Emily Rodda - Sister Of The South

4 - Attack

Drawing his sword, Lief plunged through the darkness of the library, out into the hallway and on into the entrance hall. As he threw himself against the tall front doors and heaved at the iron bar that sealed them, he heard shouts from deep within the palace.

Help was on its way, but he could not wait. He sprang heedlessly outside, almost tripping over the bodies of the night guards sprawled lifeless at the top of the stairs.

The sun was rising, casting a weird red glow over the palace lawn where Honey, Bella and Swift reared, squealing, their eyes rolling in terror. All three horses were lame, and covered in wounds that streamed with blood.

And shoulder to shoulder, stumbling backwards up the stairs, Barda and Jasmine were fighting for their lives.

A vast, hideous beast was lunging at them from below, driving them upward step by step. Its face was the face of a huge, snarling dog, but hideously smooth and glistening. The shapeless black mass of its body rippled like water, and from it writhed hundreds of long, razor-edged stingers that whistled like whips as they slashed at their prey.

Barda and Jasmine were defending themselves as best they could. Stingers cut through by sword and dagger pattered like ghastly rain on the stairs at their feet. But as the wriggling fragments fell they melted into puddles of oily black liquid that joined together, then rapidly returned to the beast, becoming part of its body once more. And every moment more and more stingers budded from the heaving flesh.

Screeching wildly, Kree was diving at the thing’s head, driving his sharp beak into the glossy black surface again and again. Plainly he was annoying it, but still it surged forward.

As the beast turned its neck to growl at the attacking bird, Lief’s stomach turned over. For at the back of its head was another face, narrow and ridged, with a cruel hooked beak and burning red eyes.

Pointless, then, to try to attack it from behind—or indeed, to do anything but try to escape. For even as Lief leaped down the stairs, raising his sword, he knew that ordinary weapons could not defeat this horror.

It was a thing of sorcery, like the false dragon at Dragon’s Nest, like the phantom that had hunted them on the way to Shadowgate.

The guardian of the south had been expecting them. Again, their movements had been known. Again, they had been betrayed.

‘Barda! Jasmine!’ he roared. ‘The doors are open! Get up to the doors!’

But as the words left his lips, he saw Jasmine fall, blood welling from a wound in her side. The stinger that had struck her held her fast, while a dozen more whipped forward to finish her. The dog face howled and snapped in triumph, flecks of foam spraying from its jaws. The beaked face behind it gave a wailing, unearthly cry.

With a roar, Barda slashed savagely at the attacking stingers. Their tips dropped and melted into puddles of oily liquid where they fell. Lief bounded recklessly down the last few steps, cut Jasmine free and began to lift her.

‘Get her inside, Lief!’ Barda panted. ‘I will try to hold—’

He grunted in agony as three stingers whipped around his neck. Blood began to flow freely from the wounds. The stingers tightened and pulled. As Barda staggered, choking, the beast lunged at him, its two faces howling, stingers hissing through the air like striking snakes.

Leaving Jasmine where she lay, Lief sprang forward, his sword sweeping in great arcs before him. Fragments of stingers fell, squirming, beneath his blade. The severed tips of the stingers that had been throttling Barda dissolved into trails of black slime. As Barda bent double, clutching his throat and drawing in great, rasping gulps of air, the trails joined into one and slid rapidly to the ground.

The beast shuddered and drew back. The blazing eyes of the dog face met Lief’s eyes, then dropped to the Belt at his waist.

‘Yes!’ Lief shouted, wild with rage and loathing. ‘I am the one you were told to destroy! But it is not so easy, is it? It is not so easy to face the Belt of Deltora. Get back—back to whatever foul place you came from!’

The foam-flecked lips of the dog face writhed back from its teeth in a snarling grin. And Lief’s heart seemed to leap into his throat as the hideous mound of flesh before him swelled to twice its size, and hundreds more stingers erupted from its rippling black surface.

And the next moment, it was upon him.

He was engulfed in oily, quivering darkness. He could not breathe. He could not see. Pain racked his body as stingers whipped around him, binding his arms and legs, squeezing him in a death grip.

But worse, far worse, was the sickening sound, the ghastly rippling, sucking sound that filled his ears as he was pulled further and further into the cold, jelly-like mass of the beast. His stomach heaved with the vileness of it. He wanted to scream, but his mouth was sealed.

He could feel the beast’s flesh twitching and quivering. The Belt of Deltora was burning it. But it did not release him. The blood was roaring in his ears. His chest ached with the need to breathe. His mind was growing hazy. Pictures of the past drifted in a sea of red behind his sealed eyes.

So this was what Ava meant, he thought dimly. This was the fate awaiting me. Death …

Not yet, king of Deltora. I am with you …

The voice of the topaz dragon whispered in his mind, echoing like a voice in a dream. At the same moment, he felt a jolt, as if the beast enfolding him had shuddered all over. And then he heard a roar like distant thunder, and knew—

Again the beast shuddered. There was a spitting, sizzling sound, like fat falling into a fire. And then Lief felt himself falling onto the hard stairs. He felt the cold, clinging flesh slipping away from him, sliding from his nose and mouth, from his arms and legs.

Air rushed into his aching lungs as he took great, sobbing breaths. The air was hot, and smelled of burning. It hurt him. But it was glorious, glorious!

He opened his eyes. He was lying on his side. The air was dark with smoke. A mighty wind beat on him, pinning him down. There was a blaze of golden light, a thunderous roar, and a wave of heat.

He could do nothing. He could only lie gasping like a stranded fish, staring wildly at the trail of oily black liquid snaking into the shadows at the side of the stairs and slipping out of sight.

Painfully, fighting the buffeting wind, he turned on his back and looked up. The topaz dragon hovered above him, wreathed in smoke, its vast wings glittering in the rising sun. Again he heard its voice in his mind.

What was that foul two-faced thing? In all my long life, I have never seen its like.

Lief tried to speak, but could not. So he thought his answer—the answer he knew to be true.

It is the guardian of the evil presence called the Sister of the South.

The dragon’s golden eyes narrowed. And this time it spoke aloud. Its voice was very cold.

‘When you awoke me, king, I felt evil in my land. But you told me that the centre of the evil was in the land of the ruby where I could not go.’

Lief wet his cracked lips. ‘I did not mean to deceive you,’ he managed to croak. ‘I told you there were four Sisters in all, and that we only knew the whereabouts of one—the Sister of the East, in Dragon’s Nest. Since then we have circled the land, and three Sisters have been destroyed. But one remains, and we have just learned that it is in Del.’

‘I knew it was so,’ hissed the dragon, dropping a little lower. ‘Its song has been tormenting me. I hear it now. It is here, hidden deep in the city’s heart.’

… the centre … the heart …

Josef’s voice echoed in Lief’s mind.

‘You feel the evil in the palace, dragon?’ Lief rasped urgently.