The Silver Door

22 - The Dispatch Area

Sholto’s jaw dropped as his brother vanished before his eyes. Speechless with shock, he made no protest as Rye dragged him out of the path of the approaching guards, whispering to him not to make a sound. But perhaps it was only when the guards had tramped by them without a glance that Sholto realised he was as invisible as Rye, for he looked down at his own hand with such a comical expression that Rye almost laughed.

‘How is this possible?’ Sholto breathed, when the guards were well past. ‘How does a simple piece of fabric baffle the eye? It must be something to do with the way it reflects the light! By the Wall, Rye, where did you—?’

‘It is a long story,’ Rye whispered back. ‘I know you will not believe me if I tell you the hood is magic, Sholto. You do not have to believe it. Just accept that it works. Now, tell me your plan for destroying the skimmers.’

‘I am going to show you,’ Sholto said grimly. ‘Plainly that is the only way to convince you that there is no plan.’ He led Rye further down the passage to a place where a far shorter, darker passage branched off to the right.

A few steps along the second passage, Rye found himself facing a red wall bearing a large, black and white sign.

Sholto raised his door wand. The red wall slid away. Behind it was a tiny room, even smaller than the lifting chamber. Strange black garments hung from hooks on the room’s side walls. The wall ahead was blank. Another door, thought Rye. He was sure he knew what was beyond it. He swallowed, trying to quell the fluttering in his stomach as the red panel whispered shut behind him.

Sholto took two of the black garments down, passed one to Rye, and began climbing into the other. The garments were rather like the climbing suit Dirk wore for work on the Wall of Weld, except that they were complete with hood, gloves and pockets for the feet. The black fabric was very light and slippery, and the front opening had no buttons, but sealed at a touch.

‘Do we really need these?’ muttered Rye. ‘I am still wearing the hood.’

And the armour shell, he added in his mind. But he had decided not to mention the power of the shell until he had to. It was something Sholto could not explain away, and he had been shaken enough by the hood.

Sholto turned his head. Encased in dull black, he looked like a frightening stranger. Even his face was covered. Only his eyes were visible, peering through a transparent screen.

‘This fabric has its own “magic”,’ he said dryly, his voice only slightly muffled by his hood. ‘It seals in human warmth and scent. The new skimmers do not only hunt by sight, remember, little brother.’

The fluttering in Rye’s stomach grew worse. He finished putting on his own overalls and waited in silence as Sholto opened the inner door.

The space beyond the dressing room was warm, dim, and so vast that Rye could not see where it ended. The straw that covered the floor was clotted with dried blood and droppings. And the low ceiling, strung with sturdy wires, was thick with skimmers—line after line of skimmers hanging upside down like huge pods on a vine.

The beasts’ ragged wings were folded. Their eyes were closed. They were as large, or larger, than the dead skimmer Rye had seen in Tallus the healer’s workroom. Now and again one stirred, disturbing its neighbours, and there was a small burst of irritated flapping and quarrelling before the creatures settled to sleep again.

‘Can these skimmers also fly in daylight?’ Rye breathed.

‘They can survive it, but most cannot hunt prey quite as well by day as by night,’ Sholto whispered back. ‘Their young are a different story. You saw them in the cages on the way to the cell. It is an amazing improvement in just one generation—all thanks to jell in large quantities, of course.’

‘Jell?’

‘Jell is the key. We had no idea, Rye! We thought jell had no really useful purpose. But it does. It helps plants and animals adapt to different conditions very quickly. The more jell is present, the faster a species can adapt. No one seems to know why, but it is so.’

Sholto sounded fascinated. He was fascinated—Rye could see it in his face. Sholto was truly appalled by the danger of the new breed of skimmers, yet he could not help being interested in the process that had created it.

Rye wet his lips. ‘So if skimmers are exposed to light, and there is a lot of jell in their cages, their young will cope with light better than they do,’ he murmured haltingly. ‘And the next generation will cope better still.’

Sholto nodded. ‘I have not been able to find out how long the breeding programme has been going on. I am supposed to know all about it already, so have to be careful what questions I ask. But I do know that the skimmers in the workrooms are regarded as the final product. The best—or worst—of them will be used in the morning’s test.’

The eagerness faded from his face. His sombre gaze met Rye’s, and abruptly an image of the captives they had left behind in the cell rose between them. Rye shivered. Sholto pressed his lips together and turned away.

‘What I wanted to show you is at the far end,’ he said. ‘Follow me. Be as quiet as you can.’

Rye did not need the warning. Even with the armour shell firmly in place, it was terrifying to creep below the pale, heavy bodies of the sleeping skimmers, to see the pointed snouts and the needle teeth hanging just above his head. The creatures seemed to snarl even in sleep. If one should lose its grip and fall …

The walk seemed endless. By the time they reached the far end of the enormous room, Rye was soaking with sweat.

‘There,’ Sholto whispered.

He was pointing to something on the back wall. It was a large, dark grey circle that began at the height of Rye’s waist and stretched up almost to the ceiling.

The circle was edged with what looked like a tight roll of dark fabric. Rye reached out and touched the dark edging. It was smooth and soft, like bread dough. It sank a little when he gingerly pressed it, and bounced back when he took his finger away.

‘I think this circle is a door,’ Sholto said. ‘And I think the black rim shows that a pipe or tunnel can be attached to the outside of the doorway before the door is opened. That black material makes a very tight seal. The same means is used in the workrooms, when skimmers need to be moved from cage to cage—though there, of course, the doors and pipes are much smaller.’

‘A tunnel!’ Rye caught his breath. ‘Sholto! That must be how the skimmers are sent to Weld!’

Sholto frowned and rubbed his forehead. ‘That was my first idea. This room is called the “Dispatch Area”, after all. That seems to mean that skimmers here are to be dispatched—sent—somewhere else. But I have never seen this door open, and I know these skimmers are hand-fed. It is a mystery.’

‘Perhaps there is another vault for the skimmers that go to Weld,’ Rue whispered eagerly.

‘If there is, I have not found it,’ Sholto said. ‘And Kyte says all the beasts are kept on this level.’

Perhaps in his frustration he had spoken too loudly, for a skimmer near to them suddenly grunted and stretched its wings. Its neighbours lunged at it irritably, shrieking and flapping. Rye and Sholto froze, flattened against the wall, as slowly the beasts settled once more.

‘Enough of this!’ Sholto muttered. ‘We must get out of here. Rye—if you insist on knowing my secret weapon, put your ear to the wall.’

Wondering, Rye did as he was told. And to his astonishment he heard the lapping of water. He could even feel the vibration of swirling movement against his cheek, and with the palms of his hands. He turned back to his brother, his eyes full of questions.

‘The sea is on the other side of that wall,’ Sholto said. ‘For some reason this place was built so far down on the shore that when the tide rises, much of the back wall of this floor is below the level of the water.’

He stood on his toes and reached up till his fingertips almost touched the top of the circle. ‘The tide comes at least to here,’ he said. ‘I have felt it.’

Rye felt heat rush into his face. ‘So if we could get the door open …’

Sholto nodded. ‘If we could get the door open at high tide, the sea would rush in with huge force. I have calculated that it would take an hour at most to flood the whole lower floor of this cursed place, and drown everything in it. My plan was to disable the lifting chambers first, so none of the new skimmers could be saved.’

He smiled grimly. ‘Skimmers drown quickly,’ he added. ‘I learned this in Weld. I designed a water trap for Tallus, just before I left, to help him catch specimens for examination. I often wonder if it worked.’

‘It worked very well,’ Rye murmured. He was thinking that it was typical of Sholto not even to mention that the flooding of the building would have meant his own death as well. Even if he had survived the first, raging torrent bursting through the round doorway, he would have drowned afterwards, with everyone and everything else.

Sholto had clearly considered this and decided the sacrifice was worth it. But he would not want Rye to speak of that.

Keeping his face to the wall, Rye felt for the light crystal inside the little brown bag. He drew the crystal out, smothering its light with his hand, sheltering it from the skimmers with his body. He heard Sholto gasp, but did not stop to explain. Quickly he pressed the crystal to the centre of the door.

A window appeared in the dull grey circle, but there was nothing to be seen—just thick, swirling darkness. Then something long and pale floated across the darkness. Rye squinted, trying to make out what it was, and suddenly realised it was a trailing frond of seaweed. This part of the door was underwater!

He pushed the crystal higher. And now he could see the oily, sluggishly heaving surface of the sea, and several grey ships, each with a round, black circle marked low on its side. In the distance, there was a line of white foam.

‘What is that foam?’ he asked.

‘It must mark what they call the breakwater,’ Sholto said, his voice trembling slightly as he gaped at the crystal in his brother’s hand. ‘The breakwater was built across the mouth of the Harbour to hold back the waves and make the water safer for ships at anchor. Rye, that device is …’

His voice trailed off as he saw that Rye was not listening. Rye had looked above the breakwater, above the open, foam-flecked sea beyond. He was staring at the sky—at the massed grey clouds edged with brilliant red that boiled on the horizon. His face was filled with dread.

‘I had lost track of time,’ Sholto said heavily. ‘I had not realised dawn was so near.’

‘That is not the dawn,’ Rye whispered, and he began to shiver all over.

The red-rimmed clouds were not normal clouds. Evil was within them—an evil so powerful that it turned his blood to ice. He had felt something of it when he first entered the Harbour building. He had felt it since. But now he knew that what he had felt was simply a trace, an echo, a shadow. Nothing had prepared him for this.

He became aware that Sholto was tugging at his arm, whispering urgently. With a great effort he pulled the crystal from the wall, closed his hand on it to dim its light, and pushed it back into the little bag. Dizziness almost overcame him. He swayed and felt his brother’s wiry arm wrap around him.

‘Oh, Rye, I am sorry!’ he heard Sholto murmur in a broken voice that sounded nothing like his own. ‘Fool that I am! I should not have allowed myself to be persuaded … I should not have allowed you to hope. Dirk would have known better. He is good with people—I am not. But that is no excuse …’

Rye took a deep breath, willing himself to stop trembling, willing the dizziness to pass. Sholto had seen nothing in the red-rimmed clouds but the first signs of daybreak. He thought Rye’s dread had been an attack of panic for the prisoners in the cell, for himself, for Weld, because time was running out. There was no point in trying to explain.

‘Come, we will go back to the cell,’ Sholto was saying softly, trying to pull him away from the wall. ‘At least we can release the captives, and give them a fighting chance.’

Rye shook his head. ‘The tide is rising,’ he croaked. ‘We must open this door.’

Sholto’s worried expression abruptly changed to a glare of baffled fury. ‘We cannot open it, Rye! Can you not get that through your thick head? I do not have the power to open it. For all I know there is not a person in this whole accursed place who has! And nothing will break the seal. Even skimmer venom does no more than dull the surface. I have tried it! I have tried everything!’

Rye clenched his fists and stood his ground. ‘There must be a way. There must! We have to stop—’

‘Rye, what has come over you!’ Sholto hissed. ‘You used to have sense! Have the tricks in that wretched bag turned your brain? Have you begun to think that just because you wish for something it will be so?’

‘They are more than tricks,’ Rye hissed back, closing his hands protectively around the little brown bag. ‘They are magic, Sholto!’

‘Indeed!’ Sholto jeered, hardly troubling to keep his voice down. ‘Then if you have magic at your command, why can you not open the door? Wizards in fairy tales can always get through locked doors. The sorcerer Dann was famous for it, I am told.’

The bag warmed beneath Rye’s fingers. And suddenly he remembered the golden key.

He felt in the bag and pulled out the tiny key. Then he thought again. He dipped his fingers back into the bag and drew out something else as well.

‘What is this?’ Sholto demanded, his eyes on the key.

‘I am not sure,’ Rye replied calmly, turning to the wall. ‘I have been waiting to find a lock this key will fit, but perhaps I did not understand it. We will see. Hold my arm tightly, Sholto. Just in case.’

He reached up and touched the key to the centre of the dark grey circle that Sholto thought was a door. He twisted his wrist.

There was a faint clicking sound. The grey circle slid away. And with a roar, the sea burst into the room.