Here the Masked Ones came, seven years ago, Lief thought.
He could almost see the wagons rumbling through the pass, the drivers sitting rigidly, alert to every sound. He could almost see Otto, Rust, Quill, Plug, and all the rest… and in the lead wagon, the mammoth figure of Bess, her beloved son beside her.
Jasmine’s voice broke sharply into his thoughts.
‘Lief! I beg you to stop humming that tune!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is driving me mad! What is it?’
Lief clapped his hand over his mouth. The four notes had been ringing in his head, but he had not realised he was humming them aloud.
‘It is the Happy Vale clock, I think,’ he mumbled. ‘It seems to be stuck in my brain.’
‘This pass does not smell safe, king,’ called the dragon behind him. ‘And it is too narrow for me. You must find another way.’
‘There is no other way,’ Lief said. ‘You will have to fly, and meet us on the other side.’
The dragon made an unhappy, gurgling sound, but spread its wings and soared upward.
‘I have my doubts about that beast,’ muttered Barda. ‘I would not be surprised if it deserted us.’
‘It is not in its own territory,’ Jasmine snapped. ‘Naturally it is uneasy.’
Barda hunched his shoulders and did not answer.
Lief looked up. Kree was sailing between the cliff tops, riding the wind, yellow eyes searching the ground. Above him soared the lapis-lazuli dragon, almost invisible, its underside matching the dark grey sky.
Keeping close together, glancing often behind them, Lief, Barda and Jasmine began to walk through the pass. Lief saw Jasmine frown at him, and realised that he had begun humming again. He pressed his lips together.
‘That is not the Happy Vale clock chime, Lief,’ Barda said. ‘The Happy Vale clock went like this.’
He whistled a quite different tune, a tune with five notes instead of four.
‘You are right,’ Lief said, suddenly remembering. ‘But then, why do I keep hearing—’
‘It is probably some tune Bess taught you!’ Jasmine broke in impatiently. ‘What does it matter? With everything—everything else we have to think of!’
She turned her head away, biting her lips.
And at that moment, Kree screeched a warning.
Instantly the three companions drew together, back to back. There was nothing ahead of them, nothing behind. Weapons raised, they scanned the cliff walls.
Eyes glinted in every hole, every crevice. The cliff walls were alive with stealthy movement. Here, a dripping, pointed snout poked out of a tunnel. There, a bundle of blunt claws scrabbled against the rock. Bubbles of grey slime frothed silently from cracks and slid downward.
‘Move on!’ Barda breathed. ‘On!’
They began to run. But Kree was still screeching above them, screeching warning again and again. And suddenly there was a thunderous roar that seemed to shake the rock.
The eyes in the cliff face blinked out. The snouts and claws disappeared as if they had never been.
Kree swooped downward like a black streak. The strip of sky between the cliff tops darkened. They heard the lapis-lazuli dragon give a single, panic-stricken cry.
And then they could see it no longer, for there above them was a vast, roaring thing of glittering green, its fangs bared ferociously, its spiked tail lashing, its wings battering the air.
Lief went cold. He looked down at the Belt of Deltora. The great emerald, symbol of honour, was burning like green fire.
The emerald dragon had awoken. The emerald dragon, drawn to this place by the Belt, had discovered its land invaded by another.
‘Oath-breaker!’ a great voice thundered. ‘Thief! Invader! Betrayer!’
Paralysed with horror, Lief saw the huge talons slashing—talons like knives—and heard the lapis-lazuli dragon scream.
‘No!’ he shouted at the top of his lungs. ‘It is with us! It is helping us! Do not harm it!’
But his voice was drowned by the sound of the emerald dragon’s fury.
‘Flee, then, coward!’ it roared. ‘You have no honour! Turn tail like the snivelling sneak you are! You will not escape me!’
The great mass of green turned in the air and in an instant it was gone.
Suddenly there was nothing to see between the cliff tops but sullen grey cloud. They could still hear roaring, but every moment the sound grew fainter.
Barda let out his breath in a long sigh.
‘The lapis-lazuli dragon will escape,’ Jasmine said confidently. ‘It is smaller, but it flies very fast.’
‘No doubt,’ Barda said grimly. ‘But now they have both left us. What are we to do now?’
‘We must go on alone,’ said Lief doggedly.
He was trying not to think of what this meant.
The ruby dragon had uncovered the Sister of the East. Then the dragon’s power had joined with the power of the Belt to destroy it.
But what would happen if he tried to face the Sister of the North alone? And how, without the dragon, would they find it?
Kree squawked urgently. Filli chattered. Lief looked up and saw that slowly the eyes were appearing in the cliff faces once more.
‘Let us move on,’ said Jasmine uneasily.
They ran the rest of the way to the end of the pass, and with relief burst out into the open. When they looked back, they could see that the cliff faces were crawling with movement, and bubbling with slime.
‘We are well out of that,’ Barda said heavily.
But Lief’s stomach was churning. His knees felt weak. Cold sweat was stinging his face. His head was ringing with sound.
Slowly he sank to the ground.
‘The village is ahead,’ Jasmine urged, pointing to a wall visible beyond the rocks.
Lief made no answer. He feared that if he spoke he would be sick.
He felt in his pocket for something to dry the sweat, and his fingers touched something hard. Dimly puzzled, he pulled the object out.
It was the little set of chimes Bess had given him. With it came the paper on which she had written the musical notes he was to learn, and the stub of a pencil.
Only half aware of what he was doing, Lief tapped a chime with the pencil. A soft, clear note rang out.
Yes, that is right, he thought. He tapped another note. And another. And then the second note again.
‘Lief, what are you doing?’ Jasmine was kneeling beside him, her face pale with strain. ‘That tune again! What is it?’
Again Lief tapped out the four notes.
Music is like another language, Lewin… This is how we write it down.
Blankly he stared at the paper in his hand. Then, rapidly, he began to draw in the clear space at the bottom.
His pencil hovered over the paper. He glanced up at Bess’s far neater writing. His face began to burn.
‘What are you doing?’ Jasmine repeated, frowning at the marks.
Lief shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled.
This is madness, he thought. It cannot be! Quickly he turned the paper over, to conceal it.
On the other side, there was a mass of his own writing. He realised that he had used the back of Bess’s lesson to write out the notices on the Happy Vale noticeboard.
With glazed eyes Lief stared at the writing. It seemed to shimmer before his eyes. Then, suddenly, letters seemed to move around, slip into new places.
And then he saw it—saw what his innermost mind had been trying to tell him for so long.
The names! The final secret of the notices was in the names. And as slowly he realised what that meant, his blood ran cold.
16 – Shadowgate
Lief met Jasmine’s worried eyes. He saw Barda crouching behind her, watching him in concern. He knew he had to speak, though his head was swimming and his face and neck felt bathed in fire.
‘We did not understand,’ he whispered.
‘Did not understand what, Lief?’ Barda asked quietly, glancing at Jasmine.