Emily Rodda - The Silver Door

Rye’s heart thudded as he recognised the writing on the fragment.

‘Sholto!’ he breathed. He swung round to call Dirk, saw that Dirk was still busy with whatever he had found on the ground, and quickly looked back to read the scrap in Sonia’s hand.

‘He found dead skimmers,’ Rye muttered. ‘Look on the other side.’ Sonia turned the paper over, and sure enough there were more words on the back.

Sonia shook her head in confusion.

‘It is from Sholto’s notebook,’ Rye said, battling the fear that had chilled him the moment he saw the paper. ‘But he would not have torn a page out. I do not know why it is here.’

Then, suddenly, he did know. Ignoring Sonia’s exclamations, he thrust the magic snail shell into his pocket and began pulling stones from the top of the pyramid. As he had expected, the structure was hollow.

He peered inside and found that the cavity contained some tatters of oiled cloth, the broken pieces of a clay pot, some lumps of candle wax, and the remains of a small book.

The book’s covers had been eaten away. Most of its pages had been reduced to flakes of paper clinging to a threadbare spine. The few scattered fragments that had survived had been chewed almost to pieces. Rye gathered them carefully and showed them to Sonia with a rueful shrug.

‘It looks as if Sholto filled an entire notebook in this place, and hid it when he moved on,’ he said, sliding the fragile scraps into his pocket to keep them safe. ‘He wrapped the book in oiled cloth and put it into a pot sealed with wax. No doubt he thought that was protection enough from the snails. But it was not. These snails are not like the snails that prey on the vegetable fields of Weld. They will eat anything, it seems, even wax and clay.’

‘Perhaps that is their power,’ Sonia joked feebly. ‘Perhaps whenever you hold the shell, Rye, you will be able to eat clay too.’

Rye smiled, though in truth he did not feel like it. He retrieved the little snail shell from among the paper fragments in his pocket, and weighed it thoughtfully in his palm.

‘Rye!’

Rye and Sonia jumped violently as the shout rang out. Dirk was hurrying awkwardly towards them, sliding and stumbling on the rocks. He was brandishing a dingy skimmer hook.

That must have been what he found on the ground, Rye thought in confusion. But why is he—?

‘Rye! Behind you!’ Dirk roared, his finger stabbing at the sky. ‘Put on the hood! The hood!’

Rye spun round. Sonia was looking up, her face rigid with fear.

A terrifying form was sweeping down through the cloud. It was a gigantic bird, a bird as big as a Weld house, with vast wings and a long, twisting neck that was spiked like the neck of a sea serpent.

It was the monstrous bird of which Rye had once dreamed—the bird pictured on 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?’