‘There!’ he gasped. ‘Rye, look there! I think … is that not another pyramid?’
It was. It was smaller than the one that had contained the remains of Sholto’s notebook, and there was nothing inside it, but otherwise it was the same.
‘It is a marker!’ Dirk exclaimed, replacing the stones they had pulled from the top. ‘Sholto built markers so he could find his way back! What a miracle I saw it! By the Wall, Rye, we might have already passed a dozen of these without knowing it!’
‘Hardly a dozen, if your brother did not spend more time building than walking,’ Sonia commented, rather tartly.
But nothing could dampen the flame of hope that the second pyramid had raised in Rye and Dirk. It was not just that the marker proved that they were moving in the right direction. It was the knowledge that however disturbed Sholto had been he had not lost his natural caution or his instinct to plan, at least.
After this, they kept a sharp eye on the rocks ahead. Now and again they would be rewarded by the glimpse of another little pyramid, and they would vary their path to reach it.
At the sixth marker they stopped to eat, perching uncomfortably on a snail-covered rock only just big enough to seat them all. The food Sonia had stolen from the Keep kitchen tasted salty and faintly sour, as if the snails or the curling yellow mist had somehow tainted it. Rye had to force himself to take his share, and when they set off again the meal seemed to lie like a heavy lump in his stomach.
They trudged on and on, following the pyramid trail. Slowly the light began to dim.
Rye noted the change, but he was too weary to feel more than a dull pang of fear. His whole body was aching. He longed to stop, to sit down and rest, but his pride would not allow him to do it. Sonia was ahead of him now, pulling him impatiently along. She seemed to have a new surge of energy. It was all he could do to keep up with her.
He saw Dirk glancing at the sky, and knew what his brother was thinking. In an hour or two the sun would set and the skimmers Sholto had seen would come out to hunt.
As if he had felt Rye’s gaze, Dirk looked round. ‘We should stop and build a shelter for the night,’ he said.
Before Rye could answer, Sonia looked over her shoulder at them, shaking her head vehemently. ‘We cannot stop now!’ she cried. ‘We are nearly there.’
Dirk regarded her quizzically. Rye looked ahead. There was nothing to be seen but drifting veils of mist and endless, snail-covered rocks glimmering very faintly in the fading light.
‘We are nearly at the end of the wasteland,’ Sonia insisted. ‘Do you not feel it?’
‘Feel it?’ Dirk repeated blankly.
Sonia made an impatient sound. Her face was pale with exhaustion, but her eyes glowed with purpose. She tugged at Rye’s hand.
‘Come on!’ she begged. ‘Just a little further!’
‘No, Sonia,’ Dirk said, calmly but very firmly. ‘Your longing to get out of this place is deceiving you. There is no sign whatever that the wasteland is coming to an end. We must stop and prepare for the night and the skimmers. It is too dangerous to do otherwise. We will have little enough time as it is.’
‘If Rye’s shell could protect us from that giant bird it can surely protect us from skimmers!’ Sonia argued, her voice rising. ‘We cannot stop so close to the end! We must go on! We must!’
Rye hesitated, torn, glancing from one to the other. Dirk was eyeing Sonia with concern. Clearly he thought she had taken leave of her senses, and certainly she looked wild enough, with her strained face and burning eyes.
Dirk’s way was best, and safest. All Rye’s commonsense told him so, and all his instincts urged him to trust the brother he had looked up to all his life. But still he hesitated.
Sonia had been right before. She had been right in the Fell Zone.
He met Sonia’s desperate gaze. He took a breath, and suddenly noticed something.
‘I think the air has become a little fresher,’ he said slowly. ‘Easier to breathe. As if—’
‘Yes!’ Sonia cried. ‘It is as I told you! The mist is ending! The snails are ending!’
Dirk shook his head. He, at least, had noticed no difference in the air.
But Rye had. He was almost sure of it. ‘Let us go on for a short while, Dirk,’ he coaxed. ‘Half an hour will not hurt.’
‘I will remind you of that when we are still building our shelter at sunset,’ Dirk said grimly. But as Sonia set off again, pulling Rye behind her, he followed.
As the minutes passed and the light continued to fade, Rye felt increasingly jittery. He was tormented by the fear that he had been wrong in taking Sonia’s side. And he had begun to feel he was being watched.
I am just very tired, he told himself, as for the fifth or sixth time he jerked his head up and saw nothing to fear. This place is affecting me. I am imagining things, as Sholto did.
But the feeling would not leave him. His vision blurred as he peered into the misty distance. Then his mouth went dry. He could swear that the land ahead had begun to quiver!
He rubbed his eyes, but it made no difference. It was only when he looked down at the rocks beneath his feet that he realised what was happening.
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.