The Silver Door

8 - Discoveries

The giant bird opened its cruel, hooked beak and screeched. The sound echoed from the rocks, harsh, hideous, pitiless. Rye pulled the hood over his head and seized Sonia’s arm, but the monster faltered only for a split second before flying on.

Now they could hear the sound of its wings, pounding the air like waves crashing on the shore. It was heading straight for them, its razor-sharp talons spread wide, ready to seize, to slash …

‘It can still see us!’ Rye shouted. ‘The hood does not—’

A shadow loomed over them. They rocked in the gale of the bird’s mighty wingbeats. The air filled with a vile, bitter stench.

In terror they threw themselves down, covering their heads with their arms. There was the thud of running feet and the sound of labouring breaths, and the next moment a heavy body was rolling on top of them, pressing them hard against the pyramid.

‘Stay still!’ Dirk panted. ‘I will try to beat the creature back. I have a skimmer hook—’

‘Throw it away!’ Sonia screamed. ‘The metal will affect the magic of the hood!’

‘The magic is affected already!’ Dirk roared back. ‘I could see you—only faintly, but enough! This weapon is our only chance! By a miracle I spied it lying among the rocks. One of the Wall worker volunteers who chose the silver Door must have come to grief—’

His voice was lost in a tumult of sound. Suddenly the monster’s wingbeats were like thunder above them, blasting them with a freezing, stinking gale that seemed thick with malice. And at that moment Rye was swept by the knowledge that this beast was no mere hunter of the air. It was an evil, unnatural thing, a creature of the dark power he had sensed in his dream.

He felt Dirk struggling to resist the wind, to wield the great hook, and knew it was hopeless. In despair he heard Dirk’s curse, and a dull clang, and guessed that the weapon had been swept from his brother’s hand.

Then the bird was upon them. With sharp, cracking sounds the terrible beak snapped shut once, twice, three times. Talons rasped on stone again and again. A long, grating screech split the air.

Rye lay locked in a daze of horror, feeling Sonia quaking beside him, waiting for the cry of agony that would tell him Dirk had been taken, waiting for the monster’s talons to rake his own back.

But it did not happen. The sounds continued, the moments passed … and it did not happen.

And then, abruptly, the deafening screeches and the sounds of attacking beak and talons ceased. The pounding of giant wings began again. Again, a great wind beat down on the rocks. Then the gale became less, and the pounding grew fainter. And at last, there was silence.

Rye felt Dirk roll away from him. Hardly daring to believe that the ordeal was over, he sat up, blinking.

Dirk was tugging at the skimmer hook, which had landed some distance away and was jammed between two rocks. The monstrous bird was flying back the way it had come. As Rye watched, it wheeled to the left and for a split second he saw its hideous shape silhouetted against the grey sky. Then it soared into the cloud, and was gone.

‘What happened?’ he asked blankly. ‘Why did it stop attacking us?’

‘It has gone, that is all I care about,’ Sonia groaned, climbing painfully to her feet. ‘Oh, I am bruised all over!’

‘Be grateful you were not torn to pieces,’ Dirk growled, striding back to them with the great hook in his hand. ‘By the Wall, Rye, do you not see now how insane it was for you and the girl to come here? You must go back!’

‘We arrived knowing that this place must be dangerous,’ Sonia replied coldly. ‘And as for going back … Rye is free to do as he likes, but I have no intention of letting you beat me to the source of the skimmers, Dirk.’

‘You little fool!’ shouted Dirk. ‘You have no chance whatever of destroying the Enemy! All you will do is hamper me, and in the end get us all killed! Why, what happened just now is proof of that! If it had not been for me—’

Sonia tossed her head. ‘You did nothing just now as far as I can see, you big oaf, but fall on top of us and bruise us black and blue! The bird—’

‘Stop it!’ Rye yelled at the top of his voice.

Startled, Sonia and Dirk both turned to stare at him. He scrambled to his feet and gestured furiously at the surrounding rocks, and what remained of the pyramid. Great grooves had been carved into the stones. Thousands of snails torn away by the monster’s talons were lying in heaps on the ground.

‘Are you both mad, fighting like—like a pair of ducks squabbling over a worm?’ Rye stormed. ‘We must think! Why did the bird go, when it could have killed us easily? What made it give up?’

‘Well … the hood,’ Sonia said, eyeing him uncertainly. ‘The bird could not see us clearly. It was just lucky that your brother’s stupid hook was blown—’

‘It was not the hood!’ Rye broke in, clenching his fists. ‘The creature might not have been able to see us clearly, but it could see us well enough to swoop down here, right here, and attack! We heard the sounds of its beak and talons! Why did they not injure us? Why did they only damage the rocks around us?’

He turned to Dirk. ‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded. ‘Show me your back!’

Dirk hesitated, then, with a strange expression on his face, he turned so that Rye could see that the back of his shirt was whole, and quite unmarked.

‘There!’ said Rye, fighting for calm. ‘You were between us and the bird, Dirk. Your back should be in tatters. And it is not!’

‘No.’ Dirk looked over his shoulder and twisted his arm around to feel his back. He winced slightly. ‘It feels a little tender, that is all. As if it is bruised.’

Rye shook his head in confusion. ‘Yet all around us the snails were torn from the rocks, and the rocks themselves were—’

He chanced to look down, and saw with a small shock that the heaps of shells at his feet were moving. The snails were all calmly righting themselves and creeping slowly towards new resting places, slender tentacles waving in front of them.

‘They were not damaged either,’ said Sonia, wrinkling her nose. ‘How strange! Their shells must be as strong as iron not to have been crushed by—’

She broke off with a gasp. Her head jerked up. ‘The shell from the bag!’ she exclaimed. ‘Rye! Its power must be—’

But Rye had had the same thought, at the same moment. He had spread out his hand. The snail shell he had taken from his pocket just moments before the monstrous bird attacked was jammed firmly over the tip of his little finger, covering the nail like a grotesque growth. Somehow, while he was clutching it, it had worked its way into place without his noticing.

‘Armour,’ he breathed. He tugged experimentally at the shell, but it would not budge. He suspected it would remain part of him until it sensed he felt safe from attack. He knew he should be glad of it, but the sight of it made him feel sick.

‘So!’ Sonia cried, clapping her hands. She grinned fiercely up at Dirk’s startled face. ‘You see? You did nothing to save us, Master Hero! As it happens, it was Rye’s magic that saved you!’

Different expressions flitted across Dirk’s face—anger, disbelief, confusion, embarrassment, and finally, acceptance.

‘Well?’ Sonia crowed. ‘What do you have to say for yourself now?’

Dirk took a breath. ‘There is nothing to say except that I am sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I did not mean to claim thanks I did not deserve. I did not understand.’

‘Any more than we did!’ Rye exclaimed, glancing angrily at Sonia.

But she was staring at Dirk, biting her lip, the spark of triumph slowly dying from her eyes. Dirk’s frank readiness to admit he had been wrong had thrown her off balance. Suddenly, in one of the lightning changes of mood Rye had noticed in her before, she was ashamed of her gloating.

‘You did deserve thanks,’ she said stiffly. ‘Nothing changes the fact that you risked your life trying to shield us. So I, too, apologise.’

Now it was Dirk’s turn to stare.

Sonia turned her head away, tearing off the dreadful Keep orphan’s cap and shaking out her hair.

‘So—which way should we go?’ she asked, with a briskness that sounded completely false. ‘With cloud hiding the sun so completely it is impossible to tell where north, south, east and west might be.’

Rye knew exactly what they should do, though the idea filled him with dread.

‘There,’ he made himself say, pointing towards the place where the giant bird had disappeared into the clouds. ‘That bird is an evil thing. I think—I know—it is the Enemy’s creature. If we wish to find him, and Sholto, we should follow it.’

Sonia glanced at him, saw the certainty in his eyes, and instantly murmured agreement.

Dirk’s brow creased. ‘But Rye, how could you possibly know—?’ he began, almost angrily. Then, no doubt remembering other strange things that his young brother had lately said and done, he changed his mind about what he had been going to say.

‘I hope we are right in thinking Sholto chose the silver Door,’ he said instead. ‘I have seen no sign of him.’

Rye looked up eagerly. ‘But we have!’ he exclaimed. ‘We found his notebook—or what remained of it.’

He felt in his pocket and pulled out the scraps of paper he had taken from the pyramid. He handed them to Dirk, who scanned them one after the other, his frown deepening as he read.

‘I agree this is Sholto’s writing,’ Dirk said after a moment. ‘But … I wish it were not.’

‘What do you mean?’ Rye exclaimed. He snatched three of the paper scraps from Dirk’s hand, and read the one on the top.

‘He was losing his mind,’ Dirk muttered.

‘Not Sholto!’ Rye said stoutly, though a heavy, sinking feeling was weighing him down. Quickly he glanced at the next fragment, very aware of Sonia crowding in to read over his shoulder.

Sonia made a small sound of distress. His mouth dry, Rye looked at the last fragment.