Cirque Du Freak #10: The Lake of Souls by Darren Shan

Author:Darren Shan [Shan, Darren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Fiction, General, Horror & Ghost Stories, Juvenile Fiction, Action & Adventure, Legends; Myths; Fables, Vampires, Horror Stories
ISBN: 9780316156271
Publisher: Little, Brown and Co.
Published: 2004-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

We made slow but steady progress through the mountains. If the weather had been finer, we’d have raced through, but all the rain had led to mudslides and slippery underfoot conditions. We had to walk carefully, and were often forced to backtrack and skirt around an area made inaccessible by the rain and mud.

“Does it normally rain this much?” I asked Spits.

“T’ tell the truth, this has been one o’ the better years,” he chortled. “We gets very hot summers — long, too — but the winters are dogs. Mind, it’ll probably break in another night or two — we ain’t hit the worst o’ the season yet, and it’s rare t’get more’n a week or so o’ nonstop rain at this time o’ year.”

As though the clouds had been listening, they eased up the next morning — affording us a welcome view of blue sky — and by night, when we set off, it was the driest it had been since we landed at Spits’s shack.

That same night, we topped a small peak and found ourselves on a sharp decline into a long, wide chasm leading out of the mountain ridges. The base of the chasm was flooded with rainwater, but there were ledges along the sides that we’d be able to use. Hurrying down the mountain, we located one of the broader ledges, tied a rope around ourselves to form a chain, me in front, Spits in the middle, Harkat behind, and set off over the fast-flowing river, edging forwards at a snail’s pace. Spits even went so far as to cork his jug of poteen and leave it untouched!

Day dawned while we were on the ledge. We hadn’t seen any caves in the cliff, but there were plenty of large holes and cracks. Untying ourselves, each of us crawled into a hole to rest, out of sight of any passing dragons. It was extremely uncomfortable, but I was exhausted after the hard climb and fell asleep immediately, not waking until late in the day.

After a quick meal — the last of Spits’s dried fish slices — we tied ourselves together again and set off. It began to drizzle shortly afterward, but then it cleared for the rest of the night and we progressed without interruption. The ledge didn’t run all the way to the end of the chasm, but there were ledges above and beneath it which we were able to transfer to, making the journey in stages. Shortly before daybreak we came to the end of the chasm and crawled down to a flat plain which spread out for many miles ahead of us, ending in a massive forest that stretched left and right as far as we could see.

We debated our options. Since none of us wanted to sleep in a hole in the cliff again, and the route to the forest was littered with bushes we could hide under if we spotted a dragon, we decided to head for the trees straightaway. Forcing our

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