by Kit Downes
The announcer judge swung a hammer and the immense bronze gong boomed. Haragan and the girl began in the same instant. Two purple spirals erupted from her palms and twirled through the air towards him. Haragan batted each aside with a separate hand and heard impressed murmuring from the judges. He sent a stun spell at her. She blocked it and then surprised him by casting another straight back. The fighting stance was not slowing her down. She cast her spells fast, one after the other like beats on a drum. Haragan matched her rhythm, blocking and counter-attacking with ease. She was very good.
Haragan sent a series of glowing, shrieking spellworms from his right hand, to distract her while he called a Tremor spell into being with his left. This was his secret weapon, which he’d used to win fights against dozens of challenging opponents. It wasn’t combat magic, so no one expected it, and Haragan knew how to make it silent and invisible. All it did was shift the ground under his opponent’s feet. It startled them, distracted them – put them off balance and broke their concentration. And his next spell always broke through. Haragan had dreamt up the technique himself and told no one about it. It was simple and elegant and he was very proud of it. Who wouldn’t be, for all the victories it had won him?
With an almost lazy left hand, Haragan cast the spell. He was dumbstruck to watch the girl jump two feet in the air, straight above it. He saw the gleam of triumph in her eye and heard the astonished gasp from the audience. Magic contests happened on two firm feet.
He understood in an instant. She had guessed. She must have been waiting her turn in the audience and watching when he used it on one of the five previous contestants. This wasn’t good. She’d found a weakness. She could…
The girl cast a spell while still in the air. The Cymbal spell struck Haragan’s forehead like a straight punch and knocked him flat, with the sound of an orchestra ringing in his head. He’d fallen out of the diamond. She had won. His Shadow teammates gasped. And then the audience, and other contestants, and even the announcer, cheered so loudly that Haragan thought the sky would fall in. The flagstones shook and the awnings rippled from the clapping and stamping of feet.
Dari and someone else helped Haragan to his feet just in time to watch the girl being congratulated for “such a brilliant distraction technique”. And then her fat father had come surging out of the audience to embrace her and swing her round. But she had looked back at him before she was surrounded by the jubilant spectators. A fierce, triumphant smile. Up until that moment, Haragan had been dazed, dizzy and confused, not quite sure what had happened. But with that look, that smile, the one he himself had given to so many losers, he knew that she had won.
The rest of the competition had been torture. He had been forced to sit on the sidelines and watch as she went through his teammates like a camel through a cactus patch. Once the orchestra had finished playing, he had to listen too: to their moans, groans and cries of pain as – for the first time in living memory – the Shadow Society lost.
The defeat had almost crushed him. His teammates were all stunned. They had walked back to base in silence. But news of Zara Aura had spread. Passers-by smirked and pointed and stallholders laughed. Haragan could not believe it. For all his hard work and effort, he had lost. He had achieved nothing. The Shadow Society knew it too. None of his teammates would have talked unless asked straight out, but somehow the news had got back to the secret headquarters ahead of them. The whole team would be punished and disciplined, but Haragan was supposed to be the team leader; he knew the severest treatment would come to him.
The Leader was waiting to greet them when they got back. Haragan had never seen the man before but knew at first glance who he was. The Leader had not spoken, he had just taken Haragan by the shoulder and led him through the corridors and tunnels to the place where failure was punished. The Dark Room.
Thrust through the door, which faded once it was closed behind him, Haragan could not tell if the room was a cupboard or a gigantic hall. The darkness was total. He took a few steps forward, arms stretched out in front. Then a tremendous, leering face screamed into existence before him. Haragan leapt back in terror, recognizing it from a nightmare he’d had at the age of three. He landed in a pile of writhing snakes, cold and slick with acid. Jumping up, another monster charged him, sending him running through the darkness, straight into the clawed embrace of a third.
Haragan was told later that he’d spent a day in the room. A day was a long time. Monsters and demons had leered, roared and torn him apart several times. When he ran out of nightmares, real memories took their place. His training masters beat him with a fury they never had in real life. Every bully he had ever known stood over him with triumph in their eyes. His friends laughed, and then turned away from him. A man and a woman he didn’t recognize, but knew to be his parents, appeared. Their lips twisted with revulsion as they pushed him away from them. The Cosmos Vulture screeched and tried to bite him as he stood before it. And last of all was Zara Aura. The room, or whatever mysterious power controlled it, re-enacted her defeat of him to perfection. It added extra humiliations too. She laughed as she stood over him. She kicked dust into his face. All the spectators were there as well, and in the room, Haragan realized how many of them he recognized from coming to watch his other matches.
He had finally been released, to stagger out, wide-eyed and sticky with sweat, to collapse on the floor at the Leader’s feet. His friends were there too, and this time they waited for him to pick himself up.
And that was where it had begun. The feud between Haragan of the Shadows and Zara Aura. For the next five years they had both been in every magical contest they were eligible for. They both swept away all other contenders to face each other in the final round. And then anything could happen. Either of them could win or lose, depending on whoever had had the better idea for a new secret technique, but it was always a very close-run victory. Haragan would sit up by candlelight for nights beforehand, running through his plans and strategies. He would meditate beneath waterfalls. He would practise every technique, every movement, every heartbeat, to perfection. And still Zara Aura had a damn good chance against him.
He had never been sent back into the Dark Room. No one was a second time. The Society knew of its power to destroy men’s minds. But each lost match down the years had been punished. More and more training and tests. Latrine duty. A full cleaning roster. The most monotonous missions available were sent straight to Haragan. No matter how hard he worked beforehand, it was never taken into consideration. Losing was failure, and failure was punished. After Zara Aura’s third victory over him, Haragan found himself near to tears over how unfair it was.
But that did not matter now.
Haragan let go of the rock and stood up, his legs still wavering. He pulled his carpet down from its hovering height and sat on it.
It did not matter any more. The past did not matter. Because, long moments ago, he had won the final victory. He had beaten Zara Aura for good. Never again would she bounce back to bite him. The last laugh was his, and Haragan leapt up from his carpet to laugh out loud and dance around the crater’s lip.
He had done it. He had won.
All that was left to do was to win the race.
Haragan jumped onto his carpet and began to fly. The front edge, where Thesa’s sword had gone through, flapped back, and the carpet came to a stop. Haragan was too happy to curse. He just turned the carpet round in the air, looked over his shoulder and flew it backwards down towards the city to begin the next stage of his plan.
Zal screamed with anger all the way down, the medallion clenched in his hand. Since he’d formed his Citadel Guard ambition, he had been determined that death wouldn’t have an easy time taking him. So he screamed and flailed his arms, trying to fly … and then plunged into very deep, very cold water. His head went under and the freezing water rushed into his nose and mouth. He surfaced, spitting and gasping for air, the chill making his heart pound. Zara was floating a few feet from him, surprised but unha
rmed. Rip was doggy-paddling about next to her.
They had fallen three hundred feet into a wide lake at the bottom of the crater. They had failed to see it on the way down because of the shadow cast by the palace and the volcano’s rim. Light did reach down on the far side, however, touching the water and creating rippling reflections on the smooth volcanic walls. Zal and Zara both swam towards this, and floated in the light.
“It must be the emergency reservoir,” said Zara, looking about her in wonder.
“Are you all right?” Zal said.
“I’m fine. Fine.” Zara gazed up at the sky through the crescent gap between crater and palace wall.
“The emergency reservoir?”
“Yes. You’ve never heard the stories? The Caliph’s great-great-grandfather was an obsessive butterfly collector. He once fell down a dry well while chasing a golden moisture tail. It was three days before he was found and rescued. He spent the rest of his life terrified of dying of thirst, or of anyone else in Azamed doing the same. So he started storing water for if the wells in the city ever dried up. An emergency supply. This must be it.”
“Amazing,” said Zal. “And I can’t believe our luck.” He looked up at the walls of the crater. They were coated with volcanic glass, near smooth and frictionless with no obvious handholds. He didn’t notice when the water behind them shivered.
“How are we going to get out of here?” he said. “Can you use your magic?”
“Not to get us out,” said Zara, scratching Rip’s head. “It’s too high to levitate, and I couldn’t carry you and Rip. But I can use telepathy to call for help.”
“Great,” said Zal. “Well, do it and let’s get out of here.”
Zara looked at him with contempt. “Have you forgotten why we’re down here?”
“Haragan pushed us…”
“We’re looking for the secret of the rainbow carpet, you moron.”
“We’re not going to find it floating in an underground reservoir!” Zal argued.
“No, but over there looks promising.”
Zara pointed ahead and to their left, where the water lapped at the mouth of a cave. Stone steps, identical to the ones Haragan had crumbled from beneath them, led up into darkness.
“Now, hold on. They could lead anywhere. We could end up in more trouble than we’re in now.”
“I think we’re doing OK at the moment,” said Zara. “Haragan thinks we’re dead. He’s not going to bother chasing us any more. We can weave the carpet back at your place with no—”
The still water in front of them suddenly exploded upwards, drenching them in white foam. A blue-scaled, forty-foot water dragon, as thick as a tree trunk, reared up from the depths. It vented a high-pitched, furious scream that stung their ears and shook their bones.
“AAAAAARGHH!” they screamed in unison. Even Rip joined in. Then the trio struck forward and swam as hard and fast as they could towards the cave mouth. To Zal it now looked as inviting as a warm feather bed. The water dragon roared again and breathed a huge cloud of ice shards, each as long and sharp as a spear. They rained down into the water around Zal and Zara, fortunately all missing their targets.
“Swim!” Zal and Zara shouted to each other.
The dragon hissed in anger and dived down at them, its jaws wide open. It fell short by about an inch and the wave created by its head hitting the water lifted Zal, Zara and Rip, sweeping them forward into the cave. They scrambled up the first few steps on their hands and knees, and then they were up and running for their lives.
The stairs only led up a short distance before becoming a long narrow corridor and then another staircase that led down into the cold heart of the mountain. They skidded to a stop on the first landing they came to. Zal and Zara collapsed side by side and hugged each other, trembling as they caught their breath. Rip stretched out on the floor and panted.
“I … didn’t think … they could grow … that big,” said Zara. Water dragons were usually the size of cats. In Azamed they were expensive, exotic pets. The very wealthy liked to have two or three swimming in the fountains of their gardens, where they could rear up out of the water and hiss at visitors.
“You were wrong,” said Zal. He looked around. “Where are we now?”
They seemed to be in a larger space than they had realized. The landing was the entrance to a deep, low-roofed cave dripping with sharp stalactites, while the stairs continued off to the right, down to another landing. Zal stood up and stumbled over to the low balcony wall. He looked over.
“Creator within us!”
Zara hurried after him, looked and gasped. Rip jumped up too, resting his front paws on the ledge. His eyes widened.
The cave seemed to be bottomless. They were at the top, which was relatively narrow, but it widened as it went down. A city had been carved into its walls. Hundreds of doors and windows led off it. Stairs criss-crossed back and forth, connecting the landings and levels and the sides of the cave. Strange channels were cut into the walls, almost like aqueducts, and all of a sudden, Zal understood their purpose. The city was so ancient, it must have existed when the volcano was active. The channels controlled the lava, preventing it from destroying the city. But the cave wasn’t open to the sky, and he could tell it never had been. They must have harnessed the lava, turning it to their use for heat and light. But whoever “they” were, they were long gone, Zal could tell in an instant. The city beneath them was dead. Cities had their own distinctive smells: Azamed was always alive with the scents of flowers and spices. The cold air from this city smelt of dust.
“You were right,” he said.
“Hmm?” said Zara, tearing her eyes from the incredible sight below.
“This does look a promising place to find the secret. The legends must be true.”
“Which legends?”
“That Azamed was built on the ruins of an even more ancient city. This has got to be it.”
Zal led the way down the next section of stairs, and the next, and the next. They peered into the carved stone rooms as they went. Aside from thick dust, all were empty. There was no furniture, no belongings, not one single object left anywhere. Rip tried to go inside one but shot out again as he disturbed a large family of bats, who fluttered around them for a moment and then flew up into the cavern roof and vanished from sight. Along the landings were occasional breaks in the balcony wall – gaps a few feet wide that had definitely been built for a purpose.
“We’re getting warmer,” said Zara as they passed one.
“How do you mean?”
“These would have been where they launched their carpets from. They’d have needed carpets in here to get up and down the levels. Quicker than walking.”
They continued their downward journey for nearly an hour. As they went they talked, discussing what they would like to do to Haragan when they finally escaped. Eventually they came to a large semi-circular balcony that occupied almost half of the shaft. In the middle of the flat side stood an ancient stone podium.
“Someone would make speeches, standing there,” said Zara, her eyes distant as she imagined the scene, centuries ago. She pointed up at the three levels of balconies on the other wall. “People would stand on those to listen. And when there wasn’t any space left, they’d hover on carpets.”
“Rainbow carpets!” said Zal, with sudden triumph and amazement, pointing at the curved wall behind the balcony. There was a pair of double stone doors in a doorway lavished with carvings. Etched onto the doors themselves were impressions of carpets. There were no colours, but each had seven clear patterns defined on it.
“I think we’ve found what we’re looking for,” said Zal.
“I think you’re right!”
Rip yapped, sensing their joy. The trio rushed forward, laughing, to push open the doors. What Zal had failed to notice was the carvings on each side of the door. These were fainter, of human figures clad in armour and carrying weapons. Just as Zal’s hand touched the door, another hand shot out from nowh
ere and seized his wrist. The hand was strong, but withered. The skin was yellow and cracked like old parchment and was shrunken to the hand’s bones. Zal’s eyes moved up the withered arm and body to the almost skeletal, eyeless face.
“YAAAAAH!” He screamed and twisted against the mummy’s grip but its hold on him was too tight. As Zal flailed, he registered in a dim, non-terrified part of his mind that another mummy had appeared and was holding Zara. She threw out a spell, but a line of strange symbols carved on the mummy’s breastplate suddenly glowed gold. They were protection runes and the magic splashed harmlessly off the metal. Zal looked behind his own attacker and understood. The mummies were the carvings. They had been standing in alcoves on each side of the doors. The way the grey dust poured in torrents off his attacker showed they must have been waiting there for centuries.
“Gouftarn? Karlial gouftarn?” the mummy guard holding Zara demanded. The expressionless hole that was its mouth had dry skin and small, stretched lips. Zara shuddered at the sight of the cracked yellow teeth and dry shrivelled tongue as it opened and closed.
“We don’t speak your language!” Zal shouted as he struggled to get free. He reached for his sword, but the mummy had already removed it without him noticing.
The guards turned to face the doors. While they could move their arms quickly, their half mummified legs left something to be desired. Turning ninety degrees took them almost thirty seconds of slow shuffling, Zal and Zara stumbling round with them. Rip, who had hung back terrified, now leapt at the mummy holding Zal. Without looking, the guard caught the yapping dog under his free arm. Rip tore a chunk out of the forearm with his teeth, exposing grey bone. The mummy did not even flinch. Rip spat out the dead flesh, repulsed by the taste.
With the grind of stone on stone, the doors opened under their own power. The mummies shuffled forward, their rusted armour clattering. Zal and Zara were led into a long, low-ceilinged room with a carved stone throne at the far end. More mummies, eighteen in total, prised themselves out of their wall alcoves and stood to attention in two lines. Zal and Zara were pulled down between the lines to stand before the throne.
