Emily Rodda - Ilse Of Illusion

The thundering sound grew louder. Lief looked around him. Everywhere trees, flowers, grass and sky were shuddering, dissolving. Everything was melting, changing …

But … but this was not just a result of the Piper’s anger, surely. This was something far more serious. It was as if … as if …

A terrible thought struck Lief, shaking him to his core. Suddenly he remembered the parchments Penn had shown him. He remembered the one thing that had puzzled him about them. He remembered Penn’s anguished eyes, Penn’s words:

I have done all you require of me, Piper, and it has cost me dearly

Yet what had Penn done but tell the history of her people’s exile? Why had it cost her so dearly? Just because she feared for three strangers’ lives?

Or because, in the telling, she had broken the law she held most sacred?

Truth is all-important.

What had Penn said when Barda asked her why her ancestors had been expelled from the dome?

They were dangerous … They were sick of pretence.

Dangerous? Why dangerous ? Unless …

‘You can make all the thunder and lightening you wish, Auris, but you will hear me!’ Jasmine shouted. ‘This is not Pirra! It is just an island protected by magic and filled with pictures. And you know that! I can hear it in your voice!’

There was a splitting, cracking sound, as though the heavens themselves were breaking apart.

Auris shrieked.

And Lief’s skin crawled as he understood at last. Penn had not lied. But she had not told the whole truth, either. And whatever the Piper claimed, Penn knew that this was the same as lying.

Auris and his people were swaying, backing towards the statue as though for protection. ‘Foulness is in your mouth!’ Auris howled at Jasmine. ‘Your mind is crude, your heart is mean and shrivelled. You are a savage, whose eyes are not fit to see the beauty of Pirra!’

‘Jasmine, do not answer! Let him be!’ Lief cried urgently. ‘Jasmine, the raft-dwellers knew this would happen. They are using us—to break the illusion and destroy the dome! The dome depends on belief! Doubt cracks it. Doubt will destroy it!’

But Jasmine was not listening to him. She was moving after Auris, shouting at him, beside herself with anger. ‘I am not a savage, and this is not Pirra!’ she shrieked. ‘You pretend not to know that, but you do, you do ! Outside this pretty dream of yours, there are monsters crawling and breeding in filth! There are caverns, and a great sea, and thousands of people who live in darkness because you—’

Thunder rolled and crashed above them.

‘You have been sent by the unbelievers!’ Auris screeched, his bulging eyes dark with terror. ‘You are spies for all that is wicked and faithless! You have come to destroy me!’

And with that final word, the surging, fading crowd around him simply vanished, the flickering colours and shapes draining away into the grass like the phantoms they were.

Auris screamed—a scream of pure anguish that chilled Lief’s blood.

‘What has happened?’ Barda roared over the cracking of the thunder. ‘The people! Where have they gone?’

‘They never were,’ Lief shouted back, his stomach churning with horror. ‘They … were part of the illusion. He is alone here. Who knows how long —’

‘One by one the last of them failed me and died,’ cried Auris. ‘But I kept the faith! Alone I kept Pirra alive, harnessing the magic of thousands to keep its beauty perfect. Then you came. Spies and traitors! Saying what must never be said, speaking of things that must never be admitted—’

There was a flash of dazzling light and an ear-splitting crash. A jagged black crack opened in the sky, zig-zagging down to the trembling horizon like a bolt of lightning.

Auris shrieked and fell to the ground at the base of the statue. Desperately he stretched out his arms to it, his bony fingers clawing the air.

The split groaned and widened as the magic trapped for so long within the dome began escaping with rushing fury. Brilliant rainbow light could be seen through the gap as the cavern walls outside exploded into life, and colours dimmed for centuries gleamed.

Lief, Barda and Jasmine threw themselves to the ground, gripping the earth desperately as the force howled around them, tearing at the rags of trees, the faded tatters of flowers, grass, distant purple hills …

Then, suddenly, there was utter silence. But it was not the peaceful or exhausted silence of an ending. It was heavy and tense, as though everything was holding its breath. Waiting …

Cautiously, his skin prickling, Lief raised his head. The vision of Pirra had been swept away. Only the huge glass statue remained, rising into thick, still air which seemed to have been drained of colour. Auris lay face down at the statue’s base, the tips of his fingers just touching the knife-like folds of the robe where they met the ground.

Everything was bathed in a weird half-light. The hills on the horizon had disappeared. Great branching clumps of fungus, tall and thick as ancient trees, hunched where trees once stood. Tiny ferns and mosses covered the clay and clustered along the banks of a deep and silent stream.

In the distance, the jagged tear in the fabric of the dome was now a gaping wound. At the top, it shone with rainbow light. But lower down it was deepest black.

That is strange, Lief thought slowly.

‘Lief!’

Startled, Lief turned to see Barda scrambling to his feet and backing away to stand with his back to the nearest clump of fungus. Barda’s eyes were fixed on the tear in the dome. Jasmine, too, was jumping up, reaching for her dagger.

‘What—?’ Lief began. Then he saw their faces change, and heard, behind him, a distant scratching, tearing sound.

He spun around. And realised why no light had been visible through the lower part of the hole in the dome. Something had been pressing against it. Something huge and black that was now ripping its way through the gap, leg by spiny leg.

Arach!

16 - Terror

With a low growl, the Arach forced itself fully through the gap in the dome. It rose on its back legs, huge, dwarfing the towering clumps of fungus that dotted the horizon.

It lurched forward abruptly, and to his horror Lief saw that another Arach was pushing through the gap behind it. Rainbows shone briefly through a tangle of black legs and a bloated body. Then the second Arach was through the hole, which was quickly blocked by a third.

‘They are escaping from the light!’ exclaimed Jasmine.

Of course! Lief thought. The Arach came from caves. They live and breed in dimness. They cannot bear bright light. Now that the caverns are lit by magic once more, the dome is the only place left for them to hide.

For the dome had not been brightened by the rainbow brilliance that shone behind the tear in its fabric.

It was as though the half-light that hung above the island stifled the brighter light, and prevented it from entering.

Five Arach now loomed on the horizon. And more were coming. The first arrivals had begun moving forward. Their massive bodies swaying on their long, spiny legs, they were feeling their way, moving awkwardly on the unfamiliar, solid ground.

‘They are coming this way,’ Jasmine exclaimed. ‘Perhaps the statue attracts them. Or perhaps they can smell prey.’

‘That is not a pleasant thought,’ said Barda grimly. He looked thoughtfully at his sword. Large and heavy as it was, it seemed as small as a needle compared to the approaching beasts.

‘We cannot fight them, Barda,’ Lief muttered. ‘Any more than we could fight the Sand Beasts in the Shifting Sands, or the Glus in the Maze of the Beast. We would not last a moment!’