They fear my mind is wandering, Lief thought.
He thrust the paper towards them.
‘The names,’ he said. ‘They are not real names. Laughing Jack invented them.’
Jasmine’s frown deepened. ‘I daresay he did,’ she muttered. ‘No doubt his little joke amused him.’
Lief shook his head. ‘Not a joke,’ he said. ‘A threat. A warning to Fern not to ignore—’
He swallowed. ‘All these names—Dean the Smoke, Dame Henstoke, Andos the Meek, Hank Modestee, Kate Mend-Shoe—are made up of the same twelve letters. Do you see?’
There was a puzzled silence as Barda and Jasmine scanned the names.
‘Yes,’ Barda said at last. ‘It is true. “Seek the Nomad” is the same.’
‘And do you remember the sign we saw on the way to the Broad River Bridge?’ Jasmine exclaimed. ‘Someone had scrawled upon it, calling himself “Mad Keeth Nose”—the same twelve letters again!’
‘It was just after we passed that sign that Fern first spoke to us,’ Lief said in a low voice. ‘The sign alerted her—made her suspect who we were. The Happy Vale noticeboard told her everything else she needed to know.’
‘But—’ Jasmine shook her head. ‘But I do not understand this! What is so special about those letters?’
Lief took a deep breath. ‘Arranged correctly, they spell another name,’ he said. ‘The name of the guardian of the north. The name Fern spoke with her dying breath. The Masked One.’
His companions stared at him, speechless.
‘But—but the Masked Ones fled!’ Barda said at last. ‘I saw them all, on the road to Purley. And Bess—’
Lief nodded. ‘Bess is dead,’ he said. ‘Rust, Quill and all the rest are far away, and know nothing of this. The evil being who calls himself The Masked One—the enemy who commands Laughing Jack, as Laughing Jack once commanded Fern—is someone else.’
Slowly he turned over the paper to show the four musical notes he had written at the bottom of the page. He sang the notes one by one, as Bess had taught him. And as he sang them, he wrote down their names.
‘Bede!’ whispered Jasmine. ‘Bess’s son? But—he is dead!’
Lief shook his head. ‘All we know is that he disappeared into the mountains here, seven years ago, and was never found,’ he said. ‘So close to the Shadowlands border, who knows what evil thing he met, and what promises of power were made to him?’
‘Of course!’ muttered Barda. ‘He was vain and spoiled, by all accounts. Once he grew tired of the poor girl he had lured away from her home, the Enemy would have found him easy prey.’
Lief gripped the paper tightly. ‘The tune that makes his name has been ringing in my ears, louder and louder,’ he said. ‘Bess felt it too, I think. The further west she travelled, the more thoughts of Bede haunted her. Somewhere very near, Bede is singing his name, over and over again.’
‘I hear nothing but the accursed wind,’ growled Barda. ‘And the beasts, howling in the Shadowlands. Perhaps you hear the tune because of the Belt, Lief.’
‘Or because I wore Bede’s mask, if only for a little time,’ Lief muttered. ‘It does not matter which. What matters is that we do not need a dragon to take us to the Sister of the North. The guardian himself will guide me.’
Their path took them past the walled village, but they did not knock upon the gate, and no-one challenged them. A few wisps of chimney smoke drifted over the wall, but these were the only signs of life.
‘Life here was always harsh, no doubt,’ Barda murmured. ‘But how much worse it must be now! Surely most people have died or fled.’
Lief nodded. He wondered if the parents of Kirsten and Mariette, the two lost girls, lived on inside the wall.
What would they say if they knew that the faithless one who stole their daughters’ hearts was still alive—and thriving like an evil weed within their land?
The sky grew darker as the companions began to thread through the maze of rocks and cliffs that lay beyond the village. Soon the light was so dim that they were almost feeling their way. Jasmine called Kree back to her shoulder. They lit torches, and moved on.
The clouds seemed to be pressing down upon them. Lightning flashed, and thunder rumbled ominously.
‘This storm is not natural,’ Jasmine breathed.
Lief stopped abruptly, and held up his torch.
‘Look there!’ he whispered.
A few paces ahead stood a tall stone. It looked horribly familiar.
They crept forward. Torchlight fell, flickering, on the stone.
Jasmine shivered. Filli had scurried beneath her jacket. Kree sat motionless on her shoulder, his feathers fluffed up, his beak slightly open.
‘It is like the stone that guarded Dragon’s Nest,’ she muttered. ‘The verse seems to say that Shadowgate is beyond. Yet we passed the village long ago.’
‘The village was named after the place, no doubt,’ said Barda. He wiped sweat from his brow and glanced at Lief. ‘Do you still hear the music?’ he asked abruptly.
Lief nodded. The feeling of sickness had returned. His head was so full of sound that he could not speak. He moved past the stone, his face turned away from it.
Despair and die…
He heard his companions following him. I am leading them to their deaths, he thought.
Lightning cracked across the boiling sky, lighting up the flat sheet of rock upon which they stood, and a vast mass of jagged peaks blocking the way ahead.
Lief looked down at the Belt of Deltora. The ruby and the emerald had lost their radiance, but the topaz and the lapis-lazuli were still glowing more brightly than the rest.
They shine because their dragons have awoken, Lief thought. The ruby and the emerald would shine, too, if danger and evil were not all about us. Four dragons now fly Deltoran skies. But faith and happiness are far behind us. Luck has deserted us. Honour has turned its back on us. We are alone.
‘We are together,’ Jasmine said loudly behind him. ‘We have the Belt of Deltora to protect us. We must not fear. We must not despair.’
Lief knew that Jasmine was not talking to him. Jasmine was talking to Kree, to Filli, and to herself, defying the evil spell of the stone.
But her words cut through his haze of misery. He put his hands on the Belt. He felt the strength of the diamond, the calm of the amethyst, the hope of the opal, flow through him. He felt his mind sharpen as the topaz glowed beneath his fingertips.
And as the lightning flashed again, he saw the mass of rock ahead shimmering and changing before his eyes. He caught his breath and gripped the Belt more tightly. He watched, astounded, as rocky peaks became towers, cliffs became high, sheer walls, hollows dissolved into barred windows…
A vast castle lay revealed before him. Evil seemed to stream from it like a vile smell.
He heard Jasmine and Barda gasp.
‘You see it,’ he said huskily.
‘Yes,’ Barda muttered. ‘Lead on!’
And Lief felt them move into place beside him.
Nothing barred their way. No creature menaced them. But as they moved towards the castle door, thunder roared above them, and lightning split the writhing clouds.
‘The Masked One is waiting for us inside,’ Lief murmured. ‘He knows we are here. He wants us to come to him.’
‘So it seems,’ Barda said. ‘He is proud, like his evil Master in the Shadowlands. And his pride will be his downfall.’
He raised a great fist, and banged upon the door.
‘Stay out here and keep watch, Kree,’ Jasmine whispered. Kree squawked reluctantly, but left her shoulder and flew away into the dimness.
We have no plan, Lief thought. We are walking into the web of this sorcerer with nothing but our wits and the Belt of Deltora to aid us.
He glanced at Jasmine, and she smiled. So be it, he thought, and straightened his shoulders.