Zal and Zara and the Great Race of Azamed

by Kit Downes

  “Yes, that is what I’ve been trying to do for the last two hours.”

  “So, I’m going to use magic to help.”

  Zal looked at her suspiciously.

  “How?”

  Zara pushed him aside and began running her hands over the carving. Blue magic glowed beneath her fingers.

  “Right. I’m ready.”

  She stepped aside and pushed Zal in front of the carving. Standing behind him, she rested her hands on his shoulders, but Zal flinched away.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “I’m using magic to help.”

  “No, I mean what exactly are you doing?”

  “I’m going to guide your sword-arm and the blade. It’s a simple spell. Come on.”

  Zal hesitated. The legends and cautionary tales in Azamed made it very clear that magic was best left to magicians, who knew what they were doing. There were always lots of things that could go wrong. A spell to warm up the tea could bring a wall tumbling down. A growth enchantment could turn a vegetable patch into a rainforest. He thought of all the things he’d heard of people being turned into by mistake. Antelopes, butterflies, water dragons; the list was endless. And only a few of them, maybe the desert ape, could he imagine being any good at fencing.

  “Zara, I’m not sure about…”

  “Come on,” she said. “Nothing bad will happen. I can control my magic. I won’t turn you into a dung-beetle or anything.”

  “A dung-beetle!”

  “It happened to Hani once, but I know what he did wrong. And this isn’t even a transformation spell.”

  Zal still hesitated. He wanted to get the door open, but despite Zara’s words, the risk seemed tremendous – as huge as a mountain. And even if it did work, was that how he wanted to say he had completed the six cuts? With the help of magic?

  But… He was not doing this for himself. He and Zara weren’t trying to find the secret so they could win the race. They weren’t trying to find it so they could laugh in Haragan’s face. They were trying to save Dad from ruin. And that made it worth the risk.

  He turned back towards the carving.

  “All right. Let’s do it.”

  Zara placed her hands back on his shoulders and closed her eyes. A hazy green mist appeared and swirled around Zal’s arms.

  “Whoa!” he said, stepping back.

  “Trust me,” said Zara. “Start when you’re ready.”

  “Trust you? Earlier you took my legs…”

  As the mist settled round Zal’s forearms, it was as if they were glowing. There was no pain, just a strange tingling sensation, and Zal realized this was what magicians must feel when they cast their magic. He raised his scimitar, took a deep breath and swung. The tingling was still there, but it didn’t seem to affect his arm at all. The air whispered as the blade sliced through the first crack as smoothly and easily as a cloth on glass. It didn’t touch the stone. The magic was working! Zal smiled, reversed his grip and brought the blade back up through the second groove. By the fourth cut, his smile had become a beam. The fifth was perfect. He raised the blade for the sixth and almost hesitated, but brought it down. He stopped breathing as the tip of the blade entered the groove. It passed through without a sound.

  “Drat!” said Zara. “Sorry. Let’s start again. Slow it down this time.”

  “What?”

  “You moved too fast. I couldn’t cast magic at the same pace. Let’s try—”

  “No, you don’t understand. I did it,” said Zal.

  “You just tried for two hours without managing to do it,” said Zara, “and this door is still most definitely clo—”

  Stone shrieked against stone as the door moved. Black dust billowed out from the cracks. Zal, Zara and Rip staggered back, choking, as the age-old door opened.

  “I … did it!” Zal coughed, waving away the dust.

  Zara deliberately continued coughing for far longer than she needed to, to avoid answering. Finally she gave up and grudgingly spoke. “Well done.”

  Zal was laughing, far too elated to care. He’d done it! The hardest sword exercise ever and he had done it without help. He felt he could do it again: ten thousand times over! He’d ace the Guard entrance trials.

  Rip howled with delight and the pair petted him and brushed the dust out of his fur.

  “Right then,” said Zara. “Let’s see what the secret is.”

  “Spiders?” said Zal. “Spiders?”

  Zara had conjured up a small tornado, which sucked all the dust out of the air and down into one corner of the first chamber. The trio now stood peering through the door to the second chamber. It was the same size as the first, but older – far older. Less skilled hands than those that had made the throne room had carved it out of the rock. The gashes and scars of chisels were still visible in the rough walls.

  The room was hung with a matrix of thick spiders’ webs woven in and out of each other, horizontal, vertical and every angle in between. Only a few touched the walls; most were spun between the others, and the assembly looked ready to collapse at any moment under its own weight. The webs were dotted with dozens of black spiders, about the size of human hands, each creeping leisurely about on its eight hairy legs.

  “I don’t understand,” said Zal. He took a cautious step through the door but did not go any further. “How is this the secret?”

  “I don’t know,” Zara said, leaning past him to look into the room. “It doesn’t make any sense. After you.”

  “Sorry. Where are my manners?” Zal stepped aside. “You go first.”

  “No, please…”

  “I insist…”

  Rip settled it by running between their legs and into the chamber. Zal and Zara both shrugged and walked in together with great care, ducking and twisting round the sticky webs. Zara summoned through some of her magic fireflies to give them light, and a few got caught in the webs. They watched as the spiders scurried over to devour them in three or four bites of their black jaws.

  “Watch where you put your hands.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that, Zal.”

  They looked around. Aside from the webs, the walls of the chamber were bare of decoration. A broken, dusty spinning-wheel stood in one corner. Zal weaved his way over to examine it.

  Rip scurried past him under the webs to the corner of the chamber behind the wheel. He yapped in excitement.

  “What is it, boy?”

  Careful of the webs, Zal crept over and moved the creaking wheel to one side. He knelt down before Rip’s discovery: a jumbled pile of empty thread spools. Short, plain wooden sticks – the kind that carpet wool was wound round.

  “What’s so special about those?” Zara knelt down next to him.

  “I don’t know. This doesn’t make any…” Zal picked up one of the spools. “Wait a moment…” He felt round the stick with his fingers. Then he appeared to pinch thin air between his thumb and forefinger and draw his hands apart as if unrolling a length of wool from the spool.

  “What are you…” Zara broke off as she realized that while she couldn’t see anything on the spool, or between Zal’s hands, she could see the shadow of a thread on the wall between the shadows of his hands. She reached out, and although there was nothing to see, she could feel wire-thin thread stretched in the air.

  “It’s transparent thread!” exclaimed Zal. “Invisible thread! Nygel’s weavers must have made it from the web of the spiders. I understand now. It’s all seven of the colours and, at the same time, none of them!”

  “Like if you shine different-coloured lights together you always get white?”

  “Yes. That’s why I could feel it in Qwinton’s fragment but not see it. And it’s not magical, so you couldn’t either. This is it. This is the secret. This …”

  “… is what will make our rainbow carpet,” Zara finished.

  They gathered up the spools, two dozen of them, and stuffed them into their pockets.

  “Will this be enough?” Zara asked.<
br />
  “More than enough. Much, much more,” Zal said. “I could weave a dozen carpets with these.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Should I?”

  “I know you don’t like weaving. But even if we win the race, your father will still need a boost to get business going again. A few flying rainbow carpets in the window…”

  “We’d be rich,” said Zal – and then, with more enthusiasm, “we will be rich!”

  “Thank you, I’ll be very happy to put the magic in for you. Now, let’s get out of here.”

  They crawled out from under the webs, stood up and found the bell on the back of the door to the previous chamber.

  “About how we get past the Emperor…” said Zal. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I think so,” said Zara. “And I’ll take care of the mummies.”

  Zal called Rip to heel and then rang the jangling bell. Within seconds, the throne slid aside and the Emperor was before them. Rage and disbelief filled his face.

  “How…?”

  Zal and Zara jumped straight through the ghost before he could finish. It gave the unpleasant sensation of running through an ice-cold waterfall, but they barely noticed. The mummified guards lurched forward to stop them. Zal drew his sword and clashed with three of them at once. Their ancient, rusty spearheads held, but the wood of the spear shafts was aged and hollowed by woodworm and it snapped and shattered, to their great surprise. Zara summoned her tornado back into being and hurled it at the mummies, who flew into the air and crashed against the walls of the throne room. Zal and Zara hopped, skipped and jumped over the sprawling mummies and were out through the door in seconds.

  “Bye!” Zal shouted over his shoulder. “Got a race to win!”

  They raced down the stairs, deeper and deeper into the mountain, laughing and congratulating each other all the way. Rip jumped and barked alongside them, prancing along in pure joy.

  Their voices echoed up and down the volcano shaft, far louder than the Emperor’s had. In the crater, the water dragon raised its head, listening to the faint sound. Above, on the palace roof, Shar hoisted himself back through the skylight and paused as it reached him too. Deciding he’d imagined it, he moved aside for Dari and Haragan.

  The Fire City below the Emperor’s throne room was as ruinous and filled with shadows as the upper levels had been, but Zal and Zara were no longer scared. They almost danced down the stairways, and when the bats, disturbed by their noise, fluttered out of the houses, Rip jumped up at them without fear.

  “We’ve done it!”

  “Didn’t I tell you all along?”

  “Shut up.”

  Zara laughed and summoned more magic fireflies, which wove and spiralled around them as they continued their long descent into the oldest part of the Fire City.

  “You know, Zara, despite all the danger—”

  “Zal!” said Zara, interrupting him.

  Zal stopped. Zara had paused and was looking over the stone banister. He joined her and exclaimed in amazement. Spread out below them was a maze. High stone walls turned at sharp right angles, splitting and branching off and doubling back on themselves. The tops of the walls were coated with dust and the passages between them were concealed by shadows.

  “Ah,” said Zara. “It made no sense when the Emperor said it. But now…”

  “The maze Salladan Shadow’s bodyguards built in one night!” finished Zal. He surveyed its geometric twists and turns. “How, by the Stork, are we going to get through it?”

  “Not a problem.” Zara made the cloud of fireflies spiral around her. “Since that day Dad got us lost in the market, I’ve learnt loads of path-finding spells. We’ll be through it in no time. Now, let’s get down there.”

  They turned to continue downwards but then paused. The next landing ran straight across the shaft above the maze, but instead of leading to more stairs it ran straight into the wall and stopped there.

  “Drat!”

  Zal and Zara walked forward, peering over both sides of the final landing, but there were no more stairs below them. Zal reached the end and began examining the wall.

  “The stairs can’t have collapsed,” said Zara. “No one’s been down here for thousands of years. Who would have moved the rubble?”

  “I don’t think there are stairs,” said Zal. He slapped the stone banister. “I think this landing is a lift.”

  “A lift?”

  “Yep,” said Zal. “I think I need to pull this lever and we’ll go straight down to the maze. Get that path-finding spell ready.”

  He took hold of the rusty metal lever that was mounted on the wall.

  “Wait,” said Zara.

  “For what?”

  Zara regarded the lever. She looked back towards the stairs and along the bridge-like landing.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “Oh,” said Zal. “So now you are psychic?”

  During the first year of their betrothal, when they had been experiencing the opposite of love at first sight, Zal had tried to make the best of a bad situation. Their fathers had been trying to cultivate their relationship by making them attend each other’s magic and fencing competitions. For four contests in a row, Zal had begged Zara to read his opponents’ minds and relay their plans to him by telepathy. Despite her many talents, Zara was not blessed with psychic powers. She had refused to help him with magic anyway, on principle, and Zal, who’d lost two of the four contests, had never quite forgiven her for it.

  “No,” said Zara, “It’s just a normal, bad feeling.”

  “We all get those, and most of them turn out to be nothing,” said Zal. “It’s just because I’ve worked it out before you, isn’t it?”

  Rip scampered up and sniffed around the lever. They both watched, but he neither barked nor growled.

  “Two against one,” said Zal. He pulled on the lever and it didn’t move. Using both hands, he wrenched it down.

  “Zal!”

  “What’s the very worst that could happen? It could turn out to be a trick or a trap or something?”

  Suddenly the landing they stood on flipped upside down. In an instant it had turned over.

  Gravity kicked in when they were halfway round.

  Screaming and barking just as loudly as they had done falling into the crater, Zal, Zara and Rip dropped head over heels down into the maze.

  Zara landed, to her surprise, on her feet. Pain exploded through her ankles and she fell over anyway. Gasping with agony, she struggled up and looked around. The tall walls towered over her. Like the Caliph’s library, the top was so far away that it seemed to close in. The maze had eaten her.

  Zara looked to the right and the left. The passage she stood in seemed to stretch for an equal distance in both directions.

  “Zal!”

  There was no answer. The fool! How could he be so hasty? First he had wanted to wage a one-man war with the Shadow Society, and now this. She should have seen it coming. She had! Why hadn’t she leapt forward and pulled him away from that stupid lever? The sword-obsessed idiot! Distracted, Zara shaped her hands to cast the path-finding spell … and almost fell over in shock when nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing changed. No spell appeared between her cupped palms. Zara strained, terrified. Every muscle in her body burned as she tried to push some magic out.

  None came.

  Zara fell back against the wall and slid to the ground. The mountain and the maze became ten times more cold and frightening than they had been before. She couldn’t cast her magic. It was gone. She was powerless; she was useless. What was Zara Aura if she wasn’t a magician? She wasn’t like Zal, who could fence and reluctantly weave fine carpets and was a good athlete. She was talentless without her magic. What would she do? What could she do?

  Zara’s fireflies were still humming round her, but they would fade as the magic in them cooled. How could she, Zal and Rip get out of the maze without her path-finder spell? They might wander
down here for years. And that was if she could find Zal. Zara jumped up and ran down the left passage at random, calling out to him and Rip. She skidded to a halt as she realized her calls gave off no echo.

  Now she understood. It made perfect sense. There must be a spell, maybe several, laid over the maze. Thick, strong enchantments that stopped her voice from echoing and suppressed her magic powers. Salladan Shadow must have been far more powerful than her. Anything done with magic could be undone with magic; a blocked volcano shaft could be unblocked if the Nygellians had a strong enough magician. But not if that magician couldn’t use his powers.

  Zara began running again. She had to find Zal. That stupid idiot who’d got her down here might now be her only hope.

  Zal also landed on his feet, as did Rip beside him, but he was too angry to notice the pain. He could not believe it. He just could not believe it! It was so unfair! Who had led him out on this crazy quest for a rainbow carpet? Zara. Who had made him sneak into the Caliph’s palace? Zara. Who had eagerly suggested they follow the passage into the unknown when they’d already fallen into an underground reservoir? Zara! But when he tried being impulsive for once, taking a chance, acting and seeing what would happen, it blew up in his face. How did she get all the luck? Did she have some strange pact with the Celestial Stork, guaranteeing good fortune? Or was the Cosmos Vulture out to get him? Either way, he could not believe it!

  A whimper from Rip caught his attention, and Zal knelt down and satisfied himself that his dog was shaken, but uninjured. He looked around. He was in the exact middle of a long passage, with no indication of which way to go. The walls of the maze were smooth and tall and too far apart to climb by bracing himself between them. He tapped the stone with his finger. No: jabbing his sword point into that was out as well. How was he going to find Zara? Arrogant girl. How was she going to find him? Easily, knowing her.

  “OK, boy,” he said to Rip. “We’re on foot. ZARA!”

  There was no reply and Zal noted, a little puzzled, that there was no echo either. He gestured to Rip and they trotted side by side through the maze. He picked and chose passages and junctions at random, still calling Zara’s name. Rip joined in by barking. The maze floor was pure dust, and at one point Zal tried drawing a cross to mark the passage he was going down. The cross remained for an instant and then, moved by no breeze, the dust smoothed over again. Zal jumped back. There was magic in the maze. No wonder he had found no footprints. This was going to take Zara’s path-finding spell thingy. Otherwise he and Rip could be going in circles in here for years. For ever! He needed Zara and her magic and he needed them now.