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.
23 - Trapped
Rye had not really believed it would happen. It had been an idea—the glimmer of an idea. But suddenly he and Sholto were off their feet, tumbling beneath a cold, salty, battering torrent, clinging together by a miracle.
Dimly Rye heard Sonia crying out in his mind. No doubt she had felt his sudden stab of shock and fear. But the fear had passed almost instantly. Now he was exultant. With savage joy he felt the sea serpent scale he had taken from the bag of powers sink deep into the flesh of his hand. He felt serpent strength flow through him. He felt his body become one with the flood.
He gripped his brother tightly. He surged with his brother up to the air. He flung himself forward and rode the wave created by that first massive explosion of water till at last it cast them down by the sealed entrance at the other end of the vast room.
And then, clinging together knee-deep in water thick with sodden, stinking straw, Rye and Sholto looked back. And they gaped in awe as the sea gushed through the huge gap the golden key had opened, and the water rose, and the skimmers died.
For the skimmers, woken, shrieking, flapping, fighting each other for space to fly, were attacking the noisy, swirling flood. They did not fear it, because they did not recognise it for what it was. To them, sound and movement meant only prey. Muddy eyes on fire with a ravenous hunger that was never satisfied, they plunged, snarling, to their deaths. They clawed at tumbling clumps of bloody straw, sank their needle teeth into writhing strands of seaweed, slashed at long-dead fish and rolling bones. Then they went under, their wings flailing helplessly as the rushing water dragged them down.
The air was thick with them. The dark water gushing through the wall was swirling with them. In moments the eddying lake that the floor of the huge room had become was filling with pale bodies struggling and dying.
And still the sea poured in, and still the water rose, and still the skimmers attacked, till the flapping and shrieking had ended, and there was no sound except the ceaseless roaring of the flood.
‘We must open—the doors!’ Sholto gasped, ripping off his black head covering. ‘The water must reach the workrooms—the daylight skimmers. None must survive to breed!’ He was numb with shock, but he knew what he wanted. He wanted the sea to take possession of every corner of the cursed building that was the skimmers’ breeding ground. He wanted the sea to sweep away every skimmer in existence, to flood the nest, to drown it.