellow students and teachers and no home besides his tiny room at the headquarters. He had been abandoned as a baby and snatched up by the Shadow Society before any of Azamed’s hospitals could find him and offer him up for adoption. The Society magicians had sensed his ability to cast all seven colours of magic and saw nothing in him but potential. He had not been invited into the order, as most recruits were; he had been given no choice at all.

  Haragan had never known anything but schooling and training. He had never owned or worn any clothes save for the brown uniform and mask. But he still felt the full brunt of the hatred many Azamedians held for Shadows. He’d been tripped up, shouldered and hissed at in the streets enough times. The Azamedians made their feelings known to the young Shadows because they would not dare do it to the elders. The contests were when Haragan took his own back. He was the reigning champion. He beat every contestant that came at him and he made it look easy.

  As he stood, relaxed, at his end of the arena, waiting for the next and final contestant to walk forward, he wished it was easy. In fact it was very hard. The victories he won required years: years of practice contests with other Shadows; months of practising spells on wo
oden targets to cast them as fast as possible; weeks spent in the Society’s library, memorizing an endless list of spells, enchantments and magical combat techniques.

  He didn’t do it alone, of course. Oh no, there were always others studying beside him. And there were the training masters, who appeared at odd moments to test him with questions or attack him suddenly as he walked down a corridor. They would nod when he succeeded and punish him when he failed. A mistaken answer: the next day would be spent drilling the correct one into his head. A spell getting through his defences: a day of being pummelled with it until he could stop it without thinking.

  It was a brilliant and successful teaching method. The trophies Haragan had carried home showed that. But it was hard, involving early rising and very late nights. Haragan always seemed to collapse onto his bed pallet exhausted, drained of magic and with reddened fingers from writing with his quill. It was hard and never-ending. It was no way to live life, but it was the only life Haragan knew. And also the contests. They made it worth it.

  “Zara Aura!”

  The shout came from a judge who was also announcer and master of ceremonies. Haragan turned his attention to the blonde, angry-looking girl who stalked towards the painted diamond. (Each contestant stood on one of the two furthest points, and cast their magic only within the diamond.) She met his eyes, and the venom in her gaze startled Haragan for a moment, but he soon composed himself. An angry magician was never a good fighter. They did not concentrate; they made mistakes.

  The other Shadow contestants, who had cheered with real enthusiasm when Haragan triumphed, did some sniggering as Zara Aura took her place on the diamond. These became soft jeers as she assumed a magical fighting stance and locked her attention on Haragan. Haragan relaxed. Fighting stances were double-edged. She could defend his magic better, but it would slow her down when she cast her own. But that said, Haragan noticed with interest, she was watching his hands. Before any contest, the two opponents looked at each other – it was inevitable. Most watched their opponent’s eyes, trying to spot some glint or flicker that told of a move about to be made. But it was far more sensible to watch the hands, which did the moving. She was not an amateur. The girl did know a thing or two.