The Lake of Souls (7 page)

“Harkat!” I screamed, reaching out automatically, as though I could grab and save him. The picture of Mr. Crepsley falling into the pit of stakes in the Cavern of Retribution flashed through my head, and my insides turned to lead.

There was an ugly thud and an agonizing screech as the panther was impaled on the stakes. No sound came from Harkat, which made me think he’d landed beneath the panther and died instantly.

“No!”
I moaned, picking myself up and hobbling toward the edge of the pit. I was so worried about Harkat that I almost toppled into the pit myself! As I stood on the edge, arms swinging wildly to correct my balance, there was a low groan and I saw Harkat’s head turn. He’d landed on top of the panther — he was alive!

“Harkat!” I shouted again, joyously this time.

“Help … me … up,” he gasped. The panther’s limbs were still twitching, but they no longer presented a threat — it was nearing the final stages of its death throes and wouldn’t have had the strength to kill Harkat even if it wished to.

Lying on my stomach, I reached down into the pit and offered Harkat my hand, but he couldn’t reach. He was lying flat on the panther, and although the creature — and the baboon underneath — had taken the worst of the stakes, several had pierced Harkat, a few in his legs, a couple in his stomach and chest, and one through the flesh of his upper left arm. The wounds to his legs and body didn’t look too serious. The one through his arm was the problem — he was stuck on the stake and couldn’t raise his right hand high enough to clutch mine.

“Wait there,” I said, looking around for something to lower to him.

“As if … I could go … anywhere!” I heard him mutter sarcastically.

We didn’t have any rope, but there were plenty of strong vines growing nearby. Hurrying to the nearest, I sawed at it with my fingernails, cutting off a six foot length. I grabbed it tightly near both ends and tugged sharply to test it. The vine didn’t snap under the strain, so I returned to the pit and fed down one end to Harkat. The Little Person grabbed it with his free right hand, waited until I’d gotten a good grip on my end, then yanked his left arm free of the stake. He gasped tightly as his flesh slid off the piercing wood. Grasping the vine tight, he swung his feet onto the wall of the pit and walked up it, pulling on the vine at the same time.

Harkat was almost at the top when his feet slipped. As his legs dropped, I realized his falling weight would drag us both down if I held on to the rope. I released it with snake-like speed, collapsed to my stomach and clutched for Harkat’s hands.

I missed his hands, but my fingers closed on the left sleeve of his blue robes. There was a terrifying ripping sound and I thought I’d lost him, but the material held, and after a few dangerous, dangling seconds I was able to haul the Little Person up out of the pit.

Rolling onto his back, Harkat stared up at the sky, his grey, stitched-together face looking even more like a corpse’s than usual. I tried to get up, but my legs were trembling, so I flopped beside him and the two of us lay there in silence, breathing heavily, marveling inwardly at the fact that we were still alive.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I
PATCHED HARKAT UP
as best I could, cleaning out his wounds with water from the stream, slicing my sweater into strips to use as bandages. If I’d been a full-vampire I could have used my spit to close his cuts, but as a half-vampire I lacked that ability.

The wounds to his face — where the panther had clawed him — should have been stitched, but neither of us had any thread or needles. I suggested improvising and using a small bone and animal hair, but Harkat waved the idea away. “I have enough stitches.” He grinned. “Let it heal as it likes. I can’t get any uglier … than I already am.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, and laughed as he swatted me round the back of my head. I swiftly grew serious again. “If infection sets in …”

“Looking on the bright side as usual,” he groaned, then shrugged. “If it sets in, I’m finished — no … hospitals here. Let’s not worry … about it.”

I helped Harkat to his feet and we returned to the edge of the pit to gaze down at the panther. Harkat was limping worse than normal — he’d always had a slight limp in his left leg — but he said he wasn’t in much pain. The panther was five feet in length and thickly built. As we stared at it, I could hardly believe we’d bested it in the fight. Not for the first time in my life, I got the feeling that if vampire gods existed, they were keeping a close watch on me and lending a helping hand whenever I strayed out of my depth.

“You know what worries me … the most?” Harkat asked after a while. “Mr. Tiny said the panther was … the
least
of our worries. That means there’s worse ahead!”

“Now who’s being pessimistic?” I snorted. “Want me to go down and get the panther out?”

“Let’s wait until morning,” Harkat said. “We’ll build a good fire, eat, rest … and drag the panther … up tomorrow.”

That sounded good to me, so while Harkat made a fire — using flinty stones to create sparks — I butchered the deer and set about carving it up. Once upon a time I might have let the deer go, but vampires are predators. We hunt and kill without remorse, the same as any other animal of the wilds.

The meat, when we cooked it, was tough, stringy, and unappealing, but we ate ravenously, both aware of how fortunate we were not to
be
the main course that night.

I climbed down into the pit in the morning and pulled the panther off the stakes. Leaving the baboon where it lay I passed the panther’s carcass up to Harkat. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds — the panther was very heavy — but we were stronger than humans, so it wasn’t one of our harder tasks.

We studied the panther’s gleaming black corpse, wondering how it would tell us where to go. “Maybe we have to slice it open,” I suggested. “There might be a box or canister inside.”

“Worth trying,” Harkat agreed, and rolled the panther over on its back, presenting us with its smooth, soft stomach.

“Wait!” I shouted as Harkat prepared to make the first cut. The hair on the panther’s underside wasn’t quite as dark as elsewhere. I could see the stretched skin of its stomach — and there was something drawn on it! I searched among our makeshift knives for one with a long, straight edge, then scraped away some of the hairs on the dead panther’s stomach. Thin raised lines were revealed.

“That’s just scar tissue,” Harkat said.

“No,” I disagreed. “Look at the circular shapes and the way they spread out. They’ve been carved deliberately. Help me scrape the entire stomach clear.”

It didn’t take long to shave the panther and reveal a detailed map. It must have been gouged into the panther’s stomach many years ago, maybe when it was a cub. There was a small X at the extreme right of the map, which seemed to indicate our current position. Toward the left an area was circled, and something had been written within the circle.

“Go to the home of the world’s largest toad,” I read aloud. “Grab the gelatinous globes.”

That’s all it said. We read it a few more times, then shared a puzzled look. “Any idea what ‘gelatinous’ means?” Harkat asked.

“I think it’s got something to do with jelly,” I answered uncertainly.

“So we’ve got to find the world’s … largest toad, and grab globes made out of jelly?” Harkat sounded dubious.

“This is Mr. Tiny we’re dealing with,” I reminded him. “He makes jokes out of everything. I think our best bet’s simply to follow the map from here to the circle and worry about the rest once we get there.”

Harkat nodded, then set about the panther’s stomach with a sharp stone knife, cutting free the map. “Here,” I stopped him. “Let me. I’ve got nimbler fingers.”

As I carefully cut around the edges of the map and sliced the panther’s flesh away from its insides, Harkat strolled around the dead beast, mulling something over. As I peeled the map free of the panther and wiped the inside of it clean on a patch of grass, Harkat stopped. “Do you recall Mr. Tiny saying he’d … thrown in a clue to my identity?” he asked.

I cast my thoughts back. “Yes. Maybe that’s what the message within the circle means.”

“I doubt it,” Harkat replied. “Whoever I was before I died, I’m pretty … sure I wasn’t a toad!”

“Maybe you’re a frog prince,” I giggled.

“Ha stinking ha,” Harkat said. “I’m sure the writing’s got nothing … to do with me. There must be something else.”

I studied the dead panther. “If you want to root around in its guts, feel free,” I told Harkat. “I’m content with the map.”

Harkat crouched beside me and flexed his stubby grey fingers, intent on ripping out the panther’s insides. shifted away, not wanting to be part of the messy task. As I did, my eyes flicked to the panther’s mouth. Its lips were curled up over its teeth in a frozen death snarl. I laid a hand on Harkat’s left arm and said softly, “Look.”

When Harkat saw what I was pointing at, he reached over to the panther’s mouth and prised its stiff lips entirely clear of its fangs. There were small black letters etched into most of the creature’s teeth — an A, a K, an M, and others. “There!” Harkat grunted with excitement. “That must be it.”

“I’ll hold the head up,” I said, “so that you can read all the —”

But before I’d finished, Harkat had grasped one of the panther’s largest teeth with his fingers and attacked its gums with a knife held in his right. I saw that he was fixed on extracting all the teeth, so I left him to it while he hacked them loose.

When Harkat was done, he took the teeth to the stream and washed them clean of blood. When he returned, he scattered the teeth on the ground and we bent over them to try and decipher the mystery. There were eleven teeth in all, host to a variety of letters. I arranged them alphabetically so that we could see exactly what we had. There were two A’s, followed by a single D, H, K, L, M, R, S, T, and U.

“We must be able to make a … message out of them,” Harkat said.

“Eleven letters,” I mused. “It can’t be a very long message. Let’s see what we can come up with.” I shifted the letters around until I got three words — ASK MUD RAT — with two letters left over, H and L.

Harkat tried and got SLAM DARK HUT.

As I was juggling them around again, Harkat groaned, pushed me aside and began rearranging the teeth purposefully. “Have you worked it out?” I asked, slightly disappointed that he’d beaten me to the punch.

“Yes,” he said, “but it’s not a clue — just Mr. Tiny … being smug.” He finished laying out the teeth and waved at them bitterly — HARKAT MULDS.

“What’s the point of that?” I grumbled. “That’s a waste of time.”

“Mr. Tiny loves playing with time,” Harkat sighed, then wrapped the teeth in a piece of cloth and tucked them away inside his robes.

“What are you hanging on to them for?” I asked.

“They’re sharp,” Harkat said. “They might come in handy!” He stood and walked over to where the map was drying in the sun. “Will we be able to use this?” he asked, studying the lines and squiggles.

“If it’s accurate,” I replied.

“Then let’s get going,” Harkat said, rolling the map up and sticking it inside his robes along with the teeth. “I’m anxious to meet the world’s … largest toad.” He looked at me and grinned. “And to see if there’s any … family resemblance.”

Laughing, we broke camp quickly and set off through the trees, eager to leave behind the clouds of flies and insects gathering to feast on the corpse of the defeated lord of the jungle.

CHAPTER NINE

A
BOUT THREE WEEKS LATER
, we came to the edge of a huge swamp — the area marked on the map by the circle. It had been a relatively easy trek. The map had been plainly drawn and was simple to follow. Though the terrain was tricky to negotiate — lots of wiry bushes to cut through — it didn’t present any life-threatening problems. Harkat’s wounds had healed without complications but he was left with three very noticeable scars on the left side of his face — almost as if he’d been marked by an especially eager vampaneze!

A foul smell of putrid water and rotting plants emanated from the swamp. The air was thick with flying insects. As we stood and watched, we spotted a couple of water snakes attack, kill, and devour a large rat with four yellow eyes.

“I don’t like the look of this,” I muttered.

“You haven’t seen the worst yet,” Harkat said, pointing to a small island off to our left, jutting out of the waters of the swamp. I couldn’t see what he was talking about at first — the island was bare except for three large logs — but then one of the “logs” moved.

“Alligators!” I hissed.

“Very bad news for
you,”
Harkat said.

“Why me in particular?” I asked.

“
I
wrestled the panther,” he grinned. “The alligators are
yours.”

“You have a warped sense of humor, Mulds,” I growled, then stepped back from the edge of the swamp. “Let’s circle around and try to find the toad.”

“You know it’s not going to be … on the outskirts,” Harkat said. “We’ll have to wade in.”

“I know,” I sighed, “but let’s at least try and find an entry spot that isn’t guarded by alligators. We won’t get very far if those guys get wind of us.”

We walked for hours along the rim of the swamp, without sight or sound of a toad, though we did find lots of small brown frogs. We saw plenty more snakes and alligators too. Finally we came to a section with no visible predators. The water was shallow and slightly less pungent than elsewhere. It was as good a place as any to wet our toes.

“I wish I had Mr. Tiny’s … rain boots,” Harkat grumbled, knotting the hem of his blue robes above his knees.

“Me too,” I sighed, rolling up the bottoms of my jeans. I paused as I was about to set foot in the water. “I just thought of something. This stretch of swamp could be full of piranha — that might be why there are no alligators or snakes!”

Harkat stared at me with something close to loathing in his round green eyes. “Why can’t you keep stupid thoughts … like that to yourself?” he snapped.

“I’m serious,” I insisted. I got down on my hands and knees and peered into the still waters of the swamp, but it was too cloudy to see anything.