Authors: Leo ; Julia; Hartas Wills
Rampage! (29 page)
Paddle,
Whir,
Snap!
‘And,’ said Aries, spitting out the greenery, ‘you promise to tell the truth about what happened on this quest?’
For a moment Jason hesitated and Aries took a step backwards.
‘Yes,’ spluttered Jason, hopelessly yanking at the creeper on his foot. ‘Anything!’
Aries chewed again.
They were nearly there.
In just a few short seconds they’d be able to get
down from this terrible place, before the Guardian noticed.
Paddle,
Whir,
Snap!
Paddle,
Whir,
CRUNCH
Tinkle tinkle
…
Duh?
Aries’ ears shot up.
Beside him, Jason straightened up, hopping unsteadily, still tied by one ankle to the boulder.
Together, they stared down the slope.
The stirrer lay in a mangled heap on the rock. Its wings were buckled, its emerald glass shattered. The Guardian snuffled dismally at it, prodding it with its snout, trying to make it fly again. Then, dejected, it swiped the scatter of green glass with its foot and looked up sulkily at Aries and Jason. A flash of moonlight twinkled in the depths of its glassy, disappointed eyes. Just before it shot up on to its legs and thundered up the slope towards them.
Oh dear.
I suppose you’ve arrived down here on the lagoon shore hoping for some cheers and celebration about Alex having dispatched Medea to the Underworld.
So, this is going to be a shock.
But you see, that huge flash of light wasn’t the Erinyes blasting out of the statue at all.
And the high-pitched yell wasn’t even remotely triumphant.
In fact, well, perhaps it’s best if you simply read on.
Surprise, they say, is the best form of attack. And so it was a great pity that as far as surprise went, Alex’s and Wat’s attack didn’t have enough to cover a gnat’s ankles. As soon as Aries had turned towards the bluff, they’d sprinted heads-down across the shore towards the sorceress, aiming to topple her like a poisonous skittle. But as they were closing in on her, just as they were in tantalising statue-slamming distance, she’d spotted Aries clattering up the rock face and, immediately realising that she was under attack, she’d spun round. In her hand she held what looked like a golden eagle, the first piece of El Dorado gold that the lead caiman had brought her. And as Alex and Wat ran towards her, she glimpsed the Nemesis statue, eyes narrowing as if understanding the danger (which, thanks to Jason, she did). Raising the eagle high over her head, she’d unleashed its terrifying power.
A brilliant flash of bone-grey light shot through the air, sending Alex stumbling backwards. He yelled – yes, I’m afraid
that
was the high-pitched cry Aries had heard – and dived out of the way as what seemed to be an octopus of streaming light loomed up in front of them, crackling and spitting, wreathing its ghostly legs out into the darkness around them. Its tendrils unfurled to curl around his neck, chest and arms. They coiled around Wat’s
mallet-wielding arm. Growing longer, they tangled about their ankles and, with a ferocious yank, sent them both spluttering to the ground. Alex crash-landed, sending the Nemesis statue flying out of his grasp and slap into the mud. Throwing out his arm, he brushed the tip of its base with his fingertips as the quavering light changed around him, thickening into what appeared to be a gelatinous wall. A split second later, it slid backwards, scooping him up like a snowplough. His fingers dragged through the mud as he was slammed back against Wat, and the quivering wall engulfed them, sealing them together into a giant rubbery bubble, which lifted into the air to float a couple of metres above the ground.
Alex punched, he kicked, he jabbed, he tore. Wat pounded the walls with the mallet handle, desperately trying to tear a hole, but each time he struck the sides, they stretched out like bubblegum. Hissing wildly, the snakes tried to pierce it with their fangs.
But it was hopeless.
The walls were unbreakable.
Beneath them, Medea watched, spider-eyed and triumphant, being careful to step quickly away from the Nemesis statute, lying upended in the mud.
Alex stared at it through the bubble. He could still see its base sticking out of the mud and his head hammered with frustration that it was so, so close and yet absolutely unreachable. Doubling over, snatching his breath, he pushed his face up against the clammy wall and watched the glints of red, orange and blue,
bright beneath its mud-spattered veneer. For a few seconds more they twisted and bounced, and then, as if knowing what had happened to the Nemesis statue, they faded away to nothing.
Out on the water, Rose was far too horrified to scream.
Dimly aware of the Guardian playfully snapping at something on the rock high above, she gaped at Alex’s and Wat’s terrified faces as they pummelled from the inside of the trap, feeling sick in the pit of her stomach.
‘That’s better,’ cried Medea, dusting off her hands. She looked across the lagoon at Rose, shaking her head in disappointment. ‘C’mon, we have work to finish!’
‘You must be joking!’ shouted Rose. ‘I’ll never do another thing you ask. And I know about the gold, Medea. It’s not cherished. It’s disgusting and poisoned and can never ever help my father!’
‘Oh my,’ sighed the sorceress. ‘I wonder who’s been filling your head with such rubbish? As if I didn’t know!’
She jabbed the golden eagle into the bubble and it instantly started to shrink.
‘Still,’ she added, stifling a giggle as the snakes stabbed at the approaching walls with their snouts, ‘it’ll be the last time they ever interfere. In a few minutes that bubble will be so small, so airless … well, you can imagine.’
‘Let them go!’ shouted Rose, scooping up the vials from the bottom of the canoe. ‘Otherwise I’ll throw these over the side and you’ll never get the rest of the gold!’
Medea sighed. ‘Oh, Rose. Why spoil things now when you’ve been such a marvellous partner?’ She smiled spitefully. ‘You do realise that I could never have got this far without you? I couldn’t have raised Wat and I’d never have found the lagoon. I certainly couldn’t have distracted the Lake Guardian and fetched the gold up at the same time. And I wouldn’t have this.’ She kissed the eagle statuette like a footballer with a trophy. ‘Meaning,’ she sneered, nodding at the bubble, ‘I could hardly have done that!’
Rose felt her words like punches.
‘Of course,’ continued Medea coldly, ‘it would have been quicker and easier, not to mention safer –’ she glanced up at the Lake Guardian – ‘without your ridiculous change of heart. And if you’d kept your end of the deal, we could have been finished by now. But,’ she added, raising the golden eagle high over her head, ‘needs must!’
Tilting her face up, she began to turn anti-clockwise, chanting rapidly, her words spilling dark and uneven into the night. Rose noticed the sorceress’s face, pinched and furrowed with effort, and felt a spark of hope behind her ribs, knowing that Medea was finding it harder without her help. Perhaps – she tried to think over the wild hammering of her heart in her ears – perhaps, even
with
the golden eagle she wouldn’t be able to raise the gold all on her own? Feeling her eyes grow wide, she stared at the dark water around her, hardly daring to breathe as she willed the sorceress to fail.
And then she heard Medea’s shrill squeal of delight.
Looking up, she gasped as the sorceress flung out her arm like a flamboyant orchestra conductor to unleash a sweep of caramel light, the colour of rotting apples. Squirming with glowing tendrils, it shot over the lagoon before exploding like hailstones into the water.
Rose felt her stomach flip over as the water instantly began to boil around her. Now, staring down into its depths, she caught a glimpse of something golden, rising like a shoal of glittering fish. She clutched the sides of the canoe, staring in grim fascination, groaning as a clatter of goblets erupted from surface. Behind them, plates, knives and boxes, fashioned from gold, leaped like salmon and splashed back on the swell.
Suddenly a super-sized wave slammed the canoe, throwing Rose backwards on to the floor. For a moment, she stared up, stunned by a rainbow of gold-headed spears that arced over her. Then, struggling to sit upright again, she gaped at the water around her, gleaming with gold figurines and medallions and cups and snake-shaped buckles. A throne with a back carved into a leaping jaguar bobbed madly. Torques and breastplates lolled like flotsam. Pendants the size of ostrich eggs sped over the waves like skimmed pebbles. And everywhere, caimans dived, snapping and grunting after the treasure, snatching it from one another’s jaws to return to Medea with it.
‘To think of all those years I spent fiddling with wisps of Fleece,’ cried Medea, pausing from her chanting to wipe her brow with the back of her arm. ‘And now, look at the power I have!’
She scooped up a handful of ancient coins and threw them over the nearest couple of caimans at her feet.
There was a deafening bang, making Rose jump, and she blinked hard as a cloud of bruise-purple smoke enfolded the reptiles. Sneezing against the stench of sulphur that drifted in clouds towards her, she heard a thick, rustling sound, reminding her of umbrellas, giant ones, being opened, and gasped as two huge pairs of wings, long, green and silver-tipped, sprang up through the haze. Flames blasted through the fug as two shimmering dragons stalked out. Each was bridled with a silver harness and snorted fire from their massive nostrils.
But behind them the bubble was shrinking smaller and smaller, and dragging her eyes away from the astonishing creatures, Rose realised that now she could only just make out the pink of Wat’s hands, still inside their floppy cuffs, pressed uselessly against the glittering walls as Alex fought on, kicking and punching, jabbing the sides with the shield, stabbing them with the sword. Meanwhile, high on the bluff, the Guardian had stopped swatting at whatever had distracted it and was glowering up the rock at Aries and Jason.
Amused by her horrified face, Medea flicked another bolt of energy from her makeshift eagle wand across the water and sent the canoe torpedoing backwards towards the opposite bank.
Rose sprawled forwards and clung on as the canoe sliced through the water, gasping at the wrongness of everything.
The Nemesis statue was lost.
Alex, Wat, the Gorgon and snakes were trapped in a prison that would crush them out of existence in a few more minutes.
And high on the cliff, the Lake Guardian was thundering towards Aries again.
There had to be
something
she could do.
Crawling to the end of the speeding canoe, she stuck her nose over the edge and saw the sorceress growing smaller in the distance, tickling the dragons under their chins. In desperation, she reached back and unbuttoned the pocket of her shorts and pulled out her own flask of Reversal Potion.
She stared at it, dull purple in the moonlight, biting her lip at the memory of Alex’s horrified expression when she’d used it against the conquistadors, his face twisted in fury.
When have you truly seen her magic do anything good?
She scrunched her eyes closed, bewildered. Beneath her, the canoe lurched, bumping faster over the churning, gilded water and for a moment she sank her face against its cool wood in absolute despair. Around her, the waves slapped the boat’s sides, bumping it with their flotsam of misery-stuffed trinkets, clattering against its flimsy wood, but as a particularly hefty shield walloped the tip of the canoe, Rose jerked up, blinking. Holding the flask in front of her, she stared at the potion as it slopped and swirled, and suddenly realised something important, something she’d been too worried and frightened and
confused to see before now: that this wasn’t Medea’s magic at all.
It was hers.
There was no pharaoh’s bangle here, no Fleece, no gold of El Dorado. Only magic powered by a birthday locket, made from a nugget beloved of the Yanomani people and given as a good wish to her mother.
Gold steeped in love right from the start.
Truly cherished gold.
Not bloated with hatred and suffering.
Which must surely mean that it could not possibly be poisonous?
Energised now, she ripped what remained of the locket from her neck and stuffed it into the flask, gladdened by the answering swirl of blue smoke, spangled with stars that shot up into the night.
Then corking the flask tightly, she took a deep breath.
And dived into the water.
High up on the rock, Aries flew backwards through the air and landed, sprawled like a starfish, the godly gifts he’d carried exploding into the darkness around him. A couple of metres away, the Guardian leered, triumphantly enjoying the ram’s breathlessness, and, clearly confident that it had almost won, snatched up a nearby swatch of Penelope’s tapestry – Ithaca at sunset – and chewed. Behind it, the smashed tinderbox spluttered and wheezed, spitting out its last sparks like a spent Catherine Wheel.
Slowly, painfully, Aries drew himself up onto his hooves, as behind him Jason feverishly tore at the remaining creeper, tied fast around his left ankle. His back felt bruised, his leg tendons trembled. His muzzle was swollen and his left haunch throbbed where the Guardian’s foot had sliced off the harness only seconds before. Worse still, he was just beginning to wonder what had happened to Alex and Wat. After all, that flash of light had been several minutes ago now, which surely meant they should be up on the bluff with him. So why weren’t they? And why was the canoe zipping the wrong way over the water, sending up a glittering trail of foam behind it?
Trying to tamp down the bad feeling that plaited his stomachs, Aries watched as the Guardian spat out the tattered remains of the sewing and braced himself for its next attack.
Which is when he noticed the lyre.
Tilted on the rock, it spangled in the moonlight and despite the way the Guardian had tried to chew it, and the drool that now dribbled down its strings, it remained perfectly intact. Unbreakable, able to withstand the roughest voyage, just like Euterpe had said.
Suddenly the gloom filled with the sound of skittering shale and Aries looked up to see the Guardian lurching forward. Seizing hold of the lyre, the ram charged forward and slammed it over the toothy tip of the Guardian’s snout. He thrust hard, hard, harder still, forcing it high on to the creature’s bumpy nose to jam its frame tight over its jaws.
The Guardian grunted in appalled surprise. Crossing its eyes, it stared down at the strange trap and a moment later began tossing its head, left, right, up, down, snarl, mutter –
twing, twang, twong
– trying to shake the lyre free. But it was stuck fast. The monster slumped down and tried to bat the lyre off with legs that were far too short and stumpy and, panicked, tried to prise its jaws open. Its neck muscles throbbed. Its cobbled shoulders strained. Muscles bulged fiercely beneath its chin whilst its body rumbled like an earth tremor, quivering and shaking as it strained hopelessly against the instrument’s unbreakable frame.
Aries stepped back, cringing as the lyre of Orpheus, famed for its honey-toned melodies, wailed like Scylla with the stomach ache, accompanying the monster’s frustrated yowls as it struggled desperately to wrench its mouth free.
But it couldn’t.
Whoopee-doo!
Way to go, Aries!
Croc-bopper supreme!
Even Jason was struck silent with grudging admiration as now, thoroughly confused and blazing mad, the Guardian flipped itself up into the air and began its death roll.
60
You see, deep down in his foggy, primitive brain, the Guardian knew that such a move had always led to good things. Except that death rolls in water are one thing and death rolls on a high terrace of rock quite another. Especially when there’s a ram standing close by, desperate to find his friends on the shore below, and in possession of the most ferocious kick, which he uses to send a wildly spinning stone caiman tumbling down the slope.
All of which goes to show that gifts from the gods really do what they say on the tin. Well, sort of. After all, the lyre had withstood an epic journey, managed to calm a raging beast and even if it hadn’t quite brought
the team together in harmony, at least for once Jason had nothing to say. And indeed, how delightful that would all have been, if everyone, and particularly my charming self, could have sat down to a delightful cup of tea and a Custard Cream at that point.
Except that as the Guardian flew off the ledge
W
H
E
E
E
E
!
Alex, Wat, the Gorgon and snakes were finding it almost impossible to breathe inside the shrinking bubble. In fact, Alex was so dizzily close to fainting that he could hardly be sure that he hadn’t just imagined seeing Rose drag herself out of the lagoon, blinking and dripping, a few metres away.
61
Beside him, Wat lay half-dazed, slumped in a heap, mumbling under his breath whilst the snakes drooped like wilted asparagus.
But luckily, Medea was busy.
And I say ‘luckily’ because she was so occupied in chanting and scrunching her eyes closed as she whipped up a storm of magical energy to create her getaway
vehicle that she didn’t see Rose tiptoe past. Nor, with her head filled by the sort of bone-rattling bangs and hisses that conjuring up a magnificent Greek chariot out of thin air always produces, did she notice the strange trembling that Alex now felt quivering the sides of the bubble. Or hear the rising
chucka-chucka-chucka
noise, raucous as a dumper truck tipping its load of shale, as the Lake Guardian thundered down the rocky ridges towards her.
In fact, it was only when what the lyre finally flew off the Guardian’s snout and twanged past her, that Medea spotted the creature at all …
… spinning like a gigantic totem pole of rock towards her …
… its tail a blur of pebble-grey
… just before it walloped her sideways into the water and crashed on to her spanking new chariot, smashing it to smithereens.
Stumbling to its feet, the Lake Guardian lumbered groggily forward, groaning as the two dragons took gustily to the sky and flapped away. Then, catching a glint of the gold,
his
gold, still clutched in Medea’s hand, it scrambled after her.
Now Alex saw Rose sprinting across the shore. She leaped over the Guardian’s swishing tail and for a split second Alex met her panic-stricken eyes before she hurled something wet at the bubble. It splashed against the gelatinous sides, dragging them outwards, stretching them, straining and squealing, until the bubble burst
with a deafening bang. Reeling, Alex and the others were hurled to the ground, free.
‘Yes!’ shrieked Rose.
Gasping, Alex glanced up at the rock bluff and, seeing Aries there, stamping his hoofs, safe and victorious, felt a fresh surge of determination. Searching about him, he blinked furiously, scanning the ground for the Nemesis statue. Above his head, the bubble skin spun back out into its original sheet of light and exploded in a shimmer of grey. Momentarily, it lit up the statue’s base, and Alex lurched after it. Sensing him, the Lake Guardian swung its head back and snapped ferociously. Desperate, with his sword and shield flung beyond his reach, Alex held the statue out in front of him, swinging it from side to side as the monster lizard plunged forward and clamped its jaws around the statue’s head and snatched it from his grasp. Then, seemingly amused by Alex, standing there wholly defenceless, it bit down hard.
There was a sharp crack.
The air bristled as a sudden chill swept over the shore and three heart-freezing screeches rang into the night. Alex gasped, all thoughts of the spoiled weapon lost as the terrible screaming filled his ears, and he scrabbled backwards and grabbed the shield, gaping, as a trio of shadows swept into the air. Bathed in the flood of blood-red light that now poured from the broken statue, the Erinyes hunched together, floating in a circle over the Lake Guardian’s head. A low thrumming filled the air and, as Alex watched, three pairs of bat wings emerged
from the Erinyes’ smoky forms. Black gowns wreathed beneath their feet. Scorpions dripped from their whips and scuttled over the Guardian’s back.
Slowly, horribly, the three dog-headed women tilted their snouts to the sky. Now Alex could see their eyes, blazing and red, and their muzzles, matted with rough fur, silhouetted against the dazzling light as they keened together before suddenly snapping their heads down in unison and diving like cormorants for the Guardian. Two slid their hands beneath its front legs, the third seized its tail and together they dragged it into the air, squirming and snapping like a live battering ram. The Guardian twisted and wrestled. It writhed, it wriggled, it roared. But there was no escape as the Erinyes tightened their hold and sped away, rocketing across the lagoon to vanish in a fiery glow.
For a second, Alex stared into the darkness, his ears roaring with his own horrified breathing and the shocked gabbling of Rose and the others behind him.
Then, his eyes glimpsed a movement in the water.
The sorceress was crawling out of the shallows and on to the shore. Weed slithered from her hair. Filthy water streamed over her face, making white streaks in the smears of mud.
Backing away towards the others, Alex watched as she rose slowly to her feet and stood, head down, shoulders hunched, eyes blazing. When she spoke, her voice was low and guttural and spine-freezingly cold.
‘How do you plan to send me to Tartarus now?’
she asked, clawing the curtain of sodden hair from her face.
Knowing that Jason must have told her about their plan, Alex felt a flash of fury, but it was immediately swept away by fear when he noticed the gold eagle, smaller now from all its magic, still clasped tightly in her hand.
She smiled gleefully. ‘Now that you’ve managed to lose the statue? And got rid of that tiresome old tooth-bag, too?’
Alex raised the shield, holding it up in front of them all like a writhing, hissing wall.
Medea tipped her head, mocking the squirming snakes with her eyes.
‘Alex Knossos, potter, zoo hand and have-a-go hero. Still running around with that ridiculous lump of mutton? Busy poking your nose into my business a second time?’ She scowled. ‘And you, Rose. Can’t you see what a mistake you’re making when you have the makings of a truly great sorceress? But then, you’re not what you seemed, are you? Or you,’ she scowled at Wat, rolling her eyes at his tattered, puffball pants. ‘Just look at the three of you. On the outside you’re a fop, a fledgling sorceress and a pint-sized hero. But, on the inside you’re all the same. Monkeys.’ She tapped her nose with her finger, scowling. ‘Meddling and sticking these in, trying to mess things up! How very deceiving, don’t you think?’ Smiling darkly, she stroked the curved beak of the eagle gold. ‘All that pretending to be something
you’re not. After all, monkeys on the inside really ought to look like monkeys on the outside!’
She looked up, her eyes flashing with cold fury, mouthing a curse as tendrils of slime-green light began curling from the gold in her hand.
‘No!’ yelled Alex.
Instantly knowing what the sorceress was doing, he thrust the shield high in front of the others. ‘Get down!’
Pushing Rose and Wat backwards, he lifted the shield high over their heads as the sorceress unleashed a bolt of stinging magic at them. Yet, in that split second he saw the snakes, dark as an after-image, scrunch-faced, bracing themselves against the rancid green glow hurtling towards them and, realising their danger, his mistake, he flipped the shield over.
Instantly there was a heavy metallic clunk, like a sword crashing against the shield, sending Alex and Rose toppling over backwards to land on Wat. The snakes reared up, wailing and snapping around the Gorgon’s face as the spell slammed into the mirrored back of the shield, denting it – and, bouncing back, reflected straight into the sorceress’s chest.
‘Nooooooo!’
Medea’s scream ripped through the night, high and shrill. Then her voice began to waver, sliding down the octaves, lower and lower, until there was nothing left but a low, excited grunt.
Blinking against a thick swirl of black light, Rose, Alex and Wat peered out from the rim of the shield to
see her staggering backwards, the golden eagle falling from her furry hand. Shaking, her arms and legs splayed out like a star, her fingers fluttering madly, her head tossing from side to side. But now, her legs began to shrink and bow out. Lurching from side to side, she stared down, appalled, as her arms grew longer, until her knuckles touched the mud on either side of her. Tufts of russet-coloured hair sprouted from her face as she shrivelled further down, hunched beneath wide shoulders, her cries growing deeper and louder and thicker, as she began to hoot and yammer.
Gaping, Alex helped Rose to her feet and they stood together, staring in astonishment.
In the place where Medea had been standing, a howler monkey stretched up on to its back feet and, seeing them, began to thump its chest. Its eyes grew huge, as it swung its head, its huge mouth barking and howling and sending spittle flying into the night. Moonlight danced off its flame-red fur – and the single streak of purple that ran down the left side of its body. Stepping back, Rose and Alex edged away as the creature threw itself into the mud and hammered wetly with small, tight fists.
