The sound of my footsteps crunching over bones deflects the snake’s attention. It turns again, advancing on me instead, one eye glinting furiously, the other a bloodied pulp, streaming red. I raise my hands, letting fury take hold. But the snake only sheds the ice that begins to coat its scales like a second skin.
‘What’re you doing?’ Flint howls helplessly from the other side of the cave.
I wait until the snake is just feet away – until I can smell the carrion on its breath.
I count one heartbeat. Two.
The creature lunges, ready to devour me whole. But I’m faster, thrusting my arm upward and lodging the bone I’d been concealing behind my back into its mouth.
I become aware of a sudden searing pain in my right arm before I lose my footing and my grip on the nightlight. It bounces a few paces away, fracturing the light across the walls. The snake is bucking and thrashing as it attempts to eject the bone from its jaws. I roll to the side, grab the nightlight and scramble to my feet.
‘Flint!’ I yell.
And then my brother is there, clinging to the snake’s back, an arrow clamped between his teeth. I gasp as the snake finally snaps the bone wedged inside its mouth. It bears down on me, just as Flint stabs the arrow into the side of its head. The snake lurches so violently that Flint is thrown forward. As I pull him up, I realize that I’m bleeding – my shirt sleeve is sticky with blood. I must have nicked my arm on one of the snake’s fangs.
That’s when my body begins to turn sluggish and leaden. The sharp pain in my arm is dulled somewhat by a strange heaviness which slackens my every movement.
Giving my head a little shake, I reach inward for my anchors but my mind is vacant. My emotions are a shifting blur, my water gifts useless, dried up.
What’s happening to me?
I trip over my own feet, slumping sideways. Flint catches hold of me, shouting urgently into my ear. Only, his words make no sense – the syllables are all scrambled. He starts to back away, hauling my boneless body with him as the snake advances.
I try to speak but my tongue feels like a dead thing in my mouth.
My lips form the word.
Fire.
But Flint has begun to shake, his breaths coming in gasps, beads of sweat dewing on his brow. I think of the way he hurled a ball of flame down the throat of the cobra in the Keep. The way he dusted himself off as though it were nothing.
‘Flint,’ I rasp.
Our backs slam into stone. My brother turns his head to look at me, panic in his eyes. I stare back at him, willing him to act, willing a wall of fire to erupt and save us both.
My voice rises to a scream. ‘Fire!’
A split second later, the flames leap forth in a burning, billowing cloud.
The snake is thrown backwards by the force of the blast and flops down on to the bone-strewn floor, dead.
Smoke rises just as the walls start to tremble. Red sandstone dust falls from above.
I let go of Flint to shelter beneath my arms as debris begins to rain down on our heads. There’s a noise like a rumble of thunder, and I look up to see cracks running along the length of the ceiling, cutting deep fissures into the surface of the stone.
A shriek rips from my mouth as the ceiling caves in. But a pair of hands shoves me hard, and I’m thrown forward, narrowly avoiding being crushed by a giant slab of rock. I slide down a wall, my body overcome by heaviness. And somewhere in the haze, I recall the snake’s fangs, gleaming white and dripping with …
Venom.
I’m half buried in the depths of the Ridge, and I’ve been bitten by a venomous snake.
I can’t feel my fingers. I can’t feel my right arm. Is it still there? I can’t tell. I can’t see either, and I realize that the tunnel is now drenched in darkness, the only source of light the gentle orange glow of dying embers clinging to blood-soaked scales.
‘Flint,’ I croak, reaching out for him. ‘Where are you?’ I scrabble around, groggy and delirious, coughing on the dust floating thick in the air. ‘Flint.’
But Flint makes no reply. Because Flint isn’t here.
7
