Lex Trent versus the Gods

CHAPTER TEN

Moving between the hot and cold rooms as they progressed through the castle was in itself uncomfortable, but infinitely preferable to being frozen or toasted alive. There had been a couple of heart-stopping moments in the hot rooms when the sandy floors had given way beneath them and they had been forced to sprint for the nearest exit. Lex had thoroughly enjoyed this, of course, finding the thrill of almost plunging to his death utterly exhilarating, but Schmidt had not seemed quite so entertained and had quickly grasped the importance of avoiding the sandy rooms where they could. Despite the thrill, Lex tried as hard as he possibly could to avoid the hot rooms for he did not want Schmidt to guess the truth behind those stone statues and start panicking and upsetting everything.

But then they found Theba and the secret was out.

They had just come out of an ice room and into another sandy corridor when they found him — frozen in stone like all the others. Lex tried to hurry Schmidt past him before he could notice but the sharp-eyed lawyer was not to be deceived.

‘Gracious me, that’s the prophet’s companion!’ he exclaimed in horror.

‘Ah ha.’ Lex made a weak attempt to laugh it off. ‘There is a certain resemblance.’

‘It’s no resemblance, it’s the spitting image!’ Schmidt snapped.

‘So it is,’ Lex replied. ‘Astonishing. Come on, we can’t hang around here all day.’

He was most eager not to linger in the sandy rooms any longer than was necessary, but the damned lawyer was still ogling at the statue as if it were the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen in his life. It was, indeed, identical to Theba in every way. The thin gangster with the greasy hair had a terrified expression on his face and, now that Schmidt looked at the other stone people in the corridor around them, he was obviously realising that they all wore the same expression. The penny finally dropped.

‘Medusas!’ he croaked.

Lex sighed. ‘It seems that way. The prophet must have escaped the attack because he’s blind.’

Schmidt was instantly panic stricken as Lex had known full well that he would be.

‘We’ve got to get out of here at once!’ the lawyer exclaimed, already looking round for possible exits.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Lex said coldly. He uncurled his fist to reveal the mirror he had concealed there. ‘And I have the only mirror. I’ve been using it to look around corners. Everyone knows a medusa can only turn you to stone if you look directly at her. So if you want to move safely through the castle then I suggest you stay with me.’

Lex turned on his heel and walked away, not giving Schmidt any time to wrestle with himself. There were medusas in the castle — the sensible thing was to push on quickly and not stand about in the open discussing the danger. Schmidt obviously came to the same conclusion, for he hurried after Lex almost at once.

Unfortunately, the supply of blue doors seemed to have entirely run out and so they had no choice but to continue moving through the sandy rooms and corridors, checking around each corner with the mirror for medusas first. Medusas liked heat and hated the cold, which was why Lex had known that, in the icy rooms, they would be safe from them.

Lex and Schmidt had taken their coats off but even then the heat was unbearable. Sweat trickled down their skin, dampening their clothes, and despite taking frequent gulps of the water Lex had packed, they felt permanently dehydrated. Soon the water was almost all gone and Lex — with a considerable lack of good grace — was forced to give the last bottle to Schmidt for the old lawyer was clearly feeling the heat even more than Lex.

They made to carry on down the next corridor when Lex’s foot crunched on something lying on the floor. It was — quite unmistakably — a human bone. The floor ahead was littered with them.

‘Medusas don’t eat people, do they?’ Schmidt croaked hoarsely.

Lex shook his head in silence and tiptoed forwards through the bones before Schmidt could suggest turning back. When he got to the end of the corridor, he could hear a munching, crunching sort of noise that made the skin at the back of his neck prickle. There was really no point in even using the mirror, for anything making that sound was not something that they were going to want to try and get past. They would have to find an alternative route. But Lex couldn’t help himself — he had to see what it was before creeping away. So he raised the mirror in his hand and used it to look around the corner.

His heart sped up with excitement and dread for what he saw in the little glass was a minotaur — huge, horned, covered in tough, red skin, with great yellow fangs, sitting in what appeared to be a kind of den, gnawing happily on a human bone that had long ago been stripped of flesh.

Lex stared, fascinated, for a moment before lowering the mirror and turning back around to Schmidt. The lawyer stood only a few paces away but it was obvious from the expression on his face that he had seen what Lex had seen. He was shaking slightly as he turned around back the way they had come and Lex just hoped to the Gods that Schmidt would have the sense to avoid treading noisily on any bones, thereby giving them away. Thankfully, although the lawyer moved quickly he also moved silently and Lex caught up with him and grabbed at the back of his shirt just as he was about to round a corner.

As it turned out, it was a lucky thing that Lex stopped him because when he raised the mirror he almost dropped it in his shock at seeing a medusa — fearsomely ugly with snakes for hair — inside the corridor they had just come from and walking towards them. There was nowhere to run. They were trapped — a minotaur on one side, a medusa on the other. Certain death, for sure…

Whilst Schmidt stood with his mouth hanging open in stupid horror, Lex stared around desperately for some means of escape. But the only things in the little corridor were bones and two frozen statues of large, muscled gladiators with helmets, armour and huge, bejewelled swords. They were about as strong and impressive-looking as any two people could be and yet they had both come to an unfortunate end. What chance did an unarmed elderly lawyer and a skinny teenager possibly have? There were no doors, no stairs, no windows, no weapons…

There was one chance and one chance only so Lex grabbed Schmidt’s arm and dragged him towards the two gladiator statues. Schmidt thought at first that Lex’s plan was to hide behind them, which seemed unlikely to work considering the noise they’d just made, clattering through the bones. But then — to the lawyer’s horror — Lex grabbed a bone up off the floor and smashed it repeatedly against one of the statues, shattering the silence with the din and raising his voice to shout, ‘We’re in here!’

Then he dropped the bone and crouched down, dragging Schmidt with him. Mad, the old lawyer thought numbly, he’s gone completely mad. He covered his eyes, cringing in fear at the noise of the thundering hooves of the minotaur running into the room followed almost at once by the hissing medusa. Then the hooves stopped abruptly, the monster was cut off mid-roar and Lex was leaping to his feet, out from behind the protection — such as it was — of the statues.

Schmidt could barely register what was happening. The boy was a goner for sure and Schmidt would soon be next. There was the terrible hiss of fifty or so snakes baring their fangs and then there was utter silence, broken a moment later by the sound of Lex… laughing..

Schmidt slowly lowered his hands, still crouched on the floor amidst the bones, wondering if he was going mad or was perhaps even dead already…

‘You can come out now, sir,’ Lex called nonchalantly. ‘I’ve dealt with the minotaur and the medusa. It’s quite safe.’

Half in a daze, Schmidt picked himself up off the floor and walked round from behind the statues to see Lex looking even smaller than he really was, with the medusa on one side and the minotaur on the other. Both the monsters had been turned to stone.

‘How did you…?’ Schmidt trailed off dumbly.

‘Oh, it was easy, really,’ Lex replied, his voice rich with glee, an insufferably self-satisfied expression on his face. ‘By luring them both here at the same time I got the medusa to deal with the minotaur by turning it into stone. Then I simply jumped out at the medusa behind the mirror, causing her to look right at her own reflection and turn herself into stone as well. It’s easy when you know how.’

Schmidt didn’t know whether to be impressed or livid. After all, it had worked and they were both still alive but… ‘A hundred things might have gone wrong!’ he hissed.

‘Might have gone wrong to other people, you mean,’ Lex replied with a smirk. ‘I’m lucky, Monty. My plans are always flawless. Come on, we can’t dawdle about here. The race isn’t over yet.’

Fortunately, once they walked through the now-empty minotaur’s den, they came almost at once to a winding spiral staircase that led them straight up to the very top of the castle without further incident. They had made good time, without any seriously debilitating accidents to slow them down, and so it was an extremely bitter and entirely unexpected shock to Lex to discover that they were not the first to reach the broken mirror. Lucius and Zachary were already there.

This was one of the ice rooms — although only the floor was ice — the walls and ceiling were made entirely of glass, letting in pools of yellow light that splashed brightly off the ice and the broken mirror in the centre of the room. The other effect of the glass walls was, of course, to act as an uncomfortably effective reminder of how very high up they were. Lucius and Zachary were both sitting on the floor near the mirror and Lex could sense that they had been there for some time already.

‘How did you get here before me?’ he demanded from the doorway. The only apparent route was straight through the minotaur’s den and Lex couldn’t imagine Lucius strolling through that bone-filled place even if he had been lucky enough to be there at a time when the minotaur was not.

Zachary and Lucius both looked up, alerted to his presence for the first time at the sound of his voice. Lucius frowned at him. ‘Why are you wearing that stupid hat?’

‘It makes me look taller,’ Lex said.

‘It makes you look stupid,’ Lucius replied.

‘Well, I think your haircut makes you look like a girl but what can I do?’ Lex snapped. ‘How did you get here before us?’

‘Don’t tell him,’ Zachary said as Lucius opened his mouth to respond.

Lex narrowed his eyes at the farmhand. How he hated the man.

‘Shut your mouth before I shut it for you!’ he snarled.

‘What the hell is your problem?’ Lucius said, scrambling to his feet. ‘Can’t you keep a civil tongue in your head? What do you think Gramps would have said if he’d heard you talking to Zachary like that?’

After the last, slightly scary, incident with the ice, Lex had not intended to use the magic in the enchanter’s hat again. But now he found he couldn’t help himself. He directed his most frosty stare at Zachary and drew himself up as far as he could.

‘If you don’t tell me how you got here within the next five seconds,’ Lex said calmly, ‘I shall turn you into a ferret.’

He raised his hand to point at the farmhand, meaning only to reinforce the point but as a new and inexperienced user of magic with a complete lack of rudimentary control, the mere act of pointing had the immediate effect of turning Zachary Finnigan into a sleek, white, rather weaselly-looking ferret. There was a moment of utter silence before the ferret started to squeal.

‘Oh my Gods,’ Lucius whispered, staring at Lex. ‘You’re wearing an enchanter’s hat, aren’t you? Are you insane?’

Lex ignored the question. He was grinning in pure delight at the animal. What a profoundly satisfying moment it was!

‘Doesn’t it suit him?’ he gloated. ‘You know I always said that Zachary probably should have been born a weasel. In fact I even… thought tha-’ Lex faltered, staggering back a few steps.

‘Your nose is bleeding,’ Lucius said, staring at him.

Lex raised a hand to his face and found that Lucius was right. Suddenly he wasn’t feeling so good. The room seemed to have become very hot, despite the ice.

‘I’d better take a look at this mirror,’ he said, as an excuse to sit down.

‘Are you all right?’ Lucius asked anxiously.

‘Yes,’ Lex said irritably, pressing a tissue to his nose. ‘Stop fussing.’

‘I told you you shouldn’t have used the hat,’ Schmidt said. ‘The enchanter can probably sense you when you’re wearing it. He’ll want it back.’

‘Well, turn Zachary back and then take the hat off,’ Lucius said.

‘How did you get here before me?’ Lex repeated.

Lucius sighed. ‘We climbed the castle from the outside. The side where the shade is. We came in just below this room, okay?’

Lex frowned. That would certainly have been quicker, being much more direct than weaving through the hot and cold rooms, dodging minotaurs and medusas from the inside. And sandcastles were easy enough to climb since hand- and footholds tended to be present naturally and could be knocked in where they weren’t.

‘What about the heat?’ Lex asked suspiciously. ‘And how did you cope with your fear of heights?’

‘With difficulty,’ Lucius sighed. ‘Now turn Zachary back.’

Lex gave a hard laugh. ‘I don’t think so!’

‘But you said if I told you how we got here-’ Lucius began to whine.

‘I made no such agreement. You assumed. An assumption that turned out to be incorrect. But you’re my brother, Lucius, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do… ’ Lex put his bag on the floor and rummaged through it, drawing out a length of string. He then lunged for the ferret, tied one end of the string around its neck and passed the other end to his brother. ‘Just to make sure you don’t lose him,’ he smiled.

‘You can’t leave him like that,’ Lucius insisted. ‘Turn him back!’

‘And risk having some kind of brain haemorrhage? I don’t think so.’

‘Unsatisfactory as this whole situation is,’ Schmidt broke in, addressing Lucius. ‘Considering the danger inherent in using enchanted hats and the fact that this enchanter will be looking for us, it probably would be best if your friend remained… in his present state for now.’

‘I’m glad we’re all agreed,’ Lex said, before turning his attention back to the mirror. It was one of Lex’s highly advanced skills to be able to tune out anything that was being said that was likely to displease him, and he now totally blanked out the irritating sound of Lucius’s whiny voice complaining on Zachary’s behalf — as well as the racket the ferret was making — as he studied the mirror and applied his mind to the problem.

It was quite a small mirror, set in a silver frame and broken into five pieces. The breaks were all clean and the mirror remained resting in its frame. Lex had fully intended to use the hat to fix the mirror but he shrank from that now. The incident a few minutes ago had made him more uncomfortable than he would care to admit. He had felt the magician’s anger. Well, perhaps anger was too mild a word to use — towering rage might have been more fitting. Yes, he did not want to die an old man but neither did he want to die quite yet. There was no doubt in his mind that he had seriously pissed the enchanter off and he could not risk that he might catch up with him. But how else to repair the mirror without using magic?

‘What have you already tried?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Lucius asked, cut off in mid flow.

‘To fix the mirror. What have you already tried?’

‘It’s already fixed.’

‘No it’s not, the glass is all broken.’

‘The pieces were all outside the frame and I put them back. I thought that was all I had to do.’

‘Did Jezra come to tell you you’d won?’

‘No, but I-’

‘Then you haven’t fixed it.’

Of course you had to look quite closely to see that the mirror was in fact broken, for the breaks had all been so clean that only very thin cracks appeared to mark where the pieces joined one another. And there was no obvious way to get rid of those, not without using magic. Lucius had merely repaired the mirror, he hadn’t fixed it. A broken mirror was a broken mirror, however carefully glued together it might be. Any task set by Jezra would never be as simple as that.

‘Did you see the prophet on your way up?’ Lex asked.

‘I think he’s out of the round. He got stuck in some of the quicksand downstairs. I don’t know what happened to Theba.’

Lex sensibly didn’t enlighten him and knelt down by the mirror to tip out the broken pieces.

‘What are you doing?’ Lucius asked.

‘Do you remember what Gramps told us about sandcastles? ’ Lex asked as he rummaged through his bag. ‘He said that the corridors were sometimes guarded by minotaurs. And — if you were really unfortunate — by medusas.’

Lex drew the mirror out of his pocket. ‘I brought a mirror, just in case,’ Lex said. ‘In fact, I killed a medusa with it just a few minutes ago.’ He noted Lucius’s squeak of horrified awe before going on, ‘And — as luck would have it — it seems to be exactly the same size as the one Jezra has left for us.’

Lex brushed away the broken pieces of the first mirror and carefully slotted his own one into Jezra’s frame. It was indeed a perfect fit.

‘So Lex Trent wins again,’ a soft voice said.

Lex glanced up to see Jezra gazing down at him. ‘I always win, my Lord.’

‘Thirty-two minutes,’ Jezra said, gazing coldly at Lucius. ‘Thirty-two minutes you were here on your own before the others arrived and yet you were not able to solve this painfully easy puzzle.’

‘I am sorry, Lord Jezra,’ Lucius tremored. ‘But I had no way of fixing the mirror because I didn’t have a second one like Lex did and I-’

‘Lex,’ Jezra said. ‘Assume for a moment that you had not had that second mirror in your bag. What would you have done next?’

‘I would have thought of some other way, my Lord,’ Lex said promptly.

‘Please demonstrate.’

Lex had had many happy moments in his seventeen years, but this one had to be in the top ten. Top five, even. He had always been something of a show-off at school. Far from being embarrassed, he had actually enjoyed it when the teacher had picked on him to show the other students how something was done. Every teacher’s pet knows that smug, contented glow. It was a thousand times better when a God was asking you to demonstrate your skills. Lex calmly glanced round the room, taking in anything that might be useful.

‘Well, discounting the rest of what’s in my bag,’ he said, ‘my first thought would have been to use the ice.’

‘Use the ice, how?’ Jezra asked steadily.

‘Melt it,’ Lex said: ‘And pour the water into the frame so that the still water created a reflection. Just as effective although my way was quicker.’

Jezra smiled slightly, grasped a fistful of Lucius’s hair and, ignoring the alarmed yelp, forced his head towards Lex so that Lucius was looking straight at his brother.

‘Thirty seconds,’ the God whispered in Lucius’s ear. ‘In less than thirty seconds your brother got what you couldn’t get in more than thirty minutes. An appalling lack of resourcefulness on your part.’

‘I will do better in the second round, my Lord,’ Lucius trembled.

Before Jezra could respond, Lady Luck appeared in the tower and instantly threw her arms around Lex in a suffocating hug. ‘My dear boy, you were phenomenal! Better than I had even hoped! Why, it would hardly even matter if you hadn’t been the one to fix the mirror after the way you defeated the medusa and the minotaur simultaneously!’

‘It was nothing, my Lady,’ Lex replied, airily, as she released him. ‘I only wish there had been more of them. It would have made it more interesting.’

Schmidt rolled his eyes at the conceited bragging but Lady Luck just beamed even wider. In another moment, however, the smirk was wiped off Lex’s face when Jezra spoke to Lucius.

‘If you pay very close attention to your brother over the next few days as his guest then perhaps you will learn something.’

‘Guest?’ Lucius repeated.

‘ Guest? ’ Lex said, in much the same tone as if the God had said ‘sex slave’.

‘On board your great ship,’ Jezra said, turning to Lex, a slightly malicious smile on his face. ‘You frightened away the drayfus. Lucius and his… ’ the God glanced at Zachary, ‘and his ferret will therefore travel onboard your ship with you to the next round.’

‘That hardly seems fair!’ Lex protested. ‘It was Lucius’s fault for leaving the drayfus there! Why should I be punished for his mistake?’

‘Now, now. Play nicely, children,’ Lady Luck said lightly. ‘I have agreed to this arrangement with Jezra, Lex. Lucius will travel with you to the next round.’

‘But that just isn’t fair!’ Lex fumed. ‘I’m the one who stole the ship, I should reap the benefits!’

‘If it makes you feel any better, Lex, the enchanter is after you now that you’ve used his hat. If he catches up with you he will likely punish all persons on board the ship, so I’m afraid that, as well as reaping the benefits, Lucius may also pay the price for what you’ve done.’

Jezra picked up the end of string that was Zachary’s makeshift lead and handed it to Lucius.

‘Have fun,’ the God said to the two distinctly unhappy brothers.