In the Lair of the Mountain Beast

Angus & Robertson Fantatsy / genetic engineering / fourth book in series The brilliant scientist, Malig Tumora, has turned his genius against the city's people and enslaved them using a gas that steals away their will to resist. Only a ragged gang of children, 'The Rats', have been able to defy him by hiding in the stormwater drainage tunnels beneath the city. The gas is produced in massive greenhouses filled with millions of purple flowers. Thanks to Berrin's courage in the earlier adventures, the Rats now know that this purple flower is vulnerable to a special moth said to live on mysterious Mount Windenback. Berrin and his close friend Olanda set out to capture specimens of this moth, along with their leader Dorian and a boy named Aden. Outside the city, they encounter a rag-tag band of adults who jeopardize their mission, but from whom they learn the whereabouts of Mount Widenbeck, an extinct volcano hollow at the centre. Despite the ominous growls that echo from the crater, they climb down and find the moth they seek, only to discover just as quickly that they have been tracked all the way by Malig Tumora's forces. An act of breathtaking self-sacrifice saves them from annihilation, but all the moths have been killed.