Dain lay in a corner, firmly bound. Another prisoner lay with him — a man in a tight blue coat.
Nak and Finn were greeted with cheers. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine were pushed and jeered at for a time, then thrown down with Dain and the other man.
“Their screams will be music to my ears!” screeched Nak, as she swaggered back to the crowd. “But it will be all the sweeter on a full stomach!”
As soon as she had gone, Lief saw Filli slip from Jasmine’s jacket and scurry to her boot. With all his might the little creature tried to pull the hidden dagger free, but the task was far beyond his strength.
Dain’s exhausted eyes were dark with misery. “I knew that if you were alive, you would come for me,” he breathed. “At first I prayed you would — then I prayed you would not. Now what I feared has come to pass. They have you.”
“What is to be done with us?” whispered Lief.
Dain licked his lips. “I do not know,” he answered. “But they speak of something called the Glus.”
The man in the blue coat moaned in terror.
Dain glanced at him. “This is Milne. They call him a traitor. He tried to kill Nak, when she said he was a fool for bringing me with them.”
Milne, thought Lief. Milne. Nak. Finn. Well, I hoped to meet the owners of those names, and so I have. If we have to die, at least we will be taking one of them with us.
The polypan had been sniffing around them. Now it pushed its face into Lief’s chest and whimpered. Lief tried to push it away. Its smell was horrible. It reminded him of something, but he could not think what.
“Are they still going to give you to the Grey Guards, Dain?” hissed Jasmine.
Dain nodded. “Yes, though there was bitter argument. Milne and the others liked the plan. But Nak and Finn were afraid.”
“Afraid?” Lief looked at Nak and Finn laughing around the fire. “They seem to fear nothing.”
A strange, baffled expression crossed Dain’s face. “They fear Doom,” he whispered. “Finn said that if Doom ever finds out that they have knowingly betrayed the Resistance, their lives will not be worth a handful of ash. Doom will hunt them down one by one, and they will never escape him.”
Cheat me, and you will wish you had died in the Maze.
So that is why the pirates are still here, thought Lief. They are too afraid to run from Doom.
“We leave tonight,” Dain was saying. “Nak and Finn refuse to go. They will stay here with the booty. The rest will sail with me up the river to meet the Guards near Dread Mountain.”
The polypan was pawing at Lief again. “What ails you?” he said angrily, trying to squirm away from it. “What do you want from me?”
Then, suddenly, he knew.
Lief whispered urgently. The polypan listened. At first it shook its head, then, finally, it nodded and darted away.
Barda and Jasmine took no notice of it. They were concentrating on Dain.
He was biting his lip, plainly still confused and shaken by what he had heard the pirates say. “I thought I knew Doom,” he muttered. “Now it seems I knew but little. Finn spoke of him — as though he had powers beyond those of an ordinary man.”
“Then Finn is a fool!” Jasmine said decidedly. She raised her chin as they all glanced at her. “I fought Doom in Rithmere, remember,” she went on. “I felt his danger then, and understood it. Doom does not care if he lives or dies. Whatever he has suffered has scarred his heart as well as his face. Inside him now there is only anger, bitterness, and cold.”
“So he has nothing left to lose,” Barda murmured.
Jasmine shivered. “That is what makes him a deadly enemy. That is the source of his power. But it is a power I should not care to have.” She put up her hand to fondle Filli’s soft fur.
Chett came chattering up and pulled Lief’s sleeve impatiently.
“Put it on me, under my shirt,” Lief hissed. “Only then …”
This time, Jasmine and Barda, and Dain, too, were watching. Lief saw his friends’ eyes widen as the polypan, grumbling, fastened the embroidered belt around his waist. He saw them glance wildly at Finn, who was eating and drinking with his companions, quite unaware that he had been robbed.
“You are a fine thief indeed, Chett,” said Lief. He rolled on his side and let the polypan take what it wanted from his pocket — the little packet he had bought from Steven. The creature unwrapped the glossy brown stuff, stuck it into its mouth, and began chewing blissfully.
“This gum is a great polypan favorite, it seems,” Lief said. “Chett went with the pirates not knowing that they do not keep supplies of it for rewards, as the River Queen captain does. Was it not fortunate that I happened to have some?”
Barda wet his lips. “Jasmine has a second dagger in her boot. Would Chett get it out, in return for another piece for later?” he asked.
The polypan shook its head violently.
“I have already tried that,” Lief answered smoothly. “But Chett was afraid to go so far. I said that Nak and Finn would never find out who had done it —”
“Indeed!” Barda and Jasmine agreed together.
But still the polypan shook its head, casting envious eyes at Lief’s pockets.
“So then I asked for my belt,” said Lief, carefully looking anywhere but at Dain. “It has value for me, Barda, because you gave it to me.”
“Of course.” Barda nodded. “And the other little treasure? The pretty jewel found only a day or two ago? In a small pearl-shell box?”
“Chett seems never to have heard of it,” said Lief. “Finn is keeping it to himself, I think.”
“Treasure?” Suddenly interested, Milne rolled over and glared at them with bloodshot eyes. Dain, too, raised himself on one elbow and stared.
Not sure of the wisdom of what he was doing, Lief ploughed on recklessly. “We had a map, but we arrived at the spot too late. Finn had already been there. Wait! I will show you.”
He whispered to the polypan. Chewing madly and grinning with delight, it dug its hand into another of his pockets and drew out the map Lief had found on the cave floor. It trotted over and put the map in front of Milne. Then it darted back to Lief. He rolled again so that it could claim its second reward.
Milne squinted at the paper. His lips moved as he made out the words, especially the note on the side — the note signed “Doom.” For a brief moment he was silent. Then, with a sneer, he rolled over on his back again and turned his head away.
Before Lief had time to wonder about this, he was pulled roughly to his feet.
“Time to dispose of our garbage!” grinned Finn, shaking him by the collar. The other pirates, flushed with eating and drinking, swarmed over their victims and began dragging them out of the cavern and onto the great expanse of smooth rock that stretched out to sea. Dain, left behind, moaned helplessly, struggling against the ropes that bound him.
“Listen to me!” Lief shouted at the top of his voice. “Finn has cheated you! He has treasure that he has not shared! He found a great gem!”
There was sudden stillness. “Oh?” asked Nak in a hard voice, glancing at Finn. “A great gem? Where did he find it.”
“In the Maze of the Beast!” shouted Lief.
To his amazement, the men and women around him, including Nak and Finn, began shrieking with laughter.
“Aha! Then you and your friends can perhaps find another one!” jeered Nak. “No doubt the Glus will be happy to help you look. We will cut your ropes, so you can enjoy yourselves for longer.”
There was the sound of stone grating on stone as a huge boulder was pushed away from a round black hole in the rock.