Emily Rodda - Isle of the Dead

‘Yes,’ Lief said awkwardly. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Ah.’ The dragon grew very still. ‘And are his bones shut up in some grim place of honour in a human city? Or do they lie beneath a mossy stone in a wild place, as he always hoped they would?’

Lief hesitated. He saw Barda open his mouth to speak, and shot him a warning look.

The dragon was weak, and grieving. Now was not the time to add to its burdens. He did not want it to know that Doran had not been honoured, but had been thought mad by all his people at the last. He did not want it to know that its friend had died in a frantic, doomed search for proof of the Four Sisters—and died, horribly, no doubt, at the Shadow Lord’s hands.

The upstart has the fate he deserves…

Lief’s stomach churned at the memory of that cold voice hissing from the dying crystal on the forge in Del.

‘We do not know where Doran lies,’ he said at last. ‘He never returned from—from his last adventure.’

The dragon nodded without surprise. ‘Then, in a way, his wish was granted,’ it said.

It tilted its head and looked at the sky. ‘It is strange to think of a world without Dragonfriend in it. Strange and lonely, for after the last of my tribe was gone, he was the only friend of my heart.’

Sighing, it lowered its head on the sand once more. ‘But I will see him, very soon, and hear his laughter, where my ancestors fly above the wind,’ it murmured. ‘He will be with them, I am sure, for he always said that dragons were more his kin than those of his own kind.’

‘But—but what do you mean?’ Lief exclaimed.

The dragon looked at him with what seemed to be surprise. ‘I am dying,’ it said simply. ‘Do you not understand? You came too late, king of Deltora. Even the amethyst cannot help me now, it seems. I thought perhaps… but it is no good. My time of struggle was too long. I cannot find the strength to free myself, and so my place of refuge will become my tomb.’

‘Do not say that!’ Lief cried.

‘Why?’ the dragon asked. ‘It is the truth.’

‘But you have been imprisoned only for a single night, dragon!’ said Barda, in the tone he might use to encourage exhausted troops. ‘Surely you are not so feeble!’

The dragon’s eyes slid in his direction for the briefest of moments, then moved back to Lief. ‘Your friend’s ordeal in the sea has addled his brains,’ it said. ‘Does he—?’

Abruptly it broke off. It lifted its head, and its forked tongue flickered in and out, tasting the air.

‘Arm yourself, king!’ it muttered. ‘We are invaded.’

12 – Surprises

Lief and Barda crawled up the side of the dune and peered cautiously over the top. They were staring straight into the sun, but they could see, shimmering in the distance, a long, wavering shape.

The shape was approaching fast—very fast. Its centre was dark, but at each end, bright colours flapped like wings.

Then Lief’s dazzled eyes suddenly made sense of what they were seeing. The shape separated into five separate shapes—five figures, hand in hand.

The figures at each end wore long, flowing robes—one scarlet, one blue. Of the others, one was tall and dark, another a small blur of blue-grey, and the one in the middle…

Lief stared in disbelief. His heart gave a great thud. The next moment, he was scrambling to his feet, shouting, waving both arms wildly above his head.

Barda was roaring and waving beside him, but Lief was hardly aware of it. Dizzy with joy, he had eyes only for the black-haired girl in the centre of the shimmering line, and ears only for her thin, distant cries floating to him over the sand.

A black bird became visible, soaring above the girl’s head.

Kree, Lief thought dazedly. Kree, flying… but—but he is only just keeping up with them! How…?

And then he realised that the robed figures were Zeean and Marilen of Tora, and understood. He himself had sped on the wings of Toran magic.

He watched, fascinated, as the five swept towards them.

Long would Lief remember that reunion in the place he learned to call the Sleeping Dunes.

First there was Jasmine, scolding, laughing and crying by turns as she embraced him. Then there was Josef’s former assistant, Ranesh, beaming, with his arm around Marilen, pumping his hand. And Zeean, her wrinkled face made young by joy. And Manus of Raladin, small hands clasped and button eyes wide, as speechless as he had been when first they met him, but this time with relief.

After that came a series of shocks.

There was Lief’s and Barda’s shock on learning that The Lady Luck had been invisible to all who searched for them, and that they had been missing not for a single night, but for ten long days!

There was the shock of the newcomers when, filled with awe, they gazed upon the dragon of the amethyst imprisoned in the dune.

There was the dragon’s shock when Zeean briskly insisted that it was not going to die. And its even greater shock when, not long afterwards, a hundred Torans swept into the Dunes, raised their arms and sent the sand that imprisoned it flying, freeing it at last.

‘I did not expect this,’ the beast told Zeean, flexing its mighty limbs and gingerly unfolding its crumpled, sand-crusted wings. ‘I had accepted my fate. But I thank you, woman of Tora.’

Stiffly, it bowed.

Zeean bowed also. ‘To assist you was our privilege, dragon of the amethyst,’ she said. ‘Long may you fly Toran skies, and your descendants also.’

‘We will see,’ said the dragon. And raised its wings to the sun.

There was so much to talk about, so much to explain, so many questions to be answered.

‘Ten days!’ muttered Barda. ‘How can it be?’

‘Time stands still on The Lady Luck, it seems,’ Lief said.

He glanced out to sea and for a moment thought he caught a glimpse of a dark, ragged shape and the moving sticks of oars.

He stiffened, looked again, and saw only white-flecked water and the purple sheen of the dragon slowly wading in the shallows.

His heart thudding violently, he turned back to his companions. Clearly they had noticed nothing.

‘I arrived in Tora to inspect the Bone Point Light,’ Manus was exclaiming. ‘Little did I know that I would be searching for lost friends instead!’

The ship was my imagination, Lief told himself. It was a shadow—a vision born of fear. That is all.

‘It has been a dark time,’ Zeean sighed. ‘The morning after Jasmine and the Kin called for our aid, we in Tora felt a shadow pass, as though a cloud had swept over the sun. I thought this was a sign that you were no more.’

‘I did not believe it,’ Jasmine said stoutly.

‘You did not,’ agreed Zeean, smiling. She looked apologetically at Lief and Barda. ‘By the end, Jasmine was the only one of us who still had hope that you would be found alive. The rest of us were certain that we were searching only for your drowned bodies—and the Belt.’

Lief gripped Jasmine’s hand as Zeean told the story.

Every day Jasmine had joined the search. Every night she had drunk Dreaming Water, and fixed her mind on Lief. And after nine nights of emptiness, suddenly there Lief was—alive!—lying on a shore with Barda, in a place where dunes rose like waves running back from the sea.

‘When Jasmine woke me and told me of the place she had seen, I knew it was the Sleeping Dunes,’ Zeean said. ‘We came at once—but I confess I had little hope. How could you be so far south, almost at the border of our territory, and yet still live? I thought Jasmine’s dream was one of wishing, rather than of truth. How glad I am that I was wrong!’