Emily Rodda - Shadowgate

Jasmine swallowed the last of her tea and jumped up. ‘We can still catch him! He is on foot. No doubt he escaped from the field last night with everyone else—and went by the road, for fear of becoming lost.’

‘But which way did he go?’ Steven asked, tossing dust on the fire to put it out. ‘Among the mass of tracks, how are we to find those of one small boy?’

‘Look at the bees!’ Lief said.

Steven glanced at him in surprise, then looked to where he was pointing.

A dark cloud of bees was swirling over the dust of the road.

‘What are they doing?’ Steven growled. ‘There is nothing for them out there!’

‘Oh, but there is!’ Lief could not help smiling, despite the stinging pain in his face.

‘Yesterday, Zerry stole honey from the store wagon,’ he said. ‘He must have hidden himself away and had a secret feast. When he jostled me last night, his hands were sticky with honey—and no doubt it had dripped on his clothes and shoes as well. Look! The bees can smell it!’

They were all on their feet now, shading their eyes, staring at the bees. The swarm was slowly moving west.

‘You see?’ Lief said softly. ‘The bees are following a honey trail. To find Zerry, and the Belt, all we have to do is to follow them!’

Lief rode inside the caravan so that his injuries would be protected from the dust of the road. He rolled up his cloak for a pillow and tried to sleep, like Barda, but sleep would not come.

Long hours passed. Then his heart leaped as he heard Steven calling the horse to a halt.

‘Why have we stopped?’ he asked anxiously, as Jasmine threw open the caravan doors with Filli chattering on her shoulder. ‘Is Zerry—?’

‘The bees have lost the trail,’ Jasmine answered flatly.

As Lief clambered to the ground, he saw that the road no longer ran between open fields. Now it was overshadowed on both sides by tall rocks and trees with pale, thin branches that clattered together like bones.

He walked with Jasmine to the front of the van, where Steven was pouring water into a bucket for his thirsty horse.

Immediately ahead, there was a road leading off to the left. It was marked by a signpost so faded that Lief could not see what it said.

Kree was perched on the signpost. The bees were swarming uncertainly behind it, where there was a large clearing. Wheel tracks criss-crossed the open space, leading off in both directions.

Lief approached the signpost, and looked at it.

Something stirred in his mind. He felt he had seen that name somewhere else, not long ago. But where?

‘The boy met a wagon here, it seems,’ Steven said, moving up behind him with Jasmine. ‘And surely not by chance. We can follow—but which way?’

‘The trees here can tell me nothing,’ Jasmine said grimly. ‘They are weak and ill—barely alive. The wheel tracks tell a story, however. Only one wagon moved west. And by the deep grooves it left behind, it had been standing here for a day or two before that.’

‘Indeed,’ Steven nodded, peering at the tracks. ‘All the other wagons came and went quite quickly. And they all went south to Riverdale. No doubt the boy is with one of those.’

‘I cannot see how a meeting was arranged,’ Lief frowned. ‘Zerry was travelling all day yesterday. And Happy Vale was deserted. How was the message passed?’

‘You might as well ask how Zerry knew he must steal the Belt,’ Jasmine said impatiently. ‘Perhaps he saw it written in the sky! Perhaps the clouds formed letters saying, “Steal the Belt of Deltora. Meet at the Riverdale signpost”! What does it matter?’

Lief’s heart jolted. He had just remembered where he had seen the name ‘Riverdale’ before! And with the memory had come a vivid picture—and an idea. A wild idea…

‘It might matter a great deal,’ he exclaimed, kneeling and fumbling in his pocket for paper and pencil. ‘Remember the Happy Vale noticeboard? Everyone in the troupe saw that as we moved through the town. Did you, Steven?’

‘Of course,’ Steven said gravely.

Lief put the paper on the ground in front of him. ‘The main notice is not important,’ he said. ‘But I want you both to help me remember all the small ones. Word for word, if possible.’

‘I did not read them all,’ murmured Jasmine, flushing a little. She still felt awkward because she read so slowly.

‘You may not read fast, Jasmine, but you observe without even trying,’ said Lief. ‘That will be your part—and the most important one, if I am right.’

Quickly they finished the first notice, and the second. Jasmine could help no further after that, but Steven and Lief soon worked out the next three between them.

‘I cannot help you on the last one,’ Steven said. ‘It concerned that villain Laughing Jack, the moneylender. I did not read it.’

‘It does not matter,’ Lief said. ‘I remember it. I noticed it particularly, because the first words—”Seek the Nomad”—were odd.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Steven sourly. ‘Laughing Jack is a great one for eye-catching notices. And he is a nomad, for he has no fixed home. He appears without warning outside one town or another, and in between it is as if he vanishes. Where was he camped this time?’

‘Here,’ Lief said, writing out the last notice and drawing a border around it. ‘At the Riverdale signpost!’

12 – The Chase

Jasmine exclaimed with interest, and craned her neck to see the words Lief had written. But Steven’s frown had become a scowl.

‘Ah!’ he said in disgust. ‘So now we know whose wagon stayed so long! Laughing Jack never leaves a place until he has wrung it dry.’

He shook his head. ‘No doubt most of the other tracks were made by the poor fools who came to do business with him.’

‘What is so wrong about lending money?’ Jasmine asked, puzzled.

Steven snorted. ‘Nothing, if it is done fairly,’ he said. ‘But Laughing Jack preys on those who are desperate.’

He saw that his companions did not understand him, and raised his voice slightly as he explained.

‘Laughing Jack lends his victims what they ask, or more, and makes them sign a paper that half of them cannot even read,’ he said. ‘A season or two later he returns, demanding that the loan be repaid.’

He paused. Dark shadows flickered in his golden eyes.

‘And then?’ Jasmine prompted.

Steven’s fists clenched.

‘And then his victims discover that they have sworn to pay back ten or twenty times as much as they borrowed,’ he muttered. ‘If they do not pay, which most often they cannot, Laughing Jack takes possession of their homes, their beasts, their furniture—everything they own.’

‘I have not heard of this!’ Lief exclaimed.

Steven shrugged. ‘Laughing Jack has been a plague in the land for years without number, and dark rumours have gathered about him. His victims are too afraid to complain to anyone in authority.’

‘Afraid?’ Lief murmured.

Steven grimaced. ‘He is an evil man, and when they have given him all they have, and it is still not enough, what else can he take from them, but their lives?’

As his companions exclaimed in horror, he shook his head.

‘I am wasting our time by speaking of things that we cannot change at present,’ he said gruffly. ‘Lief, what are we to do now?’

Lief spread his paper out before them on the ground. He had drawn borders around all the notices, shaping them as he remembered.

‘Now it is your turn to test your memory, Jasmine,’ he said. ‘See the Happy Vale board in your mind. All the notices were pinned into place, were they not?’