They were staring, open-mouthed.
‘The real Belt was safe in Del all the time!’ Barda roared. ‘You were wearing a copy! All this time—and we did not know!’ He scooped up the fallen belt and shook it in Lief’s face. ‘This… this really is just a jewelled trifle!’
Lief nodded, shamefaced. ‘You have a right to be angry, both of you, but I beg you will understand,’ he muttered. ‘Doom and I made the copy in secret at the forge. We arranged our meetings using coded messages—just a simple code where each letter was replaced by the one following it in the alphabet and the numbers were treated likewise.’
‘So “DOOM” would be “EPPN”,’said Jasmine, remembering the note she had found.
Lief glanced at her curiously. ‘We used gems from the palace jewels that most nearly matched the real ones,’ he went on. ‘They have a little power of their own, as all great gems do, but compared to the talismans in the real Belt, they are worthless.’
He smiled wryly. ‘Tirral felt no magic in the belt for very good reason. There was no magic in it!’
‘You—you left the real Belt behind, to keep it safe,’ Jasmine stammered. ‘Your—your friend—wore it because—because she was the one you most trusted?’
‘Because she was the one who had to wear it!’ Lief answered. ‘In case anything happened to me.’ He beckoned to Marilen, who moved back to join them.
‘Marilen is my distant cousin—my nearest relation on my father’s side,’ Lief said, with a touch of pride. He laughed as Jasmine and Barda looked politely baffled. ‘Do you not see, you two?’ he cried. ‘Marilen is my heir—the next in line to the Belt of Deltora.’
‘What?’ Barda exploded.
‘But—’ Jasmine’s voice caught in her throat. She swallowed and tried again. ‘But I thought only the child of a king or queen could be the heir.’
Lief nodded, unconsciously reaching for her hand. ‘The palace chief advisors encouraged that belief, because they were secret servants of the Shadow Lord,’ he said. ‘But when I thought about it, I knew it could not be true. It is far too dangerous for Deltora. My life was threatened from the moment I became king, and I had no child to wear the Belt after me, should I die.’
It was such a relief to tell the story at last. The words, so long held back, tumbled from him in a stream. ‘The Belt of Deltora says simply that the Belt must be worn by Adin’s true heir,’ he said. ‘It follows, then, that if a king or queen dies childless, the Belt will join with the next in line—a brother or sister, for example.’
‘But you have no brothers or… or sisters,’ said Jasmine, biting her lip as the last word brought back unpleasant memories.
Lief held her hand more tightly. ‘No. Or uncles and aunts, for that matter. It has been the royal habit to have one child only. By chance, Adin’s heir had only one child, and this became the tradition—one the chief advisors insisted upon.’
‘It suited them very well, no doubt, to have the fate of Deltora hanging on one frail life in each generation,’ muttered Barda.
‘Yes!’ Lief said. ‘And they had done their work so well that at first my attempts to find an heir seemed hopeless. But then—’ He glanced at Marilen. ‘But then I remembered that Adin himself had several children.’
‘All of them married Torans,’ said Jasmine slowly. ‘Jinks told me that.’
‘Exactly,’ Lief said, wincing at the name of Jinks, as did Marilen, for a different reason. ‘So I knew that if I looked long and hard enough, I would surely find myself an heir in Tora, no matter how distant a relation he or she might be.’ He smiled slightly. ‘“Blood is blood, no matter how thinly it is spread over the ages”, as someone said to us not long ago.’
‘So you searched the library books and parchments for clues,’ murmured Jasmine. ‘Family histories, records of marriages, children born… All those hours of work!’
‘I had to secure Deltora’s future before I could do anything else,’ Lief said. ‘And I had to do it in secret. Doom and my mother were the only ones I told. They knew how vital it was. They knew that Deltora’s safety must never again depend on the life of just one person.’
He smiled. ‘Marilen is a descendant of Adin’s second son. When I found her, I knew I had my heir at last. It is true that when I have a child, that child will take her place as first in line—’
‘That time cannot come soon enough for me!’ Marilen broke in fervently. ‘When Lief told us in Tora that through my mother’s family I was his heir, the news seemed more like a curse than a blessing.’
Lief smiled at her fondly. ‘But still she agreed to leave her home, family and friends and come to Del—’
‘To wear the real Belt of Deltora if you went into danger, so that if something ill befell you, it would shine at once for her!’ Jasmine burst out, finishing for him. ‘And all the time we thought—everyone thought…’
She pulled her hand from Lief’s, and put it to her burning face. Her head was spinning. So much that she had thought was not true. So many things she had seen one way, she now saw in another. Lief shutting himself away in the library. The parchment labelled The Great Families of Tora. The secret visits to the forge. The taking of the royal jewels. The visit to Tora itself…
‘I know Lief wanted to tell you and Barda of me, Jasmine,’ Marilen said softly, seeing her distress. ‘But he had sworn to my father that only Sharn would know who I was, aside from Doom.’
‘The more people who knew Marilen was next in line, the more danger there was for her,’ Lief added. ‘If the Shadow Lord heard even a whisper…’
Jasmine swallowed and nodded. ‘Then why do you tell us now?’ she managed to say.
Marilen smiled delightedly. ‘Because now all is well!’ she exclaimed. ‘Lief had time only to trace the line of Adin’s second child. But Adin and Zara, his wife, had five children in all. Zeean and my father examined the parchments Lief brought to Tora. They have discovered many more of Adin’s descendants, not only in Tora, but in Del too, and indeed all over the kingdom!’
She clasped her hands, her eyes sparkling. ‘Soon everyone will know that a threat to Lief is no longer a threat to the whole of Deltora. There will be no point in killing him—for that reason, at least.’
‘So I will no longer have to live in the palace, shut up like a prisoner!’ exclaimed Lief with great satisfaction.
‘And neither will I,’ said Marilen, equally happily. ‘If Lief should die childless, I will take his place. If I should die in my turn, there will be another to take my place—and another, and another, and another! The Belt will always find an heir, and Deltora is safe.’
‘What is all this talk of dying?’ cried Barda clapping Lief on the shoulder and smiling broadly. ‘Though I confess I could strangle Lief myself when I think of the terrors I suffered, fearing for him and that lying belt!’
Marilen laughed. ‘I am so glad, so glad, that all this has ended in happiness,’ she said.
Jasmine nodded, still finding it difficult to think in different terms of Marilen. ‘This time must have been hard for you,’ she said, rather awkwardly.
‘Indeed it has,’ Marilen said frankly. ‘I faced no real danger compared to you, however. I had the Belt of Deltora, so I knew Lief lived, for it never shone for me. And the gems aided me. Once, the amethyst dimmed when my food was poisoned. I saw it, and knew something was amiss.’
Her face broke into a smile. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘if I had not come here, I would not have met Ranesh!’