Emily Rodda - The Silver Door

Slender tentacles were emerging from all the patterned shells. The tentacles were waving like blades of grass stirred by a breeze, making the rocks appear to tremble.

‘The snails are waking,’ he murmured.

‘They sense the day is ending,’ Dirk said, his voice full of meaning. ‘No doubt they feed in the coolness of the night.’

‘All the more reason why we should not be here when the sun goes down,’ Sonia snapped. ‘I do not like the idea of sleeping in a shelter crawling with snails that will eat anything and are impossible to kill!’

‘If Rye’s shell can protect us from skimmers it can protect us from a few snails!’ Dirk snapped back.

‘A few!’ Sonia jeered, and hurried on.

As Rye stumbled after her, he could not stop thinking about what she had said. The thought of being overwhelmed by snails in their millions made his stomach heave. It was almost worse than the idea of skimmers. At least that death would be quick.

He smiled grimly. Snails and skimmers—what a choice!

‘There!’

Sonia’s triumphant cry rang out, startlingly loud. Rye looked up quickly.

A new pyramid lay ahead. It was taller than the last few they had seen. Only a few snails dotted its surface, and none of them were moving. Beside the pyramid a post that might once have supported a sign leaned drunkenly to one side. And beyond it there was a dusty plain, bare and unwelcoming but blessedly free of rocks and yellow mist.

The companions scrambled over the last of the treacherous stones and slid with relief onto clear ground. The pyramid rose before them, dark against the treeless landscape. Only then did they see that the tilting post beside it marked the beginning of a deeply worn pebbled track that stretched away to the dim horizon.

‘The end!’ Sonia crowed, clapping her hands. ‘We have reached the end!’

A figure unfolded itself from behind the pyramid. It was a man, extremely tall, and so thin that he might have been a skeleton. He was wearing nothing but a faded piece of cloth roughly tied around his waist and several strings of oddly shaped beads. His hair stood up in white spikes all over his head like the crest of a stalker bird.

The companions yelled in shock. Dirk’s skimmer hook was in his hand in an instant, and Rye snatched the bell tree stick from his belt, forgetting all about the armour shell.

The stranger laughed. His mouth was so enormously wide that it looked as if his face had split in half. Rye saw in horror that he had no teeth.

‘The end!’ the skeleton man shrieked. ‘Yes, oh, yes indeed, my lords an’ lady! See here!’

He bent from the waist like a folding ruler. When he straightened, he was holding up a rusty metal sign that had no doubt fallen from the crooked post.

10 - Bones

The skeleton man watched avidly as Rye, Sonia and Dirk read the sign. ‘Bones sees!’ he cackled. ‘Bones sees your eyes a-reading along! You know your words all right, lords an’ lady! See this one?’ With a long, yellow fingernail he stabbed at the word ‘death’.

‘Stay where you are,’ Dirk murmured to Rye and Sonia, his lips barely moving. He stepped forward, tightening his grip on the skimmer hook.

‘That’s “death” that is,’ the skeleton man said, nodding madly. ‘That’s one Bones knows.’ He jabbed at the second word on the sign. ‘An’ “Saltings”, that’s another.’

‘Indeed,’ Dirk agreed politely. ‘And what of this?’ Without taking his eyes off the stranger, he pointed to the strange symbol that followed the warning message.

Bones blinked rapidly. His hand crept up to the beads hanging around his neck and he began to finger them one by one, muttering under his breath. With a thrill of disgust, Rye realised for the first time that they were not beads at all, but human teeth.

‘Well?’ Dirk asked roughly, tapping the symbol.

Bones cringed. ‘Is the mark,’ he mumbled, his ridged yellow nails clicking feverishly on his repulsive necklace. ‘His mark. The Master.’

The last words were no more than a hoarse whisper. Rye’s own spine tingled in response to the man’s terror. He felt Sonia grip his arm, but did not turn to look at her. He could not tear his eyes away from the symbol on the sign.

It was just a hand enclosed in a circle. There was a fuzzy white spot in the centre of the hand’s palm, as if a light was burning there. Surely there was nothing so terrible in that. Yet as he stared at it, Rye felt dread gathering like a cold cloud around his heart.

‘The Master,’ Dirk repeated slowly. ‘Your master rules this side of Dorne, does he?’

Bones stared, his mouth hanging open. ‘Bones don’t know sides,’ he said at last. ‘Bones only knows the Scour, an’ the Saltings.’

‘What—where—is the Scour?’ Dirk snapped.

Bones waved his arm helplessly at the flat, bare land. ‘All here, till where the Saltings starts.’

‘And it is death to enter the Saltings, is it?’

Again Bones nodded. And then, weirdly, though his eyes remained fearful, his lips twisted into a crooked smile. He looked over his shoulder as if to make absolutely sure that no one else was listening. Then he leaned forward.

‘For most it is,’ he whispered. ‘But not for Bones. Bones be too much for the Master that way. An’ not for you, lords an’ lady—no, no, no! You be too much for the Master as well, you three.’

A look of cunning appeared on his face. He tapped the side of his nose.

‘Bones knows. Bones sees it with his own two eyes! Hand in hand you comes, treading the Saltings like the wizard kings in the ol’ tales. You sees the castles of stones, an’ you follow, follow. An’ the whiners, big as they are, and hungry for your blood, they don’t dare come near.’

‘You were watching us!’ Impulsively Rye moved forward, ignoring Dirk’s angry hiss of warning. ‘I felt you, but I could not see you!’

The thin man tittered. ‘No one sees Bones in the Saltings. Bones squirms on his belly in the Saltings, flat as a twisty snake. You don’t see Bones. But Bones sees you!’

His cackling broke off in a squeak of fright as Dirk lunged for him, reaching for his throat. With a cry Rye threw himself between them, and Dirk staggered back with a grunt of anger and surprise as the armour shell repelled him.

‘Let him be, Dirk!’ Rye yelled. ‘He is harmless.’

‘Harmless?’ Dirk spat. ‘He was spying on us! By the Wall, he was taunting us with it! This is no time for squeamishness, Rye. Stand aside and leave this to me!’

But Rye shook his head. He could feel the old man’s confusion as well as his fear. And with a colder part of his mind he knew that Bones would tell them far more if they were kind to him than if they threatened him.

He turned to Bones, who was cringing against the pyramid frantically clicking his horrible beads.

‘I am sorry, Bones,’ he said gently. ‘My brother was mistaken. He thought you were threatening us.’

‘Bones is no spy,’ the old man croaked. ‘The Master has spies—many an’ many! But Bones is not one of them. Bones is … only Bones.’

‘We understand that now,’ Rye said, still in that same, gentle voice. ‘You have no more to fear from us.’

Bones wet his lips and at last nodded warily. Rye beckoned urgently to Dirk and Sonia. Dirk, his face thunderous, took no notice, but Sonia moved cautiously forward.

‘We are glad to meet you, sir,’ she murmured, dropping one of her surprisingly graceful curtseys.

The curtsey looked as odd as ever to Rye. No doubt it was perfectly proper in the Keep of Weld, but it contrasted very strangely with Sonia’s grubby orphan clothes.