by Darren Shan
I winced and covered my eyes the light was blinding after the blackness of the tunnel. Behind me, I heard Harkat and Spits spin aside to avoid the glare. The spiders took no notice of it living in utter darkness, they must have discarded their sense of sight some time in the past. "Are you OK?" Harkat roared. "Is it a trap?"
"No," I muttered, spreading my fingers slightly in front of my eyes, allowing my pupils to adjust. "It's just a " I stopped as my fingers parted. Lowering my hands, I gazed around, bewildered.
"Darren?" Harkat said. When I didn't answer, he poked his head through the door. "What's ?" He stopped when he saw what I was looking at, and stepped into the room, speechless. Spits did the same moments later.
We were in a large kitchen, like any modern kitchen back on Earth. There was a fridge the source of the buzzing a sink, cupboards, a bread bin, a kettle, even a clock over the table, though the hands had stopped. Closing the door to the room to keep the spiders out, we quickly searched the cupboards. We found plates, mugs, glasses, cans of food and drink (no labels or dates on the cans). There was nothing in the fridge when we opened it, but it was in full working order. "What's going on?" Spits asked. "Where'd all this stuff come from? And what's that?" Hailing from the 1930s, he'd never seen a fridge like this before.
"I don't" I started to answer, then stopped, my eyes falling on a saltcellar on the table there was a piece of paper underneath, with a note scribbled across it. Removing the saltcellar, I scanned the note in silence, then read it out loud.
"'Top of the morning to you, gentlemen! If you've made it this far, you're doing splendidly. After your narrow escape in the temple, you've earned a rest, so put your feet up and tuck into the refreshments courtesy of this kitchen's previous owner, who never got round to enjoying them. There's a secret exit tunnel behind the refrigerator. It's a few hundred metres to the surface. After that, you face a short walk to the valley wherein lies the Lake of Souls. Head due south and you can't miss it. Congratulations on overcoming the obstacles to date. Here's hoping all goes well in the final stretch. Best regards, your dear friend and sincere benefactor Desmond Tiny.'"
Before discussing the note, we nudged the fridge aside and checked behind it. Mr Tiny had told the truth about the tunnel, though we wouldn't know for sure where it led until we explored it.
"What do you think?" I asked Harkat, sitting and pouring myself one of the fizzy drinks from the cupboard. Spits was busy examining the fridge, oohing and aahing with wonder at the advanced technology.
"We have to do as Mr Tiny says," Harkat replied. "We were heading in a general southerly direction anyway."
I glanced at the note again. "I don't like the bit about 'here's hoping all goes well in the final stretch'. It sounds as though he thinks itwon't!'
Harkat shrugged. "He might have said that just to worry us. At least we know we're close to the"
We were startled by a shrill cry. Leaping to our feet, we saw Spits turning away from one of the cupboards, which he'd moved on to after the fridge. He was shaking and there were tears in his eyes.
"What is it?" I yelled, thinking it must be something dreadful.
"It's it's " Spits held up a bottle full of a dark golden liquid, and broke into a wet-eyed grin. "It'swhisky!" he croaked, and his face was as awe-filled as the Kulashkas' had been when they knelt before their Grotesque god.
Several hours later, Spits had drunk himself into a stupor and lay snoring on a rug on the floor. Harkat and I had eaten a filling meal and were resting against a wall, discussing our adventures, Mr Tiny and the kitchen. "I wonder where all this came from?" Harkat said. "The fridge, food and drinks are all from our world."
"The kitchen too," I noted. "It looks to me like a nuclear fallout shelter. I saw a programme about places like this. People built underground shelters and stocked them with imperishable goods."
"You think Mr Tiny transported an entire shelter here?" Harkat asked.
"Looks that way. I've no idea why he'd bother, but the Kulashkas certainly didn't build this place."
"No," Harkat agreed. He was silent a moment, then said, "Did the Kulashkas remind you of anyone?"
"What do you mean?"
"There was something about their appearance and the way they talked. It took me a while to work it out but now I have it. They were like the Guardians of the Blood."
The Guardians of the Blood were strange humans who lived in Vampire Mountain and disposed of dead vampires in exchange for their internal organs. They had white eyes like the Kulashkas, but no pink hair, and spoke in a strange language which, now that I thought about it, did seem quite like the Kulashkas'.
"Therewere similarities," I said hesitantly, "but differences too. The hair was pink, and the eyes were a duller white colour. Anyway, how could they be related?"
"Mr Tiny might have transported them here," Harkat said. "Or maybe this is where the Guardians of the Blood originally came from."
I mused that one over for a while, then rose and walked to the door.
"What are you doing?" Harkat asked as I opened the door on to the tunnel.
"Checking out a hunch," I said, crouching low and casting about with my eyes. Most of the spiders had left but a few were still close by, hunting for food or resting. I made mental contact with one and summoned it. It crawled on to my left hand and lay snugly in my palm as I lifted it to the light and examined it. It was a large grey spider with unusual green spots. I studied it from all sides, to be absolutely certain, then set it on the floor of the tunnel and closed the door again.
"Ba'Shan's spiders," I said to Harkat. "They're the spiders Madam Octa created when she bred with Ba'Halen's spiders in Vampire Mountain."
"You're certain?" Harkat asked.
"They were named in my honour by Seba. I'm positive." I sat down again beside Harkat, my forehead creased as I picked away at the puzzle. "Mr Tiny must have brought them here, like the kitchen, so I guess he could have brought some of the Guardians of the Blood too. But Ba'Shan's spiders aren't blind and the Guardians don't have pink hair. If Mr Tiny did bring them here, it must have been decades ago in this world's time, if not longer they'd need that long to transform."
"It seems like a lot of effort to go to," Harkat said. "Maybe he wanted the Guardians to build the Temple of the Grotesque. And the kitchen might just have been for a joke. But why bring the spiders?"
"I don't know," I said. "When you put them all together, they don't add up. There's something more to this, a bigger picture which we're missing."
"Maybe the answer's in the kitchen," Harkat said, rising and slowly surveying the tiles, table and cupboards. "The details are so fine. Maybe the answer is hidden among them." He wandered around the room, gradually winding his way over to the fridge, where several postcards were attached by magnets to the door. They were from various tourist attractions on Earth Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and so on. I'd seen them earlier but paid no attention.
"Maybe there are clues or further instructions on the back of these," Harkat said, taking down one of the cards. Turning it over, he studied it in silence, then quickly grabbed another, and another.
"Anything?" I asked. Harkat didn't answer. He was gazing down at the postcards, his lips moving silently. "Harkat? Are you OK? Is something wrong?"
Harkat's gaze flicked over me, then returned to the postcards. "No," he said, tucking the cards away inside his tattered blue robes. He reached for the others.
"Can I see the cards?" I asked.
Harkat paused, then said softly, "No. I'll show them to you later. No point distracting ourselves now." That raised my interest, but before I could press to see the postcards, Harkat sighed. "It's a shame we don't have any of the holy liquid. I suppose we'll just have to " He stopped when he saw me grin and reach inside my shirt. "No way!" he whooped.
I held up the vial I'd tucked away after being blown from the altar. "Am I brilliant or what?" I smirked.
"If you were a girl I'd kiss you!" Harkat cheered, rus
hing over.
I passed the vial to him and forgot about the postcards. "How do you think it works?" I asked as he turned the vial around, careful not to slosh the explosive liquid. "With all that force in its venom, surely the Grotesque should have blown its head off the first time it sunk its fangs into something."
"It must not be explosive to begin with," Harkat guessed. "Maybe an element in the air reacts with the poison after its release and changes it."
"A pretty big change," I laughed, then took the vial back. "How do you think we're supposed to use it?"
"There must be something we have to blow up," Harkat said. "Perhaps the Lake is covered and we have to blast a way through. What puzzles me more are the globes." He picked out one of the gelatinous globes from within his robes and tossed it up and down. "They must serve a purpose, but I can't for the life of me think what it is."
"I'm sure it'll become clear," I smiled, tucking the vial away. Pointing at the sleeping Spits, I said, "We should apologize to him when he wakes up."
"What for?" Harkat snorted. "Killing the Kulashkas and almost getting us killed too?"
"But don't you see? He wasmeant to. Mr Tiny wanted us to come here, but we wouldn't haveif Spits hadn't barged in. Without him, we'd have no holy liquid. And even if we'd managed to sneak a vial out of the temple, we wouldn't have known about its explosive properties we'd have blown ourselves to bits!"
"You're right," Harkat chuckled. "But I think an apology would be wasted. All Spits cares about now is his whisky. We could call him every foul name in the world, or praise him to the heavens, and he wouldn't notice."
"True!" I laughed.
We lay down after that and rested. I spent the quiet moments before sleep thinking about our adventures and the puzzle this world presented, and wondering what awful, life-threatening obstacles lay in wait for us at the end, in the valley of the Lake of Souls.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AFTER Along sleep and a hot meal, courtesy of a small gas stove, we packed some tins and drinks (Spits made the three remaining bottles of whisky his first priority), along with a few of the longer knives, and exited the underground kitchen. I switched off the light before we left a force of habit from the time when my mum would roar whenever I left lights on around the house.
The tunnel was a couple of hundred metres long and ended in the side of a riverbank. The exit was blocked with loose stones and sandbags, but they were easy to remove. We had to jump into the river and wade across to dry land, but the water was shallow. On the far bank we got undercover quickly and hurried away through the tall stalks of grass. We were anxious not to run into any Kulashka survivors.
It was midday when we left the kitchen. Although we'd previously travelled at night, we marched steadily all day, hidden by the tall grass. We stopped late in the night to sleep, and set off early the next morning. That evening we cleared the grasslands. We were delighted to leave the tall grass behind we were covered in burs and insects and nicked all over from the sharp edges of the blades. The first thing we did was find a pool of water and wash ourselves clean. After that we ate, rested a few hours, then headed south, reverting to our previous pattern of walking by night and sleeping by day.
We expected to come upon the valley at every bend Mr Tiny had said it was a short walk but another night passed without any sight of it. We were worried that we'd taken the wrong path, and discussed backtracking, but early the next night the ground rose to a peak and we instinctively knew that our goal lay on the other side. Harkat and I hurried up the rise, leaving Spits to catch up in his own time (he'd been drinking heavily and was making slow progress). It took us half an hour to reach the top. Once there, we saw that we were at the head of the valley and we also saw the enormity of the task ahead.
The valley was long and green, with a small lake a glorified pond, as Mr Tiny had accurately called it set in the centre. Apart from that, the valley was featureless except for five dragons resting around the edge of the water!
We stood staring down into the valley at the dragons. One looked like the creature which had attacked us on the raft. Two were smaller and slimmer, probably females one had a grey head, the other white. The remaining two were much smaller infants.
As we studied the dragons, Spits approached, panting heavily. "Well, lads," he wheezed, "is this the valley or ain't it? If it is, let's sing a wee sea shanty t' celebrate our"
We jumped on him before he burst into song, and smothered his startled cries. "What's going on?" he yelped through my fingers. "Are ye mad? 'Tis me Spits!"
"Quiet!" I hushed him. "Dragons!"
He snapped out of his drunkenness. "Let me see!" We rolled off and let him wriggle forward to the edge of the overhang. His breath caught in his throat when he saw the dragons. He lay there for a minute, studying them silently, then returned to our side. "I recognize two of 'em. The biggest is the one that attacked ye in the lake by my shack. I've seen the one with the grey head too, but not the others."
"Do you think they're just resting?" Harkat asked.
Spits tugged on his straggly beard and grimaced. "The grass round the Lake has been trampled flat in a big wide circle. 'Twouldn't have got that way if they'd only been here a while. I think this is their den."
"Will they move on?" I asked.
"No idea," Spits said. "Mebbe they will though I doubt it. They're safe from attack here they'd see anything coming long before it reached 'em and the land around is teeming with animals and birds for 'em to feed on. Plus, my lake's not far off as the dragon flies with all the fish they could wish fer."
"They've children too," Harkat noted. "Animals normally stay where they are when they're rearing their young."
"So how are we going to get to the Lake of Souls?" I asked.
"Are ye sure thatis the Lake?" Spits asked. "It looks awful small t' be home to a load o' dead souls."
"Mr Tiny said it would be small," I told him.
"There could be another lake nearby," Spits said hopefully.
"No," Harkat grunted. "This is it. We'll just have to keep watch and wait for them to leave they have to hunt for food. We'll move in when they go and hope they don't return too quickly. Now, who wants to creep forward and take first watch?"
"I'll go," I said, then snatched Spits's bottle from him as he made to slug back a shot. I also grabbed his sack, where his other bottles were stowed.
"Hey!" he protested.
"No more whisky until this is over," I told him. "You're taking the next watch and you're taking it sober."
"You can't boss me about!" he griped.
"Yes I can," I growled. "This is serious business. I'm not having you fly off the handle like you did in the temple. You can have some whisky before you go on watch, and when you come off, but between those times not a drop."
"And if I refuse?" he snarled, reaching towards his long curved knife.
"We'll break the whisky bottles," I said simply, and his face went white.
"I'd kill ye if ye did!" he croaked.
"Aaarrr," I grinned, "but that wouldn't bring yer whisky back!" Handing the bottle and sack to Harkat, I winked at Spits. "Don't worry when we're through, you can drink all the whisky you want." Then I hurried forward to find a bush to hide behind and observe the dragons.
We kept watch for almost a week before accepting that we'd have to revise our plan. At least three dragons remained in the valley at any given time, usually the two young ones and a female, though sometimes the male took one of the youngsters hunting with him. There was no way of telling when the absent dragons would return sometimes the male was gone overnight, while other times he'd sweep back to his family within minutes, a bleating sheep or goat clutched between his claws.
"We'll just have to sneak in one night and hope they don't spot us," Harkat said as we debated our options. We were in a rough cave we'd dug in the soil of the hill, to hide us from the dragons when they took flight.
"Them dragons have awful good eyesight," Spits said. "I seen 'em
spot prey from hundreds o' feet up on nights as black as a shark's soul."
"We could try burrowing to the Lake," I suggested. "The soil isn't hard-packed I'm sure I could dig a way through."
"And when you broke through to the Lake?" Harkat asked. "The water would flood the tunnel and we'd all drown."
"We ain't chancing that!" Spits said quickly. "I'd rather be ate by one o' them demons than drowned!"
"There must a way to get past them," I groaned. "Maybe we could use the explosive Grotesque poison wait until they're grouped together, sneak up close and lob it among them."
"I doubt we'd be able to get close enough," Harkat said. "And if even one of them survived…
"If we had more'n one vial, we'd have nowt to worry about," Spits sighed. "We could walk in and toss a vial at 'em any time they came near. Mebbe we should go back t' the temple and search fer more vials."
