Emily Rodda - Sister Of The South

But still he could not relax. His nerves were tight as bow strings.

‘Father tried to persuade me to change my mind, but I knew my place was here,’ Marilen was chattering on. ‘So I put on a garment that Sharn had left in Tora, picked up what food I could carry, and came.’

‘If only you were Lindal’s size,’ bellowed Gers, with his mouth full. ‘You could have carried five times as much!’

Everyone laughed. Ebony and Kree looked up from the shred of fish they were sharing and screeched. Even Filli, happily nibbling fruit peel, added his tiny voice to the general din.

All is well, Lief repeated to himself fiercely. It is over.

But he knew it was not. And as he bent his head unwillingly, he saw that the Belt knew it, too. The topaz was still shining like a golden star. But the ruby and the emerald were as pale and dull as roadside stones.

There was another burst of laughter around the table. Dazedly, Lief raised his head. He saw that Barda was ruefully displaying his wooden puzzle box, still locked despite the little rods sticking out from three of its carved sides.

‘Plainly there is another lock on the fourth side!’ cried Manus, holding out his hand. ‘The trick is in the carving. Let me try it.’

‘No, let me!’ shrieked Zerry. ‘Bess of the Masked Ones had many such puzzles. I could do it!’

‘Oh, no,’ growled Barda. ‘This box will open for me, or not at all!’

Disdainfully he poked the box with his finger. His jaw dropped as with a tiny click, the fourth rod slid outward.

The lid of the box burst open. Out shot a laughing clown face, bouncing on a spring.

Barda yelled and dropped the box. Everyone shrieked in shock, then began to laugh helplessly.

The jack-in-the-box lay on its side on the table, its grinning head nodding foolishly, its tinny clockwork laughter running down.

Lief’s skin crawled.

‘Why, I spent hours on that foolish thing!’ cried Barda in disgust. ‘And for what? To have the life scared out of me.’

He tried to stuff the clown back into the box, but it would not go, and neither would the rods slide back in place. Clearly this was a puzzle that could be done one time only.

‘Barda! Throw it in the fire!’ Lief heard himself shouting harshly. His heart was beating like a drum.

‘With pleasure,’ Barda snorted, and tossed the box into the stove. It caught and burned merrily, quickly collapsing into ash.

What is wrong with me? Lief thought desperately. Why would a harmless toy terrify me so?

‘Oh, that was a fine trick indeed!’ gasped Manus, tears of mirth streaming down his cheeks. ‘The rods hold the lid in place, with the clown pressed down beneath it. One rod removed—nothing. Two rods, three rods removed—still nothing. But when the last rod is removed—bang! Ah, Barda, if you had seen your face!’

He collapsed in fresh gales of laughter, echoed by the whole company.

Lief felt as if he was suffocating. He stood up abruptly and went outside. He sat down on the bench beside the back door and took a few deep breaths of cold fresh air.

The door opened again and Ranesh came out.

‘I understand how you feel, Lief,’ Ranesh said soberly. ‘After all that has happened, it seems callous to be merry. But Josef would have rejoiced to hear us laugh.’

Lief’s mind was filled once again with the memory of the frail old man bent over his desk, muttering as he studied the plan of the chapel. And again he had the feeling that something about the memory was wrong, or that there was something about it he did not understand.

Why do I keep fretting over this? he asked himself angrily. What more is there to understand? Josef guessed that the Sister of the South was beneath the chapel. He was horrified, and tried to contact me, to tell me. The night he died, he was studying the plan of the chapel to make absolutely sure—

And suddenly Lief’s stomach seemed to turn over as he realised that what he had just thought simply could not be true.

Josef could not have been studying the chapel plan the night he died, because the very next day, the plan was in its proper place, in a heavy box high in the storeroom.

Josef could not possibly have replaced the plan in that box. He could hardly walk, let alone stretch up to a high shelf. And if he had asked Paff to return the chapel plan for him, she would certainly have destroyed it.

But if Josef had not been studying the plan, what had he been doing?

17 - The Trap

Lief’s mind was in turmoil. Why had he not remembered Josef’s frailty? Why had he not realised that the old librarian must have been studying something that was already in his room?

Ranesh cleared his throat. Looking up, Lief realised that Ranesh was staring at him, holding out a stack of paper tied with pale blue ribbon.

‘It is the manuscript of Josef’s book,’ Ranesh was saying. ‘Josef wanted you to have it. I took it from his desk earlier, and it seemed right to give it to you now.’

Lief took the manuscript and, to please Ranesh, untied it. He lifted the top page, bearing the book’s title, and looked at the next.

It was not a contents page or an introduction, as he had expected. It was a tale copied from the Deltora Annals, and when he saw which one, he felt cold to his very bones.

Lief put down the second page with a shaking hand.

The Four Sisters … You … the sorcerer … you must stop …

Josef’s halting words were echoing in his mind. And now they had a new and terrible meaning.

‘It is too sad a tale to begin the book, I think,’ said Ranesh, who had been reading over Lief’s shoulder.

‘Josef wrote it last,’ Lief whispered, fighting the rising terror that was threatening to overwhelm him. ‘He copied it out of the Annals and put it at the front of his manuscript, so I would be sure to see it at once if anything happened to him. He sent me a note—’

I must see you. Urgent. Fearful news …

Lief swallowed. ‘The volume of the Annals was still lying open on his desk when I arrived. The tale was there, in its original form. But I did not read it.’

You are the sorcerer. You must stop …

Ranesh frowned in confusion. ‘It is only an old folk tale. And surely Josef had told it to you before?’

If only I had remembered! Fool! Fool!

‘His memory of it was hazy,’ Lief said. ‘He had forgotten the end. By the time he read it again, for his book, and realised what it might mean, I was far away.’

‘“What it might mean”?’ Ranesh exclaimed. ‘I do not understand you!’

Was Josef writing out this tale when Doom came into his room last night? Lief thought. No. The Annals volume was far to his right—too far away for him to see it clearly. The manuscript was on his left, already neatly tied. And Josef was using a ruler. There are no ruled lines upon these pages.

So Josef must have been working on something else—something that was proof of what the tale had made him suspect.

After Doom left him, Josef must have hidden the proof somewhere close by, Lief thought. But surely he would have tried to tell me, or Ranesh, where it—

His heart jolted.

‘Ranesh,’ he said slowly. ‘When Josef told you he wanted to be buried in his librarian’s tunic, what exactly did he say?’

Ranesh stared. ‘I told you—he could hardly speak. He just said, “In my tunic”. He repeated it several times, very urgently, as if he thought I did not understand. But of course I knew exactly what he meant. Joseph had always said he wanted to be buried in the uniform of his office when the time came.’