Legend of the Three Moons (12 page)

He crept along a tunnel that he was sure was too small for an Enkidu, and suddenly found himself in the column-filled cavern where he had tied the end of the red string. He untied it, and followed it back until he reached the tunnel where he'd lost Chad and Swift.

Expecting to find them waiting for him in the cave, he came full pelt around the bend - and then to a skidding stop. Bent over and sniffing at the nest that Swift had stood in earlier, was a young female Enkidu. She reared up in surprise as Lem dodged beneath her outspread arms and slid out into the afternoon sun.

Further down the glacier he saw Swift outside a gull's cave.

`Swift, get away from the cave!'

Swift turned to see his brother leaping down the glacier. `Lem, you're back! We're getting more eggs.'

`Is that Lem?' asked Chad, appearing in the cave's entrance, his cape full of eggs and his ears full of indignant gull cries. He hadn't see the two Enkidu creeping out of the darkness behind him.

The Enkidu with the arrow in his eye slapped Chad so hard that he and the eggs flew across the cave and smashed into the far wall. The pain from the blow made him see double. Double monsters coming towards him with double the number of claws outstretched to rake the skin from his face. He slid unconscious onto the cave floor.

Swift barely had time to draw his sword before the second Enkidu lunged at him. Just as its paw swiped so close to his nose that he felt its white fur brush his eyelashes, a beam of bright sunlight lit up its bare skull. It slid to a stop. It blinked its small red eyes and shuffled backwards.

`They hate light,' yelled Lem, reaching Swift as Swift fell back onto the ice. `Be ready to drag Chad out the minute I distract them.'

Yelling as loudly as he could and swinging his sword, he charged the Enkidu that was bending over his cousin. Possibly recognising Lem as the cause of the pain in its eye, the creature stretched to its full height and, with an angry boom, swung at him.

Gambling that Edith's snapdragon buds would protect him, Lem threw the remaining buds at it and the second Enkidu which was shambling up on his left. For a moment it looked as if the buds would not work on the fierce
becamed
creatures but then, as if mortally wounded, their booming died in their throats and they crashed to the ice.

Lem dragged Chad out onto the glacier, heaved him onto his back then, bent double from the weight, and with Swift carrying all their weapons, the two boys staggered down the glacier. `Did you get the talisman?' panted Swift.

Lem sidestepped an ice hole while readjusting Chad's weight. `Yes. The dragon is Celeste and Chad's father and those creatures are the Enkidu
becamed
by the High Enchanter, the same as the Goch. They mock and attack the dragon every day and make it bleed.'

Swift was horrified. `Can't he breathe fire on them?'

`He's frozen and hurt.'

Swift was thinking about the dragon being his uncle and not his father, and Lem was thinking about how heavy Chad was, when an ominous rumble rocked the entire glacier from the edge of the sea to the top of Tartik Mountain. Rising and falling like a gigantic ice wave it knocked the boys over. The next rumble was so violent that before they could stand up again, they were sliding down the ice along with an avalanche of boulders dislodged from the mountain's peak.

`What's happening?' yelled Swift, clinging to a spike of ice to stop himself from sliding into an abyss that had appeared in front of him.

Lem dug his heels into the ice beside the spike and hung on to Chad, whose feet were hanging over nothing.

`The High Enchanter knows I have the talisman.'

Lem heard Lord Shamash's howl and passed on the wolf's words to Swift. `To get away, the wolf says we must slide into that hole.'

Swift's eyes widened as he stared into the black hole. `What wolf?'

`There's no time to explain. Just do it. I'll go first.'

Swift watched as Lem, hanging onto Chad, slid towards the abyss and with a yell disappeared over its edge. Swift took a big breath, let go of the ice spike and slid after him.

Somewhere under the glacier the walls of the abyss turned into a steep slope that finally, after what felt like forever, levelled out. They slid down it so fast they couldn't catch their breaths, but eventually came to an abrupt halt with their boots buried deep in an ice-drift. Waiting for them were four blue-eyed wolves.

`Follow us,' said Lord Shamash. `The High Enchanter would rather sink Tartik Island than let you escape.'

`Follow the wolves,' shouted Lem while trying to heave Chad out of the soft ice.

`What wolves?' groaned Chad, coming to and struggling to free himself from Lem's grip.

Lem let him go. `The ones that are saving us. Can you walk?'

Chad staggered to his feet to show that he could, then with Lem holding one arm and Swift the other, they followed the wolves.

The pack led them along one tunnel after another. Each sloped deeper into the ice and became darker as they spiralled down, until the only way the boys could tell which way to go was to follow the wolves' panting.

Suddenly, as if a huge knife had sliced the island in half, the mountain cracked open and in flooded the last of the day's sunlight. When their eyes became accustomed to the light, the boys saw behind them in the tunnel's ice walls, hundreds of frozen, open-mouthed, frightened-eyed men, women and children; all with their hands held up against the ice, either begging for help or trying to push the ice back.

`Are they dead?' gasped Lem.

Lord Shamash shook his white head. `These are the Walls of the Disobedient. They are simply imprisoned for disobeying the High Enchanter.'

`Can we help them?'

`He would destroy you first.'

As if the High Enchanter had heard the wolf's words, the ice beneath them began to ripple and the walls around them to crumble.

`Hurry,' urged Lord Shamash. `He has sent an avalanche. The beach is around that bend.'

`What about you?' cried Lem as they began to run.

The wolf's answer was swallowed up in a wave of powdered ice that lifted the boys and pushed them down the cliff face, across the ice pebble beach and out onto the bobbing floes.

The girls watched with horror as the boys, followed by a large white shape, slid out of control down the glacier and into the abyss.

But they had no time to worry about them. They were too busy trying to control their boat as tons of ice surged into the sea and rocked the floes around them. The boat bucked against its anchor and filled with so much ice that they had to bail or sink.

Celeste was emptying a tin of slush when she caught sight of the boys leaping across the tossing floes. `They're alive, Lyla!'

Suddenly the anchor was ripped from the ice and the boat was thrown into white-crested waves which dragged them away from the floes. Lyla snatched up the boat's buoy and threw it as far as she could.

It fell short of the last floe on which the boys were standing. They were yelling, for the girls to bring the boat back, trying to be heard over the crashing ice.

Lyla hauled the buoy back and, through tears of frustration, tried again and again but she was throwing against the wind.

`Throw it again,' urged Celeste. `It has to reach them. You can do it, Lyla. '

Lyla threw the buoy as hard as she could even though her arm hurt so much she could barely lift it. When she screamed in frustration as it dropped into the water again, Nutty gave an excited bark and dived overboard.

`Oh no. He can't possibly make it, he's too small,' breathed Celeste, as Nutty's small head emerged on top of a white crested wave. `It's too rough. He'll sink.'

`Come on Nutty,' yelled Chad and Swift urging the pup on, while Lem's heart sank each time the little black and tan head went under water.

`He made it!' Lyla grabbed Celeste squeezing her so tightly Celeste had to wriggle free.

With the buoy's rope in his mouth Nutty paddled bravely on towards his friends.

The moment the near-exhausted pup's paws scratched against their floe, Lem snatched him out of the freezing water and hugged him close. Chad and Swift grabbed the buoy's rope and tried pulling the boat towards them but the waves dragged it away, and the rope slid through their cold hands burning their skin.

`We'll have to swim for it,' Lem said.

Swift stared at the churning water and the darkening sky. He did not want to swim for it. He was tired and it was too far, and somewhere out there were fierce sea lions. `What about our weapons?' he asked. `What about the sea lions?'

Lem ignored the sea lion question. `We'll tie the weapons to the buoy. I'll hold it while you and Chad pull yourselves along the rope. When you reach the girls, they can pull Nutty, the buoy and me to the boat.'

Swift looked at Chad's bruised face and Chad looked at Swift's frostbitten nose. They nodded at each other and Lem, then grasped the rope and jumped. Fighting the waves and fearful of the sea lions, they pulled themselves along as fast as they could, and kicked and kicked until they reached the boat. Lyla and Celeste dragged them over the side to safety.

Then, with Swift at the tiller and Chad lying on a bench exhausted from the pain of his head and shoulder, Celeste and Lyla hauled Lem and Nutty through the waves.

The cold waves washed over him and dragged at his boots. They tried to pry his fingers free from the rope and dislodge Nutty from the buoy. Lem was still only half-way to safety when he saw a thing so amazing he thought he was imagining it.

It was the snow leopard. The big white cat was struggling through the icy water about an arm's-length away, until a wave pushed it against him and Lem heard its voice in his head, `Help me. I am escaping too.'

`Come with me,' Lem thought back.

Seconds later Lem and Nutty were hauled into the boat. Lem was coughing up seawater unable to speak, when two huge paws grasped into the portside of the boat tipping it dangerously. The girls flung themselves backwards as Nutty started growling.

Lem held him back. `It's okay Nutty, it's a snow leopard. We have to help him. He's escaping too.'

So while Celeste, Swift and Lem leant on the boat's starboard side to stop it from capsizing, Lyla slid an oar under the snow leopard's belly and levered it up so that he could scramble aboard. He clambered over Chad and Swift's legs and into the prow where he lay snarling at Nutty, until Lem threw a sail over it.

 

Forced on by an easterly wind, the boat fought the waves all night until early the next day when the children were able to turn it in a north-easterly direction.

Lem told the others about Lord Shamash, the Enkidu, the dragon, and the Walls of the Disobedient. Then he gave the red scale talisman to Lyla to put into the casket.

Tears formed in Celeste's eyes as Lem described her father's bleeding paws, and the terrified eyes of the frozen people. `We have to save him. We have to save all of them.'

`We will,' he assured her. `After we have the five talismans.'

`But we aren't moving fast enough. Are we Chad?'

Chad agreed that they weren't. What he didn't say was, if the High Enchanter could
became
creatures like the Goch and the Enkidu, if he could control the ice and snow and make avalanches, and if he could imprison entire villages of people in glaciers, how were they going to conquer him?

 

Three days later they spotted a rugged coastline in the distance, and hoped it was Whale Island.

They had run out of water the night before and were thirsty and heartily sick of raw fish. Even the snow leopard growled sadly when Swift gave him his share.

`He's old and his legs ache from the cold,' Lem said. `And he doesn't like Nutty or Splash. Or any of us really, except Swift who he calls Little Cub.'

`I'm not little,' retorted Swift, and then grinned in delight. `Tell him I call him Snow.'

`And tell him Splash doesn't like him either,' said Celeste, kissing her pet on its flat green head.

It took a few hours to reach the shallower waters of turquoise sea that surrounded the island. The water was as transparent as glass and the breeze, idling down from its cone-shaped hills, was warm and smelt of flowers. They sailed straight into a pretty half-moon bay where the beach was guarded by five large statues.

Not far offshore to their right, was an old high ridge of reef, now all dead and rock-brown. Lem grabbed the tiller and turned the boat away from shore.

`What are you doing?' demanded Lyla.

`Being careful.' he said. `If this is where the High Enchanter has imprisoned the merwoman then you can be sure that he has
becamed
some sort of dangerous monster to stop her escaping, or anyone from rescuing her.'

Lyla was in the middle of saying that the island looked peaceful and they didn't know for certain that it was Whale Island anyway, when they heard the women singing. Their lilting voices were so beautiful that Lem and Lyla stopped arguing and with the others turned to listen. Even Snow's growling became a purr.

So enchanted was everyone by the women's song that Lem ignored his own warning about the island and handed back the tiller to Swift, who turned the boat towards the shore. No one seemed concerned that he was also steering towards the reef.

The first hint that Lem had been right to worry was the awful scraping sound along their keel, just before a spear of coral punctured the boat's starboard side.

`Plug it!' Lyla urged, as she came to her senses. She pulled the sail down to stop them from sailing straight into the coral outcrop and over the reef below it.

Celeste stuffed her spare leggings into the hole, but water still oozed in. The snow leopard climbed onto the prow and the children had to stand on the benches.

Meanwhile the singing became louder and sweeter.

`They're calling me,' Swift said, his legs already over the boat's side. `I'm going to swim to the island.'

Celeste shook her head, to clear it of the hypnotic voices, and dragged Swift back. `Block your ears. Don't listen. The singing stops you from thinking sensibly.'