The Scarab (The Oracle Sequence) by Fisher Catherine

Author:Fisher, Catherine [Fisher, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Children's Books
Published: 2010-10-07T05:00:00+00:00

All dangers are reflections in her mirror

It was a corridor into a god’s world.

Mirany knew that because it was too smooth, had no markings or doorways. The perfection of its curved walls made it seem like the swollen tunnel of some vast beetle, formed over aeons by the rolling of a fiery sphere. She had no idea how long she had been walking down it. Maybe days. Maybe only minutes.

It was dark, but not completely black. She could see Argelin in front, and looking back, the bulk of Oblek trudged behind like a hunchbacked shadow, carrying the Archon. She stopped now, and let him catch up.

Looming next to her his puzzled whisper echoed round the walls. ‘Where the hell are we, Mirany?’

‘Nowhere,’ she said. Then she smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re here though, Oblek.’

He grunted, peering through the dimness. ‘He’s stopped.’

Argelin had halted before a massive structure. Hurrying down, Mirany saw how a great gateway rose to the roof, how the General spread his palms against its bronze doors.

Hearing them, he turned.

For a moment he and Oblek glared at each other; then in the big man’s ear the Archon whispered sleepily, ‘Put me down,’ and the lumpy shape dissolved into two, a thin form sliding to the floor, yawning and scratching.

‘So,’ Argelin said quietly. ‘Is this a nightmare? Or some spell?’

‘Neither of those,’ Mirany said.

‘And I am not dead? Because I believed all of you to have been.’ He laughed, harshly. ‘Maybe death is not so much to be feared after all. At least I can assume the fat musician will not be trying to cut my throat at every turn.’

‘Don’t give me ideas,’ Oblek growled.

Argelin smiled thinly. His smooth beard was ragged, his eyes dull with fatigue. He turned back to the gates, holding up the sun-disc like a lamp. ‘These are locked.’

Mirany came up beside him. The entrance to the Underworld was made of bone; an ivory stack of criss-crossed femurs and tibias, as if all the displaced inhabitants of some lost tomb had been piled up here in pieces, a ramshackle structure on which to hang the brass doors. It should have been fragile but it wasn’t; when Argelin kicked the pillars they were immovable, and the row of skulls across the top stared down through dark sockets.

‘The doors of death.’ Argelin’s voice was quiet. ‘Hermia would have come this way and these doors would have swung wide to admit her. Your magic disc is not working, boy.’

‘I expect you have to knock.’ Alexos wriggled past him, put his fist up and knocked once, then again on the beaten brass. A tiny, hollow sound, it echoed oddly and for a moment Mirany was afraid that there was nothing behind the doors at all but a terrible emptiness studded with stars, so the sudden deafening crack made her jump back, grabbing Oblek’s arm.

The doors split.

Dust fell. Oblek pulled Alexos away. Only Argelin did not move.

Shuddering, as if pushed from behind, the doors opened outwards. They grated over the smooth

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