Zal and Zara and the Great Race of Azamed

by Kit Downes

  Zal began running flat out, and Rip matched his pace.

  “Zara!”

  “Wruff!” Rip skidded to a stop as they passed through one junction, and ran back to one of the other paths.

  “Rip, come on. We’ve got to…”

  Zal broke off. He watched as Rip’s nose searched just above the dust.

  “Wait a minute. You’ve found her scent?”

  “Wruff, wruff!”

  Zal ran back.

  “Go, boy! What are you waiting for? Go!”

  He sprinted after Rip through the maze. Once he had the scent, Rip did not lose it. Forward, left, right; right, left, forward, right. They now knew they were heading in the right direction and Zal ran with growing confidence. But he was still overjoyed when it happened.

  “Zara!”

  “Zal!”

  She skidded into the passage ahead of them, dusty and shaking. They ran towards her and Zal was surprised when Zara jumped on him and hugged him tightly, trembling. It took him a second to see the tear stains on her cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t use it!” She almost wailed the words.

  “Can’t use what?”

  “My magic!”

  “Your magic?” Zal stepped back.

  “Yes, magic!”

  They both leant against the walls, panting.

  “There’s a blanket spell of some kind,” Zara said. “It’s lying over the whole maze. I can’t use my magic in here. Oh, Stork help me, I’m useless! We’re finished.”

  “No path-finding spell?”

  “No.”

  “Drat.” Zal looked up and down the passage, identical to all the others. “But we’re not finished. There must be some other—”

  “Wruff!”

  Rip was at the next turning, sniffing and looking back at them.

  “Rip…” said Zara thoughtfully.

  “Of course!” said Zal. “Well done, boy.”

  They started down the passage towards the little dog.

  “You think he can lead us out of here?”

  “He followed your scent. I’m sure he…”

  Zal broke off as they turned the corner. They both knew in an instant that Rip had found the centre of the maze. It was a square courtyard, far wider than the passages had been. On a pedestal in the centre, facing away from them, was a statue carved from shining black volcanic glass. With Rip at their heels, Zal and Zara walked round the edge of the courtyard to see it from the front. It was of a tall man, heavily armed with daggers, his face hidden behind a tightly wound scarf.

  “Salladan Shadow,” said Zara.

  The courtyard exploded around them. Like the rest of the maze, the floor of the courtyard was all dust. Clouds of it shot upwards as thirty-five mummies erupted out of hiding holes in the ground. Streams of dust poured off them like rainwater off rooftops.

  Zal whipped out his sword, noting that not only was he outnumbered, but these mummies were in a far better condition than the Emperor’s bodyguards. Muscles and tendons were still strung to their bones beneath their dried skin. They moved fast and with precision as they surrounded him and Zara and levelled their brutal, hook-tipped spears at them.

  “Zal?” Zara whispered through her teeth.

  “You still can’t use magic?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then grab the largest stone you can find and be ready to throw it as hard as you can.”

  It wouldn’t do them much good, but it was better than nothing. Zara crouched and began to search the dust with her fingers.

  “Karsure!”

  They both started at the mummy’s barked command.

  “Oh, not again. We don’t speak your language!” Zal raised his sword.

  “What?” exclaimed the figure. “You speak my language, but not your own?”

  This mummy was tall, and the others stood aside as he stomped forward. His armour was scratched and battered, but his helmet was decorative and he brandished a chipped sword rather than a spear. Zal blinked as he spotted the worn raised mark on the helmet. The Shadow Society’s symbol.

  “Zara,” he whispered, “let me do the talking.”

  “What?”

  “Shh! Trust me.”

  Zara hesitated but kept silent.

  “The offer of our master is quite specific,” said the mummy. “All Nygellians who wish to do so may leave the mountain by way of the maze, but no weapons may be carried out with them. Until you surrender that sword, boy, and tell me how you speak the Asameed tongue, you may not pass.”

  “I will carry it with me as far as I wish, soldier,” Zal said. He tried to fill his voice with all the pomp and arrogance of Haragan’s.

  “Then you will carry it no further than where you now stand,” said the mummy, and he raised his sword. The other mummies clashed their spearheads together.

  “Zal!” hissed Zara.

  “Quiet!” he whispered back, then he turned to address the mummy again. “I find it hard to believe our master will be impressed by the news that my companions and I were delayed by keeping hold of our weapons.”

  “Our master?” said the mummy.

  Zal held out Haragan’s medallion. “We are also of the Society of Shadows. The loyal servants of the Cosmos Vulture!”

  If the mummy had still had eyebrows, they would have shot up. As it was, he dropped to one knee, his armour clanging, and bowed low. His undead men followed suit.

  “Please, forgive me…”

  “Forgiven, soldier,” said Zal. “We are … agents of … our illustrious master, Salladan Shadow. We would have revealed ourselves right away, but we wanted to be sure you and your men have not been addled by such a long tour of guard duty.”

  “No, sir agent!” the mummy said. “We are the Society of Shadows. We have kept our wits about us.”

  Zara and Rip watched the conversation open-mouthed.

  “Excellent,” said Zal. “Then I can give you your new orders.”

  The mummy’s head snapped up, then bowed again.

  “I imagine we are the first Nygellians to have passed through here in a while?”

  “Yes, sir agent.”

  “Well, the last ones were in fact the very last Nygellians in the Fire City.”

  “I remember them well,” said the mummy. “One was the youngest grandson of the original architect who had been tasked with maintaining the city’s structure. He wept for an hour before leaving.”

  “Well, the only Nygellians left in the city now are that madman, the Emperor, and his personal guards, up in the throne room,” said Zal. “My companions and I have just relieved them of the secret of the rainbow carpets.”

  The bowed heads of every mummy now shot up. There were gasps from dried throats and withered lungs.

  “Congratulations, sir agent,” said the head mummy, his voice reverent.

  “Oh, it was simple,” said Zal. “But now that we have it, there is no need to leave the Emperor on his throne any longer. We will take the secret back to … headquarters, where our master is waiting. Take your men upstairs, soldier and … deal with the Emperor.”

  Zal tried to think up a more specific instruction for how to deal with a ghost, but there was no need. The head mummy sprang to his feet and snapped off a salute.

  “Understood, sir agent. Ha-ha! At last, Asameed and the Society of Shadows will be truly triumphant. Follow me, men!”

  The mummies hoisted their spears and ran out of the maze, armour and weapons clattering.

  “Hey!” Zal shouted after them. “How do we get back to Master Salladan?”

  There was a rumble and Salladan Shadow’s statue moved aside, revealing steps down to another stone corridor.

  “Thanks!”

  Zal grabbed Zara’s arm and pulled her down the steps, with Rip leading the way.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Zara.

  “I can scarcely believe it myself,” said Zal. “But I thought on my feet and it all made sense. After the maze was bui
lt, Salladan Shadow put the anti-magic spell over it, and then he mummified his guards so they would keep guarding it and stop the Nygellians digging their way to the lava by hand. But he also knew the Nygellians would want to escape once the fire was gone, so he made the tunnel for them to use.”

  “And only those who went peacefully, without their weapons, were allowed to use it,” finished Zara. “Zal, you’re brilliant!”

  “Thank you. Though I feel degraded for posing as a Shadow.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Zara. “I think you’d be very good at it.”

  “Well, with that brilliant series of lies you gave the guard at the palace, so would you. Maybe we should look into joining.”

  It was a ridiculous conversation and they both knew it. But after all the dangers and terrors of the day, it was a wonderful release. The tunnel was long and straight and was carpeted not with dust, but with sand. Zal scooped up a handful and smelt it. It was a mix of volcanic stone and ground diamonds and gemstones. The sand of the Great Desert. Azamed sand. They were on their way home. They raced down the tunnel, their laughter echoing behind them.

  “Next time we see Haragan, we’ll ask him for some application forms.”

  “Great! What can we put on them? Lying to the Citadel Guard. Breaking into the palace. Stealing the greatest secret of Nygel!”

  “Yes! We succeeded where their founder failed. They’d have to accept us!”

  “We’re the perfect candidates!”

  The tunnel ended and they skidded out onto the fine, powdery sand at the foot of the mountain just as the moon began to rise. The sky was blue, showing the first stars, and they savoured the cool night air after the dry dust of the dead Fire City. Zara felt a deep warm rush stir within her. Zal watched as she stretched out her hand and conjured up a small spirit galleon, entirely of sand. The evening breeze filled its sails and it swept away across the desert.

  “It’s back,” Zara smiled.

  “Great,” said Zal. “Now, please tell me how, by all the names of the Creator, you expect me to weave a full-sized carpet in one night?”

  Violet

  An hour later, when Zal and Zara returned to the Thesa household, it was dark. They had first gone to Zara’s home to collect the money she’d saved from her love potions, and then they’d visited Zal’s favourite blacksmith. He had been unhappy at being disturbed, but he had been robbed by the Shadow Society in the past: once they’d explained, he’d soon found the needles they needed. They had then run round to close to every carpet shop in the city, buying wool in all seven colours and as many shades and tones as they could find.

  As Zal and Zara stumbled into the house, laden down with their purchases, Augur and Arna rushed to greet them.

  “WHERE HAVE YOU TWO BEEN?”

  “Oh, right. Yes,” said Zara.

  “Sorry,” said Zal.

  “Sorry? Is that all you can say?” Augur took his son by the shoulders and shook him. “You’ve been gone for hours. We’ve been frantic!”

  “I was about to start searching the wells,” added Arna, waving a grappling hook on the end of a long rope.

  “We thought the Shadows had killed you both!”

  “They tried to,” said Zara.

  “They tried to?” said her father. “Holy Stork!”

  “Look, we’re safely home now,” said Zal. “Is this really important?”

  “Really important?” repeated Augur. “We thought we’d lost you! Like your mothers.”

  Zal and Zara both sobered at this.

  “I’m sorry,” Zal said, and Augur removed his hands from his tunic. “We should have sent word somehow. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you what we were doing –”

  “That’s my fault more than his,” added Zara.

  “– but right now, I need you to be angry with me later. Because I have to, somehow, weave a carpet before dawn.”

  Augur was so surprised by this uncharacteristic statement that he almost fell over. Zal put his share of the bags down on the table and ran upstairs.

  “Wait…! What?” said Augur. His expression changed from amazement to suspicion. “What are you up to?”

  “We’re weaving a rainbow carpet so that we can win the race tomorrow,” said Zara. “And don’t worry about the Shadows turning up – Haragan thinks he did kill us. Zal! Where are you going?”

  “Just lay everything out on the table!” Zal shouted from upstairs. They heard a clatter of falling boxes – he seemed to be searching for something.

  Zara obeyed, emptying the bags onto the table and laying out everything they’d bought.

  “Is this where you’ve been all day? Buying wool?” said Arna.

  “No, we only spent the last hour doing that,” said Zara. She didn’t want her father to ask about the money. Mixing love potions was a profitable, but very disreputable, activity in Azamed. “We spent the rest of the time finding out how to do it.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Augur. “Rainbow carpet? Rainbow carpet? You’ve found out how to weave a Rainbow carpet?”

  “One that flies?” asked Arna, wide-eyed.

  “Yes,” said Zal as he appeared down the stairs carrying a spare loom that the Thesas didn’t usually have space for in the workshop. “It almost killed us, but we found it. The secret is transparent wool.”

  He took a spool from his pocket and passed it to Augur, who examined it first with puzzlement, then astonishment.

  “Holy Stork above us!” he said, and abruptly sat down.

  “You can actually do it?” said Arna, peering at the thread, then at the children.

  “Ask Zara,” said Zal. He took another spool of the transparent wool and began to prepare the loom. He stretched the warp threads from top to bottom and the weft threads from side to side, and within minutes he had made a grid. They couldn’t see it, but the moonlight through the window cast its shadow clearly on the wall. “Right,” he said. “Ready. So will you finally tell me how I do this before morning?”

  “Quite simple,” said Zara. “I help with magic. Like I did with the six cuts.”

  “You failed!” said Zal.

  “Well, if you can do it all by yourself,” said Zara, “let’s see you thread the first needle.”

  Zal was thrown by this, but he picked up one of the needles nonetheless, gripped a length of the invisible thread between thumb and finger, tried to thread it … and stopped. He could see the eye of the needle, but not the thead that needed to go through it. He could tell that the length he was trying to thread was short, but not if it was straight or hanging— Wait! There was its shadow on the wall. That was straight. He tried again, lining up the two shadows. Missed.

  Zara picked up the thread reel and cupped it in her hands. Blue balancing magic glowed between her fingers and flowed down the thread. It appeared, blue and shining, as if an invisible pen was tracing it in the air between her hands and Zal’s.

  Augur and Arna both gasped and Rip hid behind their ankles. His confidence growing, Zal tried again but still could not quite do it. He had to hold his hands tense and then that made them tremble, and…

  Zara placed a hand on his shoulder and the blue magic swirled round his arm again. This time Zal could feel it working: steadying him, calming his muscles. He tried a third time and the green glowing thread went perfectly through the eye.

  Zal looked from Zara to the waiting loom to the pile of transparent and multicoloured threads before it. In his mind’s eye a carpet, a rainbow carpet – the rainbow carpet he could weave – began to take shape.

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  Zara tried to recount the story of their day’s adventures to their fathers, but they were too distracted by watching Zal work. They gave up before Zara had even got as far as the palace and watched in awed silence.

  Once Zara had powered his arms with orange magic for speed, Zal’s fingers moved in a near blur across the frame as if following dance steps they had practised for years. The carpet and its pattern seemed to flow fro
m under his fluttering hands. At first he was a little nervous about this new freedom in his fingers, but he had become used to it before the carpet was more than an inch long. The transparent thread was the finest he had ever used and it felt strange beneath his fingertips: it was too smooth and even, unlike the others with their varying textures. He made up the pattern as he went along, using a different shade for each part but keeping the colours in clear bands running down the whole length so that it did look like a rainbow. Beneath every band lay the wonderful transparent thread.

  In the end, he wove the carpet in half a night. Blinking the tiredness from his eyes, his fingers aching and blistered, he tied the knot in the end of the last tassel and stepped back to look at his work.

  “Beautiful,” Augur said, yawning.

  “It’s fantastic!” said Arna.

  “My hands are never going to be the same again,” said Zal.

  It was a magnificent carpet. It looked more like a piece cut from a rainbow than any other carpet in existence. Zal had used the varying tones and shades of the colours with great skill, putting the darkest shades in the middle of each band and the lighter ones at the edges so that the bands seemed to merge and blend into one another. Zal had also taken inspiration from their day’s journey. Four giant water dragons curled in the corners; Qwinton’s pet doves fluttered in a circle in the centre. The border repeated the design of the rainbow carpet that had been carved on the doors of the Emperor’s throne room and the Emperor’s crown decorated the leading edge – the side that would point forward when the carpet flew. Even the Shadow Society’s symbol had been included, about to be eaten by one of the water dragons.

  “It’s been a pretty amazing day, hasn’t it?” said Zara.