might indeed possess such a sensitivity. And there was no getting away from the fact that he had stolen the enchanter’s ship. He shivered involuntarily. He had always intended to steal something from an enchanter one day — some tiny little thing that probably wouldn’t be missed for a very long time, if it was missed at all — but a huge, powerful ship stuffed full of valuables was something altogether different and, for an instant, Lex experienced the disquieting fear that he might be in over his head this time. He shook these fears off hastily. What was done was done and he must keep a clear head for the Game.
He turned his attention to their new surroundings. They had broken into one of the sandy rooms and at the moment the heat was making a pleasant change from the frozen iciness before but Lex knew that that would change pretty quickly. They both stripped off their fur coats and stuffed them into Lex’s magic bag. It was a relief to feel sand underfoot again. Unlike the previous room, this one had no windows, but the same flickering torches in brackets were on the walls, just as they had seen in the corridor on the way into the castle. There was a sand bridge stretched across the length of another huge room, suspended some thirty feet in the air with nothing but more sand stretched out beneath them. Lex didn’t particularly like the look of that bridge. There were no railings to hang on to and no obvious pillars supporting it. But they had to get across to the other side somehow and the sand staircase behind them only led back down, not up.
‘Well, at least the sand should be easier to walk on,’ Schmidt was saying. ‘I don’t know why we didn’t just go through the sandy rooms to begin with; anything’s got to be easier than trying to walk on ice.’
But ice is solid, Mr Schmidt, Lex thought. Sand is not. He didn’t speak aloud. After all, that would not have been at all conducive to persuading the lawyer to cross the bridge. Besides which, he had already spotted another couple of stone people down there…
CHAPTER TEN
Moving between the hot and cold rooms as they progressed through the castle was in itself uncomfortable, but infinitely preferable to being frozen or toasted alive. There had been a couple of heart-stopping moments in the hot rooms when the sandy floors had given way beneath them and they had been forced to sprint for the nearest exit. Lex had thoroughly enjoyed this, of course, finding the thrill of almost plunging to his death utterly exhilarating, but Schmidt had not seemed quite so entertained and had quickly grasped the importance of avoiding the sandy rooms where they could. Despite the thrill, Lex tried as hard as he possibly could to avoid the hot rooms for he did not want Schmidt to guess the truth behind those stone statues and start panicking and upsetting everything.
But then they found Theba and the secret was out.
They had just come out of an ice room and into another sandy corridor when they found him — frozen in stone like all the others. Lex tried to hurry Schmidt past him before he could notice but the sharp-eyed lawyer was not to be deceived.
‘Gracious me, that’s the prophet’s companion!’ he exclaimed in horror.
‘Ah ha.’ Lex made a weak attempt to laugh it off. ‘There is a certain resemblance.’
‘It’s no resemblance, it’s the spitting image!’ Schmidt snapped.
‘So it is,’ Lex replied. ‘Astonishing. Come on, we can’t hang around here all day.’
He was most eager not to linger in the sandy rooms any longer than was necessary, but the damned lawyer was still ogling at the statue as if it were the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen in his life. It was, indeed, identical to Theba in every way. The thin gangster with the greasy hair had a terrified expression on his face and, now that Schmidt looked at the other stone people in the corridor around them, he was obviously realising that they all wore the same expression. The penny finally dropped.
‘Medusas!’ he croaked.
Lex sighed. ‘It seems that way. The prophet must have escaped the attack because he’s blind.’
Schmidt was instantly panic stricken as Lex had known full well that he would be.
‘We’ve got to get out of here at once!’ the lawyer exclaimed, already looking round for possible exits.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Lex said coldly. He uncurled his fist to reveal the mirror he had concealed there. ‘And I have the only mirror. I’ve been using it to look around corners. Everyone knows a medusa can only turn you to stone if you look directly at her. So if you want to move safely through the castle then I suggest you stay with me.’
Lex turned on his heel and walked away, not giving Schmidt any time to wrestle with himself. There were medusas in the castle — the sensible thing was to push on quickly and not stand about in the open discussing the danger. Schmidt obviously came to the same conclusion, for he hurried after Lex almost at once.
Unfortunately, the supply of blue doors seemed to have entirely run out and so they had no choice but to continue moving through the sandy rooms and corridors, checking around each corner with the mirror for medusas first. Medusas liked heat and hated the cold, which was why Lex had known that, in the icy rooms, they would be safe from them.
Lex and Schmidt had taken their coats off but even then the heat was unbearable. Sweat trickled down their skin, dampening their clothes, and despite taking frequent gulps of the water Lex had packed, they felt permanently dehydrated. Soon the water was almost all gone and Lex — with a considerable lack of good grace — was forced to give the last bottle to Schmidt for the old lawyer was clearly feeling the heat even more than Lex.
They made to carry on down the next corridor when Lex’s foot crunched on something lying on the floor. It was — quite unmistakably — a human bone. The floor ahead was littered with them.
‘Medusas don’t eat people, do they?’ Schmidt croaked hoarsely.
Lex shook his head in silence and tiptoed forwards through the bones before Schmidt could suggest turning back. When he got to the end of the corridor, he could hear a munching, crunching sort of noise that made the skin at the back of his neck prickle. There was really no point in even using the mirror, for anything making that sound was not something that they were going to want to try and get past. They would have to find an alternative route. But Lex couldn’t help himself — he had to see what it was before creeping away. So he raised the mirror in his hand and used it to look around the corner.
His heart sped up with excitement and dread for what he saw in the little glass was a minotaur — huge, horned, covered in tough, red skin, with great yellow fangs, sitting in what appeared to be a kind of den, gnawing happily on a human bone that had long ago been stripped of flesh.
Lex stared, fascinated, for a moment before lowering the mirror and turning back around to Schmidt. The lawyer stood only a few paces away but it was obvious from the expression on his face that he had seen what Lex had seen. He was shaking slightly as he turned around back the way they had come and Lex just hoped to the Gods that Schmidt would have the sense to avoid treading noisily on any bones, thereby giving them away. Thankfully, although the lawyer moved quickly he also moved silently and Lex caught up with him and grabbed at the back of his shirt just as he was about to round a corner.
As it turned out, it was a lucky thing that Lex stopped him because when he raised the mirror he almost dropped it in his shock at seeing a medusa — fearsomely ugly with snakes for hair — inside the corridor they had just come from and walking towards them. There was nowhere to run. They were trapped — a minotaur on one side, a medusa on the other. Certain death, for sure…
Whilst Schmidt stood with his mouth hanging open in stupid horror, Lex stared around desperately for some means of escape. But the only things in the little corridor were bones and two frozen statues of large, muscled gladiators with helmets, armour and huge, bejewelled swords. They were about as strong and impressive-looking as any two people could be and yet they had both come to an unfortunate end. What chance did an unarmed elderly lawyer and a skinny teenager possibly have? There were no doors, no stairs, no windows, no weapons…
There was one chance and one chance only so Lex grabbed Schmidt’s arm and dragged him towards the two gladiator statues. Schmidt thought at first that Lex’s plan was to hide behind them, which seemed unlikely to work considering the noise they’d just made, clattering through the bones. But then — to the lawyer’s horror — Lex grabbed a bone up off the floor and smashed it repeatedly against one of the statues, shattering the silence with the din and raising his voice to shout, ‘We’re in here!’
Then he dropped the bone and crouched down, dragging Schmidt with him. Mad, the old lawyer thought
