The Wrath of the Lizard Lord (7 page)

A metallic ringing carried on the wind, making Dakkar pause. He glanced up the beach to the cliffs and saw a girl hammering at the rock with what looked like a tiny pick. Her long skirt and shawl flapped in the stiffening breeze and she held on to her bonnet with one hand as she swung the small pick with the other.

Dakkar hurried through the shingle to get nearer.

The girl turned; Dakkar could see a pair of fierce eyes and a tight, buttonhole mouth. Black ringlets of hair spilled out of her bonnet’s brim, hardly containing it at all.

‘I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to –’ Dakkar began, but a rock fell from above him, landing inches away, then another and another.

Small stones bounced off his head and shoulder. Then a deep rumbling followed and shadow fell across the two of them as the cliff collapsed.

Chapter Ten

Mary Anning

The roar of the crumbling cliff filled Dakkar’s ears. Dust clouded around them and huge boulders crashed together, cracking and splintering in the chaos. Without hesitating, Dakkar threw himself towards the girl, grabbing her round the waist. They tumbled on to the shingle as earth piled forward, threatening to engulf them. Still holding on to the girl, Dakkar rolled over and over again away down the beach. Soil grimed his eyes and made his mouth feel dry and gritty.

The thundering subsided and, for a second, Dakkar and the girl lay still on the shingle. A mountain of rock and earth lay inches from them. An occasional stone or pebble bounced down, clicking and cracking as it did. The blood pounded in Dakkar’s head and he panted for breath. Then, suddenly, the girl was struggling, kicking and slapping at him.

‘Let go of me, you scoundrel!’ she yelled, scrambling to her feet. She was a local girl; her accent told Dakkar that much. She glared at Dakkar. Her bonnet was pushed back from her head and dirt smeared her clothes and face. ‘What do you mean by leapin’ on a defenceless young lady like that? I’ve a mind to call the constable!’

‘I was saving you from the rockfall!’ Dakkar said, staring at her as if she were mad. ‘You would have been crushed if I hadn’t intervened.’

‘Crushed?’ The girl’s eyes widened. ‘I’ve been diggin’ in these cliffs all my life. My old dad used to do the same, God rest his soul. I was about to get out of the way but you crept up on me!’

‘Crept up?’ Dakkar muttered. He gritted his teeth and gave a short bow. ‘Well, ma’am, forgive me. It wasn’t my intention to alarm you. I thought I was saving your life. Now, if you’ll excuse me
.
.
.’

He turned and began to walk away, his feet scrunching on the pebbles.

‘Savin’ my life? The day Mary Anning needs her life savin’,’ the girl called after him, ‘will be the day she dies!’

‘Two things! One: that doesn’t make sense,’ Dakkar said, stopping and turning round. ‘And two: did you just say your name is Mary Anning?’

‘Who wants to know?’ she said, narrowing her eyes at Dakkar.

‘My name is Dakkar. Prince Dakkar of Bundelkhand, to be precise,’ he said, giving another short bow. ‘I was wondering if you’ve ever seen anything like this before?’ Dakkar pulled the claw from his pocket and held it in front of Mary.

Mary’s face fell. ‘I ’aven’t seen nothin’ like that before,’ she snapped, turning and hurrying away. ‘I don’t care who you are. I don’t know anythin’ about it!’

Dakkar stood for a second, watching her. He hadn’t expected a reaction like that. Then he started after her.

‘I think you do, miss,’ he called, and stamped through the shingle. ‘If you’d just stop and talk to me.’

‘Go away!’ she shouted, and began to run surprisingly fast considering her long skirt.

Dakkar hurried as she dashed round a rocky outcrop. He leapt over a boulder and glanced around. She’d vanished!

A footstep behind him warned Dakkar, but he was too slow. He spun round to see her holding up a smooth rock with both hands.

‘I told you to leave me alone!’ she yelled, bringing the stone down on his head.

Pain lanced through Dakkar’s skull as he staggered back, tripping over. Overbalancing, he landed painfully and lay dazed and blinking. He glanced up to see the blurred image of Mary Anning’s boots disappearing across the pebbles.

Dakkar lay still, his head thumping. He groaned, putting a hand to his scalp. A goose egg of a lump grew there. Dakkar groaned again and clambered to his feet. Stumbling over the rocks, he headed after the now distant figure. His head whirled and the horizon seemed to see-saw in front of him.

Mary hurried along the shore, still some distance from Dakkar. His head began to clear although the lump pulsed with pain. The shore grew narrow here and the cliffs grew sheer. Dakkar could tell this wasn’t a place that many visited. The tide would rush in here, cutting anyone off from the town. He blinked and shook his head. She’d vanished again.

He stopped and scanned the cliff. A crack just about large enough for a man to squeeze through scarred the cliff face.

‘I wonder
.
.
.’ Dakkar muttered to himself.

He hurried to the gap and peered into the darkness. Something moved in the shadows and a mechanical hissing and clanking filled the air. Taking a breath, Dakkar squeezed in through the fissure.

The cave opened up inside, allowing him room to stand. Dakkar’s eyes became more accustomed to the dim light. Mary Anning stood in a strange metal cage, her mouth open and eyes wide. She clanged the door of the cage shut but Dakkar leapt forward and wrenched it open.

‘Don’t!’ she screamed, pulling back at the door. ‘It’s dangerous! Any minute now it’ll –’

‘It’ll what?’ Dakkar snarled. ‘Tell me what’s going on!’

‘Just get away!’ she snapped, and she slammed the door closed again.

Dakkar dragged it open and jumped in before Mary could stop him.

‘What on earth –’ Dakkar began, but the hissing grew louder and more urgent, steam filled the room and Dakkar felt his stomach lurch.

The cage gave a jolt and then, with a rending of metal, the door bent inwards, crumpling as the cage began to fall.

‘What have you done, you buffoon?’ Mary shrieked above the squealing metal.

‘We’re falling!’ Dakkar yelled.

He gripped the bars of the cage as it plummeted. The walls of a shaft rushed past. He could smell sulphur and the roar of the steam filled his ears. Mary stood pressed into a corner of the cage, fear etched on her face.

‘It don’t normally go this fast,’ she shouted above the rush of steam and air. ‘You’ve broken it!’

‘What’s happening?’ Dakkar bellowed.

‘Like you said,’ she yelled back, ‘we’re goin’ down! But you’ve messed it up, ’aven’t you?’

The cage continued its descent. Dakkar and Mary clung to its sides, helpless. Sparks leapt from the crumpled door as it scraped down the rocky wall of the shaft. They both flinched as the whole frame clanged and bucked against the side.
Think
, Dakkar told himself.
Breathe slowly and think!

‘Is there any kind of lever?’ Dakkar yelled over the roar in his ears. ‘A brake maybe?’

‘I dunno!’ Mary scowled back.

Dakkar examined the cage. It was a rectangular box of solid metal bars with a roof and floor. It fitted almost flush with the shaft down which it was hurtling. Wheels at the side of the cage should have kept it level and stopped it snagging the sides but the door had knocked it out of line and now it rattled and clattered against the stone.

‘It’s designed to travel up and down this shaft.’ Dakkar edged round to Mary. ‘It must have controls of some kind!’

He pushed her aside to reveal a red lever sticking out of the frame of the box.

‘You were hiding that,’ Dakkar said above the screech of metal.

‘Don’t pull it,’ Mary shouted. ‘Who knows what’ll happen at this speed!’

‘Nonsense.’ Dakkar spat and jagged the lever down.

Dakkar felt weightless as the ceiling of the cage came down to meet him. His head smacked against the hard metal and then he fell back down to the floor. Mary flopped on top of him. They had come to a dead stop.

For a moment they lay listening to the echoes of their gasping breath vanish up to the surface.

‘There,’ said Dakkar, grabbing the lever and pulling himself up. ‘See? Nothing to worry about.’

A gentle, metallic
ping
seemed to mock his statement. Dakkar watched in slack-jawed horror as the pin holding the handle in place slid to the floor and vanished over the edge. Then the lever came off in his hand.

‘That’s not good,’ Mary whispered, staring at him.

The whole cage creaked and shuddered. With a bang that threw Dakkar back to the floor, the cage continued its downward journey, faster this time. The handle spun from Dakkar’s grip and bounced off the wall, whirling back and nearly clipping his temple as he reached to grab it.

The cage thumped the shaft at regular intervals now, slowly twisting out of shape and becoming more unstable. Dakkar stumbled across the metal box, knocking Mary to the floor as he tried to steady himself. He pushed the handle back into its place, jamming it down.

Sparks fountained from the brake behind the lever and the handle shook, numbing Dakkar’s arm. Slowly, the handle slid off the bar that held it. Dakkar desperately tried to push it back on, ignoring the friction heat that glowed from the metal. More sparks flew from the brakes, lighting up the shaft.

Mary threw herself towards Dakkar, and for a second he thought he was going to have to defend himself. Her hands pushed on the brake too, however, and gradually the cage began to slow even more.

Dakkar’s heart pounded. Steam boiled up around them. The whole shaft seemed to rattle. It had grown hot and stuffy.

The roof of the cage gave a deafening clang as it snagged on something that ripped it out.

Dakkar’s arms ached and his hands burned with holding the increasingly hot metal lever. Mary gasped next to him.

‘We must be near the bottom by now,’ she panted, sweat rolling down her brow.

Light glowed around the edge of the floor and the cage exploded in a scream of tortured metal. Dakkar’s feet hit hard ground. Pain speared up his legs, through his knees and up into his jaw. He tasted blood in his mouth and he stumbled forward, out through a roughly hewn doorway. Mary leapt after him, leaving a tangle of metal struts and bars blocking the shaft.

‘Well, there goes any hope of gettin’ back up to the surface!’ Mary said, slapping her hands at her sides.

But Dakkar didn’t reply. He stood, open-mouthed, staring at the scene before him.

He was gazing into dense, green jungle.

Chapter Eleven

The Underworld

‘It’s a
.
.
.’ Dakkar pointed at the tall ferns and trees that filled his vision. Above him, clouds swirled and crackled with lightning. Insects buzzed through the air and creatures chirped and croaked from the undergrowth.

‘It’s a forest,’ Mary said, putting her hands on her hips. ‘And thanks to you we’re stuck here!’

‘Thanks to me?’ Dakkar said, raising his eyebrows.

‘If you hadn’t followed me and pulled the door open, I’d have been fine,’ Mary said, her cheeks blazing red. ‘But, no! You had to go and wreck the cage. Now we can’t get back up!’

She walked over to a rotten tree stump and pulled out a water bottle with a long strap, a knife, a satchel and then a short stubby rifle with a wide barrel. Dakkar stared once again.

‘What’s the blunderbuss for?’ he said, blinking.

‘In case we meet the owner of your precious claw!’ she replied, looking over his head and into the dense jungle. ‘Or one of his friends.’

A distant roar punctuated Mary’s sentence and made Dakkar swallow hard.

‘What is this place?’ Dakkar demanded.

‘We’re deep underground,’ Mary said. ‘I dunno how this forest got here but here it is. I found it by accident some time ago.’

‘But you didn’t build the ingenious descending cage?’ Dakkar said, frowning.

‘No.’ Mary sounded defensive, as if she could have if she’d wanted to. ‘I dunno who made that but I ain’t never seen anyone else down ’ere. Anyway, that’s all a bit after the fact now that you’ve destroyed the bloomin’ thing!’

They both turned to look at the entrance to the shaft. It was carved in a rock face that rose straight and sheer to the clouds. Dakkar thought he could see tiny black shapes flying high above them.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Dakkar muttered to himself. ‘Why did you run away from me?’

‘Well, you jumped on me, to begin with,’ Mary said, her cheeks reddening. ‘And when you showed me the claw, I thought maybe you knew about down here and I was in trouble or somethin’.’

Dakkar tried to make sense of Mary’s story. ‘But if –’ he began.

‘Look, are we goin’ to stand ’ere all day gossipin’?’ Mary cut in. ‘Only, I want to make sure everythin’s all right down ’ere and maybe we can find another one of them cages somewhere.’

She started to walk towards the edge of the forest. Dakkar hesitated for a moment, watching Mary disappear into the thick foliage.