The Serpent of Eridor Read online

  They arrived back up from the cellar to find a massive golden snail – as tall as a man from its slimy foot to the top of its shell – in the kitchen. Its huge, pale green eyes stuck out like periscopes on glistening stalks. Myth lay by the back door purring loudly as Flick, now sporting spiky purple hair with silver streaks, stroked him.

  ‘Your hair,’ gasped Alex, without thinking.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ asked Flick. ‘OK, I’ll change it back.’ She swept her hand over her hair. It returned to the sleek dark green bob of a few minutes ago. ‘Thanks for the drink, by the way,’ she added to Zorrin. ‘It was yummy.’

  ‘Sorry. Not me, I’m afraid. Must have been Viskar.’

  ‘Are you going to introduce me to your friend?’ Ikara asked, indicating the snail with her tail.

  ‘This is Yub,’ said Flick. ‘He mows the lawn for me.’

  ‘Very slowly, I guess,’ said Alex. ‘It must take weeks.’

  Flick shook her head. ‘As it happens, it doesn’t. I have made him jet-propelled. Velocita.’

  The snail shot across the kitchen, skidding to a halt inches from the far wall.

  ‘I tie him to a stake in the middle of the garden and then set him off whizzing round and round. As he does so the rope winds round the stake, so he eats his way through a spiral of grass.’ Flick reached into a cupboard and pulled out a leaf the size of a bath towel. She patted Yub on his slimy brown head, her hand coming away covered in rainbow-coloured snail slime. ‘I always give him a little treat once he’s finished.’

  Flick placed the leaf in front of Yub. With a single crunch and a slurp the banana leaf vanished.

  ‘How he could be hungry after a lawn full of grass?’ asked Skoodle.

  ‘Beats me,’ said Flick. ‘But he is.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better get him outside, my favourite mollusc tamer, before all that grass reappears at the other end in a different form?’ asked Zorrin.

  ‘Good point.’ Flick climbed on to Yub’s neck. She grabbed the bottom of each eyestalk.

  ‘Yuk,’ Ikara murmured.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt him.’

  ‘It’s me that I’d worry about, not the snail,’ said Ikara. ‘Think of all that slime.’

  ‘Velocita.’

  The pair whizzed towards the open back door.

  ‘We’d better continue our tour,’ said Zorrin, watching the golden shell rocket across the stable yard.

  ‘I’ll stay here. Have a little sleep,’ said Myth, jumping on to a sofa.

  They left the kitchen by a wide stone-floored high-vaulted corridor, lined with ancient battle instruments: spears, balls with spikes and clubs. This led into an immense hall lit by orbs of fire suspended in mid-air, hissing and spitting softly.

  Pictures of beasts of a mythical level of weirdness hung on the dark wooden walls. There were ferocious dragons with snakes’ heads, a winged lion, an eel with the head of a shark devouring an armoured rabbit four times its size. Alex hoped that they were imaginary. Yet the whole set-up was so extraordinary that he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they were Zorrin’s pets. They moved on to a long balcony with arches on one side framing a view over the garden and the jungle beyond.

  Keeko leapt up on to the low wall which ran beneath the arches. As she leaned forward to peer out there was a crack as she banged her forehead. ‘That hurt. The air is solid.’

  ‘A powerful spell, not glass, fills those arches,’ said Zorrin. ‘I have my enemies. From outside this appears to be tangled jungle. Let’s go upstairs to Flick’s room. It’s amazing.’

  CHAPTER 12

  In a first floor corridor Zorrin approached an ordinary-looking dark oak door and placed his hand flat where the handle should have been. Silently, it slid sideways into the frame. Dazzling light streamed out of the room, as if they had flung the door open to reveal a sunny July morning. They could hear the low roar of running water from inside. Following Zorrin, they stepped forward into the brilliant yellow glow.

  The sound filling the room came from a waterfall that fell from the ceiling and ran away through the floor. In front of them a precipice yawned, with nothing between where they stood and the lush green jungle.

  ‘Another magical glass wall?’ asked Ikara, pointing her tail at it.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Zorrin, stroking an orange and green hummingbird that had landed on his shoulder.

  ‘Makes this place look like home. Masses of leaves and flowers.’ Ikara pushed off from the stone tiles. As she reached the glass floor there was little friction. She slid towards the jungle, scrambling to slow down but failing.

  ‘Watch out, Ikara. You’ll crash,’ called Alex, waiting for the bang, the cry of pain. It didn’t come.

  Ikara slid off the edge of the visible floor to hang in space ten metres above the ground. ‘What happened?’ she called, body rigid, peering directly down.

  ‘It’s totally safe,’ said Zorrin, laughing. ‘The magical glass-like floor extends out by about five metres. You’ll hear a gentle hiss before you hit the far wall.’

  Ikara slid on in mid-air. After a few meanders, they heard a soft whooshing noise. She stopped and reached out with the tip of her tail towards the air in front of her. ‘It’s solid,’ she said, tapping at it.

  ‘Correct. Like it?’

  ‘Amazing,’ said Ikara, curling up, surrounded by jungle.

  ‘This floor is pretty,’ said Keeko.

  A whirl of stars embellished the entire surface of the visible floor. Multicoloured planets, their orbits marked with ribbons of gold, hung suspended in a deep blue sky: names were written in copperplate silver lettering beside each.

  ‘It’s not decorative,’ Zorrin said. ‘It’s a dynamic encyclopaedia – a mine of knowledge. It moves in harmony with the stars around us and is useful for various spells, as well as being invaluable for predicting weather conditions such as typhoons and cyclones.’

  ‘It’s broken. It’s not moving,’ said Keeko.

  Ikara yawned and positioned her head more comfortably on her tail. ‘I suppose you expect planets to be whizzing about all over the place, asteroids zooming under your feet, a hail of shooting stars zipping from wall to wall. Wrong. Owing to the relative proportions of the cosmos and the floor the movements in this pattern are too tiny to be seen over a short period, like an hour or even a day. Maybe a week would be long enough for you to perceive them.’

  Zorrin raised his eyebrows. ‘Impressive. You understand both astronomy and scale.’

  Ikara pointed the tip of her tail at her skin. ‘I think you’ll find that scale is my forte. I also have an in-depth understanding of relative sizes,’ she continued, looking at Alex.

  Alex nodded. ‘I can vouch for that.’ He grinned at Ikara and then – with a look of disgust on his face – mimed shaking sticky mud off his legs then clutching his ribs while gasping for air.

  ‘Interesting dance,’ said Zorrin, smiling.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Alex, now apparently forcing his way through bushes, crouching low. ‘I’ll tell you one day.’

  ‘Can’t wait.’

  ‘You’re right: it could be a dance,’ said Skoodle, from Alex’s shoulder. He shook his legs in turn, gasping, waving his arms, as he hummed to himself. ‘What do you think, Uncle Toomba? No? Perhaps you’re right.’

  Zorrin raised his eyebrows at Alex.

  ‘He talks to his dead uncle. Apparently he used to do it in Hamster-speak in England. He reckons he gets all his best advice from Uncle Toomba.’

  ‘Interesting concept,’ said Zorrin. ‘My Aunt Florianne was amazing, if mentally always on another planet. I wouldn’t mind chatting to her. How do you dial them up?’

  ‘It’s a rare gift,’ said Skoodle, stopping his dance and sitting down. ‘They have to talk to you first. You can’t just barge into their spirit lives.’

  ‘Or deaths?’ asked Alex.

  Skoodle looked at him without smiling. ‘Funny.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Alex. He poi
nted at a floor-to-ceiling ice-like sheet, whose silver-grey face reflected the sparkle and dance of the waterfall opposite.

  Zorrin wandered over to place his hand on its rough surface. ‘This crystal wall shows where anyone is. A fantastic piece of kit. I invented it. Ask and it shows where anyone is, as Flick did to find Tariq.’

  ‘Flick said it didn’t work when the evil forces had you,’ said Ikara.

  ‘That’s true. Yet she knew I was alive by this.’ Zorrin pointed to a large board next to it, on which were lists of names written in gold. Some were bright and glittering as if freshly written, others dull from age.

  ‘It’s a record of living wizards. Anyone who’s still alive appears on the board. There I am.’ He pointed to the name Zorrin Horsfeld. ‘On a wizard’s death the name disappears. When a baby wizard is born a new name appears.’

  As he spoke a commotion started on the board, letters jostling each other as they moved.

  ‘Out of my way. Move down, oaf,’ said a tiny voice from the golden list.

  ‘Keep going or that K will get me right in the bottom.’

  ‘Don’t shove me. The Zs are still asleep. Someone get the last Y to poke them.’

  The letters shuffled and reformed, then stopped moving as the little voices died down. A new name had appeared high up between Angelissa de Pomadori and Degrote de Pomadori, in bright gold letters.

  ‘Baby de Pomadori. An Italian wizard, I presume,’ said Zorrin. ‘There’ll be another fuss when he’s given a first name and they have to shuffle again. I don’t know why they always grumble about moving. You’d think they would be grateful for a little exercise.’

  ‘Look,’ exclaimed Keeko, gazing over a low brick wall. ‘Teeny-weeny creatures.’

  Alex joined Keeko, who was peering over the boundary of a miniature world. On a flat plain tiny lions lazily swished their tails, watching mini antelope grazing. Close by, in a desert, sphinxes and pyramids trotted around on four legs. Miniature walruses lay on an ice cap, basking in a snowfall. Several penguins played near polar bears who were flicking blue and pink fish out of the sea, catching them in their mouths. In the middle sparkled an ocean, from which minuscule dolphins leapt. Above it hung the sun, brilliant in a clear blue sky, the source of the light that had dazzled them at the door.

  ‘Is it a toy?’ asked Alex.

  ‘Far from it,’ said Zorrin. ‘Those animals are real and, when removed from the compound, normal size.’

  ‘Boring to have the sun all the time,’ said Ikara, looking over the edge.

  ‘Flick switches it for the moon at night. She keeps it here.’ He pointed to a gold bowl on the shelf. ‘But the weather is a bit random. Flick tosses in whatever she feels like.’

  He reached towards a shelf on which sat rows of jars. The labels ranged from Hail and Lightning to Spring Breeze. Zorrin chose a jar marked Rain Clouds and sprinkled a few over the mountains. A cry of protest rose from the goats and bears.

  ‘Sorry, but you need rain sometimes,’ said Zorrin to the upturned faces.

  With a small harrumph the bears trooped off to their caves. A fleet of ducks flew in, giggling, droplets of rain rolling off their heads.

  ‘How do they become big again?’ asked Alex.

  ‘These capsules.’ Zorrin indicated a bowl of fragile-looking bubbles on a pedestal near the compound. ‘They hold a weightlessness spell. If you drop one on an animal you can pick it up. When you burst it the animal becomes normal-sized.’

  ‘Do you have to put the clouds back?’ asked Keeko, reaching over to poke one.

  ‘No,’ said Zorrin. ‘They rain themselves out. Shall we see the rest of the fortress?’

  ‘Sure,’ agreed Alex, even though he wanted to stay. ‘This is so cool. I’ll ask Flick to show me the rest of the stuff in here some time.’

  As they turned to leave, bickering started again on the Live Wizards List.

  ‘Excellent,’ laughed Zorrin. ‘Not only have they given the baby a first name, they’ve double-barrelled his second. Almost the whole lot will need to shift. Riot brewing.’

  The noise levels of tens of tiny voices rose as Frederik Zimbalt-Pomadori started his descent through the list of names.

  Zorrin addressed the board. ‘There must be no torn-off bits of letters when I get back. I’m tired of mending you.’

  The last call was Zorrin’s study, a cross between a high-tech room and a male comfort cave. A transparent domed ceiling rose above them, slender silver beams visible through the glass. The circular walls were hung with maps, several of Eridor: some astronomical, most of the others incomprehensible. A painting of a sailing boat, with the name Phaedea inscribed on the hull, hung behind his desk. At the far side of the room was a doorway filled with a thick mist, like a cloud door.

  A large tabby cat sat at Zorrin’s immense wooden desk, reading a newspaper. He glanced up at them, nodded hello, then carried on reading. Near him, a tall contraption of glass cylinders, half-filled with liquids of various colours, hung in the air.

  ‘Pretty,’ said Ikara, eyeing it. ‘But is it useful?’

  ‘Very,’ replied Zorrin. ‘It’s an astromometer, sent to me by a friend of my father’s about fifty years ago. Old, but it works perfectly.’

  Keeko wandered over. ‘Love the colours. What’s it do?’

  ‘Predicts the interfacing of time zones, the occurrence of meteor showers and of shooting stars. You’re lucky to see it. Quite often it fades out and disappears, sometimes for days, which is extremely inconvenient.’

  ‘And these?’ asked Ikara, indicating a small gold bowl in which lay several red beans.

  ‘Orgreeb. If you put one in your ear I can talk to you, even if you’re miles away.’

  ‘Why not use thought transference?’ asked Alex.

  ‘It’s got nothing like the range of these. Also, with transference, everyone can hear your thoughts. Orgreeb are private, transmitting only to whoever is wearing one, so ensure secrecy.’

  Keeko opened a red enamel box. ‘And this?’

  Bounding across, the cat grabbed it and slammed the lid shut.

  ‘Thanks, Clawds. Those are highly dangerous time tears. When two time zones collide, either in the course of nature or by wizardry, an unstable edge forms. The shearing forces rip small droplets of reverse time from the edge.’

  ‘So why are they dangerous?’ asked Keeko.

  ‘Touching one without the protection of a glove of Mazal will transport you to the other time zone. The only way to return is by contact with the opposing tears remaining on the other side, but they’re amazingly difficult to find. Clawds, would you get Figstaff to bring some drinks, please?’

  ‘Of course. No problem.’ Clawds ran from the room, tail held high.

  ‘Does this box also contain time tears?’ Alex pointed at an ancient-looking wooden box, a gold mesh glove on top.

  ‘No. Go on, look in the box, but don’t touch the contents.’

  Inside were four green slimy globules, like massive blobs of snot, quivering in individual black metal compartments.

  ‘Why the glove? Do these things bite?’ asked Alex.

  ‘No. They’re cabivitrim: a powerful magical adhesive. The only things they won’t stick to are the box they’re kept in and that glove. Drink?’

  ‘Great,’ said Alex, suddenly realising how thirsty he was after the long trek around Ravenscraig.

  An emerald-green frog in a flowered waistcoat walked in on his hind legs, rearing up to the height of a man. He held a tray of glasses. Each one was scrolled with gold writing, the stems blood-red. Figstaff put the tray on a table near the fireplace then placed his front leg on it. Pale green fluid bubbled up through the glass stems.

  ‘Thanks, Figstaff,’ said Zorrin. ‘Is this your mango, orton and passion fruit mix?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Figstaff. ‘Enjoy.’

  As Figstaff handed a glass to Alex, a short bald-headed man dressed in a dinner jacket entered the study, his gaunt face unsmiling. Over one arm lay
what appeared to be a furry white towel. As the man paused at the door the soft drape moved slightly and a head appeared. Alex realised with a shock that the fluffy something was a rabbit.

  ‘You requested a bear, I believe,’ said the bunny.

  CHAPTER 13

  The man stepped back to let Tariq pass. With a shriek Keeko flung herself at Tariq, landing with her arms wrapped round his neck and her tail curled around his torso.

  ‘You’re alive,’ she yelled. ‘You frightened us.’ Crying, she beat on his chest with her fists.

  ‘Had a good swim?’ asked Ikara from her perch on the desk. ‘I suppose you got bored with your crocodile friends and thought you’d pop over and see us instead.’

  Tariq grinned. ‘Something like that.’ He looked unharmed, although mud matted his golden fur and a livid red scar ran the full length of his right forelimb.

  ‘Welcome back,’ said Alex, so pleased to see Tariq that it felt as if his chest would pop. ‘We thought you were dead meat.’

  ‘So did I.’ Tariq sat down with Keeko still wrapped round him.

  ‘How did you survive?’ asked Skoodle.

  Tariq accepted a glass from Figstaff and drank deeply. ‘Luck.’

  ‘More detail, croc wrestler supreme,’ said Skoodle, as Figstaff handed him a tiny glass. The frog wandered from the room.

  ‘A tree next to the waterfall had a thick branch reaching across the water. As we fell I kicked at the croc, using him as a springboard. I managed to grab the branch then climbed along the trunk to the side of the gorge. Old leather-face wasn’t so lucky. He’s fish food now.’

  ‘I expect the croc aerobics were quite tiring,’ said Ikara. ‘On the positive side, though, the river will have washed the blood away.’ Her tone became anxious. ‘Unless you’re still bleeding?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ Tariq ran his hand over the smooth scales of her head. ‘I had a couple of slashes when I first arrived, but Flick made me drink some disgusting green muck. I healed immediately.’

  As Tariq withdrew his paw to take his cup Ikara sank softly to the floor, a soft whisper of air escaping her mouth.