Lizard's Leap: Chapter Thirty: The Key Puzzle

‘Well,’ said King Luke round a mouthful of chocolate sauce and ice-cream and Kerry thought it was terrible bad manners, though Mark approved of it, but wasn’t allowed to do it, ‘the final puzzle is in two parts. First, you have to get the Golden Key—that opens the Golden Door to the Golden Room—and then…’

‘And will we find the golden goose? Who laid the golden egg, and will we all live in golden happiness, golden ever after?’ Emma said.

‘And the second bit?’ Vicki asked, ignoring Emma. She noticed reluctance on the King’s part to elaborate.

‘We-ell,’ Luke sounded even less sure of himself. ‘Then all you have to do is run the gauntlet of the Hall of Death and open the Golden Door with the Golden Key. See? It’s not so difficult really.

‘What’s the Hall of Death?’ Kerry asked, a tremor in her voice.

‘It’s a bit difficult to describe, really,’ said the King, evasively. He might have lost his olde-worlde language but he was no easier to understand. ‘Best that I show you when you’ve completed the first part—if you’re not dea … If you get that far.’

‘And the Key?’ Kerry persisted.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ King Luke proclaimed, in a voice that rang with false joviality. ‘It’s just at the bottom of the moat. You see, many years ago when Good King Mephistopheles came back from the crusades with one thousand chests of treasure, he locked it all in the Golden Room for safekeeping. Then he booby-trapped the hall outside the Golden Room. Then he set up the controls so that they could only be turned off from inside the Golden Room. Then he threw the key in the moat where it would be guarded by the moat crocodiles. Then he forgot that he couldn’t get back in when he needed to pay the milkman. Hence the castle has been failing ever since.’

Vicki stifled a giggle. ‘That was a silly thing to do.’

‘Yes,’ King Luke agreed. ‘His wife must have thought so, especially.’

‘Why’s that, then? Mark asked.

‘Well, he forgot that she was still in the Golden Room when he set off the booby traps.’

‘Oh,’ they all gasped, with suitable solemnity. All except Mark who thought that it was hilarious.

‘Ha ha! Only joking,’ King Luke laughed. ‘She was so angry that she couldn’t get to the treasure that she put him in the castle stocks and ordered everyone to throw rotten fruit at him for a month.’

‘That’s awful,’ Vicki said.‘Did he die?’

‘No. He just grew very fond of soggy tomatoes.’

‘Well,’ said Mark, after he’d licked his tongue round the inside of his sundae glass, something else that he wasn’t allowed to do but he saw King Luke do it first. ‘I think we should take a vote on whether or not we can help.’

‘I have an idea for retrieving the key,’ Kerry said.

‘And I have an idea for running the gauntlet,’ added Mark, proudly.

‘All in favour of trying say, ‘Aye’,’ Vicki Said.

‘Can we pull out of it if we can’t do it?’ Kerry asked.

‘Er, yes,’ King Luke said, doubtfully.

‘You promise, now?’ Kerry didn’t completely trust him.

‘Cross my heart and hope to die, I’ll even spit in a dead dog’s eye.’ This seemed to satisfy the Four Amazing Puzzle Solvers.

‘Aye!’ Mark said, loudly.

‘Aye,’ Emma said, confidently.

‘Aye,’ Vicki said, quietly.

‘Aye,’ whispered Kerry, tremulously.

King Luke leaped from his seat. ‘Come on, then. Let’s get started.’ He was very excited and walked off towards the moat.

Something had been bothering Kerry since they’d arrived at the castle and while they were walking to the drawbridge it seemed the ideal time to ask him about it.

‘King Luke? You live in a medieval castle and yet you have electricity and modern cookers and things. Where do they come from?’

‘Oh, you mean the newtiques? Well, they were left behind by our ancestors, who lived in an advanced age. Do you know they even had horseless carriages? Can you imagine that, carriages that run by magic? Good grief, these days we don’t even have the horses, never mind the carriages.’

‘What are horseless carriages?’ Vicki asked.

‘He means cars,’ Kerry said. ‘That’s what they used to call them in the old days.’

‘No, no, girl,’ King Luke said. ‘That was long ago in the new days, hundreds of years ago, when people flew across the sky in big metal birds and had things called computers that took over the world. We are far more civilised now. One day in the future, man will even undiscover fire.’ King Luke shook his head in wonder, as if this was something awesome and amazing.

‘Wow!’ Kerry exclaimed. ‘This world is going backwards as ours is going forwards. It’s amazing.’