Lex Trent versus the Gods

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lex (as Lucius), Schmidt, the prophet and the Gods had been at the Ladder Forest for fifteen minutes when the Judge at last said, ‘Lex Trent is not here. The round will commence without him.’

The Goddess of Luck fluttered her hands agitatedly. ‘I just don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘He should have arrived just in time, he always does.’

‘You’ll have to go on to the companion,’ the Judge said with a dismissive wave of his gloved hand. ‘The object of this final round is to locate the griffin that lives in the Space Ladders. The first of you to return its black feather to me, wins.’

The shock on Lex’s face was genuine, for humans weren’t allowed on the Space Ladders. It was expressly forbidden. Excitement bubbled up inside him and he wanted to laugh with delight at the mere thought of stepping out onto those ladders. But he had a part to play before the sharp-eyed Gods, so he gasped just as Lucius would have done and turned to Jezra with a wail. ‘My Lord Jezra, I beg you! A griffin! It’ll kill me; I know it will!’

‘Hold your tongue!’ Jezra snapped, smacking him round the back of the head. ‘You disgrace me with your cowardice!’

Lex bowed his head in silence.

‘Well, at least my player had the guts to turn up,’ Jezra said to her Ladyship. ‘I guess Lex Trent isn’t as brave as you thought he was.’

‘Lex is the bravest player I’ve ever had!’ the Goddess stormed — Lex could hear the angry pride in her voice and couldn’t help feeling just a little ashamed at the way he was repaying her. ‘You’ve sabotaged him again somehow!’ the Goddess went on.

‘I’m afraid I can’t take the credit for Lex’s untimely disappearance,’ Jezra said with a shrug. ‘Perhaps that enchanter caught up with him at last.’

The Goddess blanched at the suggestion and opened her mouth to say more but the Judge interrupted her: ‘Continue to dispute this between yourselves, if you wish, but as of now the round has commenced.’

With Lex supposedly gone, the players were all now to start at the same time, for a stand-in companion was forbidden to take advantage of the headstart that had been won by the player. The Judge disappeared and the prophet turned and set off in the direction of the Space Ladders.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Jezra snapped at Lex, aiming a kick at him to get him going. Lex hurried off, leaving the Gods to argue.

‘Well, there’s one way to settle this,’ the Goddess of Fortune snapped. ‘You there!’

Schmidt looked up and caught the apple the Goddess threw him.

‘I want to talk to Lex!’

‘My Lady, if Lex really has been compromised by an enchanter then I’ll become trapped in his place,’ Schmidt protested. ‘Punished for something I didn’t do-’

‘That’s the price of being a companion!’ the Goddess snapped. ‘If Lex isn’t here then you have to take his place. I only need a few minutes. Now do as you’re told and swap places with him!’

Unwilling to bring a deity’s wrath down upon himself, Schmidt reluctantly raised his hand and bit into the apple. Of course, Jezra and Lex had not been foolish enough to forget the Binding Bracelets when they were making their plans. They had simply factored them in. As soon as Lex got past all the warning signs that were stuck in the mud around the perimeter of the Space Ladders, he had taken some handkerchiefs out of his bag and gagged and blindfolded himself with them. Then he’d bound himself hand and foot with the rope — which had been no easy feat, considering the fact that he couldn’t see. The ropes didn’t need to hold for long — only a few moments, for Lex had broken off a piece of biscuit and put it on his tongue and he knew that the lawyer would automatically swallow this almost as soon as they changed places.

He didn’t have to wait very long before he was suddenly standing before the two Gods in Schmidt’s body, the taste of apple still in his mouth. ‘My Lady,’ he gasped. ‘Help me, I don’t know where I am! I woke up in this strange-’

And that was all he had time to say before Schmidt swallowed the biscuit and they changed back.

‘You imbecile!’ the Goddess raged at him. ‘That wasn’t enough time! What did you do, stuff the first piece of food you saw straight into your mouth?’

‘I couldn’t see anything,’ Schmidt protested. ‘He’s tied up and blindfolded. I don’t know where. I doubt Lex knows.’

‘I told you the enchanter would get him,’ Jezra said with a smirk. ‘It’ll take you a while to find him, you know. The Game will be long over by then.’

Then Jezra disappeared, apparently quite oblivious to the fact that the Goddess of Luck was staring daggers at him. After ordering Schmidt on to the Space Ladders, the Lady went to go and look for Lex herself and Schmidt was left standing alone at the edge of the Ladder Forest. The Space Ladders were usually a favourite tourist spot, and parents brought their children to see them stretching away into the dark, inky blackness, but today the area had been kept clear for the Game.

Schmidt laughed softly under his breath and then turned and strode towards the Space Ladders. It was normally forbidden to get too close — people were only allowed onto the carefully positioned viewing platforms. There were warning signs written on wooden boards and stuck into the mud all around, which tended to go along the lines of ‘DANGER’, ‘TURN BACK’, ‘MORTAL PERIL’ and so on. They got the job done anyway. Schmidt weaved between them and carefully rested his hands on the fence that guarded the perimeter. When he looked down over the edge, there they were — thousands and thousands of ladders stretching down towards the bottom half of the planet. It was a maze — there were just so many of them, so many different routes to take. The griffin could have made its home anywhere.

Schmidt couldn’t see the prophet — his black robes camouflaged him perfectly in the dark skies of space. But he could still see Lex, standing below on one of the central platforms, obviously trying to decide which way to go from there. There were rope ladders, wooden ladders and a whole steel staircase all leading off from the one platform, going down in different directions.

‘Hey!’ Schmidt shouted over the edge.

He saw Lex look up. ‘Mr Schmidt?’

‘Wait there for me!’ the old lawyer called.

Then he swung his leg over the fence and stepped onto the uppermost staircase. Lex stared up in horror as he realised that the old fool was actually intending to join him! That was no good — as Lucius, he would be expected to actually be polite! And slow and useless and to lose! He stood there, fuming, trying to remain calm as Schmidt slowly scaled the ladders to catch up with him.

‘Mr Schmidt, this really isn’t necessary,’ Lex said once the lawyer had joined him on the platform. ‘I can’t let you put yourself in danger on my account. Please, go back to the ship.’

‘Nonsense, my boy,’ Schmidt said, in the kindliest tone Lex had ever heard him use. ‘I couldn’t abandon you down here alone. Especially since Lex spitefully lost you your companion. Besides, I have to take Lex’s place now that he’s gone. We might as well go on together. Accompanying you is the very least I can do.’

Lex stared at the lawyer. He had not been expecting this. He’d expected Schmidt to be glad of the opportunity to escape the most dangerous round. Surely he couldn’t be that fond of Lucius?

‘I’m grateful for the thought, sir,’ Lex said desperately, ‘but I just couldn’t… these ladders will be so difficult for you to climb and… The Gods won’t like it if we go on together.’

‘I hardly think that matters now, Lucius,’ Schmidt said. ‘We both know the prophet is going to win, so we might as well travel together.’

Lex just about managed to resist the urge to wring his hands in frustration. He simply couldn’t think of any way around this without admitting to Schmidt who he really was. If they continued together, Schmidt would be sure to guess once he saw that Lex was not permanently cringing in terrified preoccupation with the Space Ladders. Then Schmidt spoke again with a smirk and Lex couldn’t help but gasp when he said, ‘It’s okay, Lex, I know it’s you. You can stop trying to think up a convincing lie.’

Lex’s mouth dropped open in stunned disbelief. ‘How did you know?’ he demanded.

‘I’ve known since last night,’ Schmidt said smugly.

‘ What? ’

‘I’ve always been able to see through you,’ Schmidt said, clearly well pleased with himself. ‘I can tell the difference between you and Lucius. I admit the hair threw me at first, but I’m accustomed to it now.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I wanted to see what would happen. So where is Lucius, anyway?’

‘On the boat,’ Lex said moodily. ‘Hiding in the enchanter’s cupboard.’

Schmidt laughed. ‘Yes, that sounds about right.’

‘Well, thank you for not telling her Ladyship.’

‘I thought you might be forced to play a penalty round for cheating and that I’d have to accompany you,’ Schmidt said dismissively. ‘That’s the only reason I didn’t say anything.’

‘Huh. Well, what do you think? Rope ladders or metal ones?’ Lex pointed at the ladders leading away from their platform.

‘The metal ones look more stable,’ Schimdt said. ‘Do you know where the griffin is?’

‘No. She used to live on a big chunk of comet that got tangled up in the Space Ladders but she’s probably moved on since then. I think the metal ladders look better, too.’

He walked over to the nearest one and started to make his way down it with Schmidt following behind.

‘How do you know where the griffin used to live?’ Schmidt asked.

‘My grandfather told me.’

‘Just what exactly did your grandfather do?’

‘He was a Chronicler,’ Lex replied.

Well, that explained a lot, Schmidt thought, remembering how Lex had seemed to know so much about magical sky castles and enchanted forests and the Golden Valley. Although Chronicling was now a dying profession, Schmidt knew that in the olden days well-read, well-educated men had often travelled with exploring Adventurers to Chronicle their adventures and expand their native libraries with knowledge about faraway lands. A lot could be learnt from reading the old Chronicles and the Chroniclers were well respected as explorers and glorified storytellers.

‘From what Lucius told me about him, he sounded like a good man,’ Schmidt said as they continued their rather treacherous climb.

‘Yes,’ Lex replied. ‘He was.’

‘I’m sorry about what happened to him.’

He sounded like he meant it, but Lex couldn’t bring himself to reply. The subject was much too painful for him. Besides which, the climb was becoming more frightening now that they were getting further and further away from the Lands Above. The ladders felt less stable and it was colder. The space frost did not stick to their hands like normal ice, but it did cover them like chalk dust, making them sneeze as they went. The one and only blessing about Lex’s whiskerfish problem was that it had completely eradicated his nasal lice without Schmidt ever managing to find out about them.

‘I realise this is a stupid question, but do you have a plan?’ Schmidt asked after about ten minutes. They were clinging to rope ladders by this time. ‘Or are we just going to keep climbing down these ladders in the hopes that we’ll eventually stumble upon the griffin?’

‘I think she’s over there,’ Lex took one hand away from the ladder to point but hastily put it back when the ladder began to turn beneath his weight.

There was an area to the right of them that seemed to jut out beyond the main mass of ladders so that it had been far more ravaged by the elements and was coated in the chalky, glittering space frost.

‘What makes you think that?’ Schmidt asked.

Lex pointed down. ‘The suns,’ he said.

Griffins were attracted to brightness, although they were more comfortable in colder temperatures. Holli’s sun had been rising when they went down into the Space Ladders. But Mahara’s, Heetha’s and Saydi’s suns were all still down below the Lands Beneath, waiting for their turn to come up.

‘That outcrop of ladders should give quite a good view of the other suns,’ Lex said. ‘Plus, it will let the griffin watch them rising and setting.’

‘You don’t seem very worried about the prophet getting there first,’ Schmidt said. ‘He did get a head start after all.’

‘Yeah, but he won’t be able to get the feather from the griffin very fast,’ Lex said, grinning. ‘There’s only one way a griffin will willingly let you take one of its feathers and that’s if you ask it very politely by name. I very much doubt that the prophet knows this griffin’s name but, luckily for us, I do.’

‘How do you know?’ the lawyer asked suspiciously.

‘Because my grandfather was the one who named her. She’s called Zoey.’

‘That’s a ridiculous name for a griffin,’ Schmidt said bluntly.

‘I know,’ Lex shrugged. ‘It was my grandmother’s name. He named her after her.’

‘Oh,’ Schmidt immediately looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-’

‘No need to be sorry, sir,’ Lex said, smiling at the lawyer’s embarrassment. ‘Zoey is — as you say — a ridiculous name for a griffin. I suppose my grandfather thought it was romantic to name a huge, hulking wild beast after the woman he loved.’

The climb down the ladders was… not a pleasant one. In fact it was a harrowing, terrifying, terrible journey, and Lex couldn’t help but have the teensiest, grudging glimmer of respect for the old lawyer that he managed it at all. They both kept their eyes fixed very firmly on the ladder in front of them, taking it one rung at a time in an effort to fool their brains into believing that they weren’t really dangling from a ladder between two halves of the same planet with cold black space pressing in against them. If this technique had been working in any small way, it ceased to do so rather spectacularly when Lex and Schmidt reached the bunch of ladders that jutted out in a cluster on their own. For then there were quite clearly three huge, brilliant suns glaring up at them from below.

They were standing on a wooden platform now, their feet leaving footprints in the deep, chalky frost. The Lands Beneath was a vague blur below them, although most of it was blocked from view by the mass of ladders. But they could now quite clearly see the three suns belonging to the two Goddesses and the one God. The sheer enormity of their size made them look closer than they really were. Lex had never seen more than one deity’s sun in the sky at any one time and so had never noticed that they all looked slightly different. The first huge, fiery ball of heat was clearly Heetha, the God of War’s sun. The second sun was so pure that it was almost white, sparkling like a perfect, heat-emitting diamond. There was no mistaking that this was Saydi’s beautiful sun. Mahara’s abandoned sun was not as bright as the others. Indeed its outer rim seemed to have cooled enough for space frost to settle on the surface, although there was enough heat left in the core for it to give out a feeble glow.

The sight of those gigantic, majestic suns burning away below them made both Lex and Schmidt feel tiny and unbalanced. The lawyer decided it would be prudent to sit down before he tipped over the edge and Lex followed his lead, sinking slowly to his knees, enthralled laughter bubbling up incredulously in his chest.

‘Why would anyone choose to miss this?’ he asked, gazing down at the spectacular sight below. ‘How could Lucius actually prefer hiding in a cupboard to this? You must be glad you came now, Schmidt? What life would be complete without that sight in it? Come on, you must agree that this has made the whole thing worthwhile? I would have eaten muggets for a year to get to see this.’

‘It is… humbling,’ Schmidt agreed, gazing down at the suns.

Although Lex himself did not feel particularly humbled by the suns, he did feel an immense swell of pride that he had managed to get there. He was probably one of the only humans ever to have set foot on the Space Ladders. Even his grandfather had never been on the ladders themselves — he’d simply assisted Carey East in sending Zoey down to guard them after the previous griffin died of old age.

‘Well, I think she’s over there,’ Lex said at last, pointing over to their left, where there were two wooden platforms, one on top of the other, connected by ladders on either side so that it looked like a square, wooden cave.

‘You’d better stay back for this bit,’ Lex said. ‘I’ll have to say her name quickly or she’ll attack me. She’ll think I’m a threat when she first sees me and it would only be worse if there were two of us.’

So the lawyer remained where he was whilst Lex scrambled up and over ladders to get as near to the makeshift ladder-cave as he could. When he was on a smaller platform only about twenty feet away, the griffin heard him and came to the entrance. She was a huge creature and looked just like the murals Alistair Trent had once taken Lex and Lucius to see in the underground church-cave where people from around the Globe still went to pay tribute to the magnificent beast.

The griffins came in several different colours and this one was white, with just a single black feather on her left shoulder. Her head and the front of her body were those of an eagle, with sharp golden eyes, curved clawed feet and white feathers covering her chest and wings. In contrast, her hindquarters were clearly those of a lion, with snow-white fur covering her from midway down her back to the end of her long tail.

The griffin had been worshipped on the Globe for a long time because of its role in the aftermath of the Great Divide. They kept the Space Ladders sacred by chasing away any people who might stray onto them. Climbing the ladders was dangerous enough but to have a griffin coming after you at the same time meant certain death since it would be only too easy to lose your grip and fall off altogether. Of course, in recent years, the presence of the griffin had become little more than symbolic, for everyone knew the Gods had forbidden humans to ever go onto the Space Ladders — they did not want people down in the Lands Beneath.

The griffin was clearly surprised to see Lex on the ladders but after a brief hesitation she stepped out into the open and stretched her wings threateningly. It was an impressive sight. The three suns below painted golden light across her pale wings as her beak snapped sharply at him in an aggressive warning. Before she could start chasing him away, Lex raised his voice and said clearly and calmly, ‘Hello, Zoey.’

The griffin slowly folded her wings back at the mention of her name and didn’t move as Lex slowly climbed the last two ladders to reach her. Carefully, he stepped onto her platform, very aware that she could knock him off it just by rearing up onto her legs. But his grandfather had said that the use of their real name and a proper show of deference would make the griffins docile and Lex trusted his advice. As a Chronicler, it had been very important for Alistair to be accurate in every detail because future generations were likely to rely on what he’d written.

Once he was on a level with her, he truly realised how big she was. Even Lex, who had never felt humbled by anything in his life, couldn’t help being just a little bit aware of his own insignificance when he looked at her. Behind her, back within the shelter of the ladders, he could see what was very clearly a glimmering golden nest. Lex knew that griffins were said to make their nests out of gold, but he couldn’t think where Zoey had managed to find so much of it out here in space.

Even more lovely than the nest itself were the three agate eggs inside it. They were all striped in different shades of white and silver. It was a mark of just how affected by the sight Lex was that he did not even think about stealing them.

‘You’re every bit as beautiful as Gramps said you were,’ Lex said softly, bowing lowly to her. ‘Zoey, I’ve come to ask for one of your feathers.’

He straightened from the bow, but remained where he was whilst the griffin watched him. He couldn’t go any closer to her — she might see it as an invasion of her space and feel threatened. He had to wait for her to come to him. After twenty slightly tense seconds the griffin slowly moved towards him, the large paws of her back legs making deep tracks in the space frost that covered the planks. The unbelievable thrill of it raced through Lex like electricity as she padded softly over and stopped in front of him. She was so large that Lex’s head only just reached past the top of her chest.

This surpassed even the royal crown! He was close enough to touch her! He was close enough to see the dusty space frost that lightly covered her feathers and fur; close enough to see the movement of her chest as she breathed and close enough to sense the restrained strength of her majestic, powerful body.

She lowered her head a little so that her long neck was within Lex’s reach. Her half-closed eyes glimmered liquid gold in the light from the three suns below them. Lex took a deep breath for the sake of the moment. Here it was — he was about to win the Game, beating Lady Luck and the Judge himself, winning for Jezra and making an immortal name for himself in the Chronicles yet to come.

He reached his hand up and laid it on the griffin’s neck. He had not expected the feathers to be so soft. His hand ran lightly down to grip the single black feather at her shoulder and prepare to pull it out. He was very aware of the cold, the suns below them, the stars around them and the utter silence of space…

Then there was a shing that sliced through the silence, whistled past Lex’s outstretched arm and buried itself deep into the griffin’s chest. She gave an awful cry of anguish and reached up one clawed foot to try to remove the huge sword from her chest before she collapsed to the ground, making the wooden platform tremble. Lex looked up and saw Schmidt staring down at them with a look of horror on his face. And to the right and slightly below the lawyer he saw the prophet.

Lex dropped down beside the dying griffin, almost unable to believe what he’d just seen. Killing a griffin was… well, it was almost like killing a God. The griffins were worshipped on the Globe.

‘Oh, Zoey,’ Lex muttered, running his hands helplessly over her bloodstained feathers. ‘I’m so sorry — I don’t know how to help you.’

Lex knew nothing about medicine. He didn’t know whether he should try to remove the sword or whether he should simply leave it there. He didn’t know whether there was anything at all he could do to help the griffin or ease her pain. But in another moment she was dead. From above, Schmidt shouted a warning but it came too late for Lex to dodge the blow entirely, so the prophet’s stick clipped the side of his head, knocking him back on the wooden planks of the platform whilst the prophet stepped past him and calmly plucked the black feather from the dead griffin.

His head still ringing, Lex shot out an arm as the prophet walked past him, tripping him up so that they sprawled on the planks together, the feather still clutched in the prophet’s hand. Lex tried to wrestle it away but, although blind, deaf and dumb, the prophet was much larger and stronger than him.

‘Lex!’ Schmidt shouted from above. ‘Let him go! For Gods’ sake, just let him have the feather!’

In another moment, Lex realised why Schmidt had been trying to make him stop, as they both rolled right off the edge of the platform, freefalling terrifyingly. They crashed through several wooden ladders before they landed on another, larger platform. Realising that the feather was in his hand, Lex pushed the prophet away, jumped up and ran to the edge of the platform where a metal ladder led up to a series of wooden ones. He put his foot on the first rung and shot up it like a monkey.

But before he could climb up to the wooden ladders, he became aware of a low groaning sound as the planks beneath his feet began to tremble. Within moments the noise had increased in volume so intensely that it seemed to pierce Lex’s eardrums. It went through him with all the force of a physical thing, knocking him down onto his knees, his hands clapped tightly over his ears.

As the planks continued to tremble beneath him, he thought for one wild moment that the Space Ladders themselves must be collapsing. But then something moved into his line of vision and he realised that the noise he’d heard had not been the Space Ladders collapsing — it had been the groan of orbiting planets. Everyone knew that the Globe was the centre of the universe. The suns passed above and beneath it and the other planets in the galaxy orbited around it. Their nearest neighbour was Plenrii — a water planet for the dead. The Globe was the only living planet in the galaxy and the others that orbited it were all said to be underworlds. There were so many other planets out there because there were always more and more people who were dying and the Gods had to keep creating more planets to provide space for them all.

The prophet, Lex and Schmidt were all motionless on the ladders as the underworld came into view like a gigantic blue marble going directly past them on its cold, solitary elliptical orbit of the Globe. Lex could hardly believe his eyes. As far as he knew, this was the first time in the history of the Globe that any living human had ever set eyes on an underworld.

The deafening roar of the orbiting planet caused no problem for the deaf prophet. He took his chance to grip the ladder below and start climbing up towards Lex, who lowered his hands with the idea of climbing to the next platform, but he realised at once that there was no way he could hold onto the ladder and leave his ears unprotected. Nor could he climb the ladder without using his hands, for the way they were shaking and trembling he would have fallen off within seconds. Still on his knees, Lex stared around the small platform, desperately wondering what to do, for the prophet was sure to be upon him at any moment. He staggered up and walked unsteadily to the edge of the shaking platform, intending to kick at the prophet when his head appeared over the top. But his head never did appear. Just moments later there was such a savage jolt that Lex fell over on the boards, narrowly avoiding toppling over the edge. The prophet was not so lucky. He lost his grip on the shuddering ladder, his hands slipped from the rung. Desperately, he flailed to regain his hold but it was too late. In another moment he was freefalling out into the vast, black coldness of space.

Lex couldn’t help but stare — both mesmerised and horrified by the sight of the black figure tumbling over and over, unable to utter so much as a whisper of fear. Twenty minutes went by before Lex and Schmidt were able to remove their hands from their ears and by that time the prophet was long out of view.