Emily Rodda - Shadowgate

Kree swooped downward like a black streak. The strip of sky between the cliff tops darkened. They heard the lapis-lazuli dragon give a single, panic-stricken cry.

And then they could see it no longer, for there above them was a vast, roaring thing of glittering green, its fangs bared ferociously, its spiked tail lashing, its wings battering the air.

Lief went cold. He looked down at the Belt of Deltora. The great emerald, symbol of honour, was burning like green fire.

The emerald dragon had awoken. The emerald dragon, drawn to this place by the Belt, had discovered its land invaded by another.

‘Oath-breaker!’ a great voice thundered. ‘Thief! Invader! Betrayer!’

Paralysed with horror, Lief saw the huge talons slashing—talons like knives—and heard the lapis-lazuli dragon scream.

‘No!’ he shouted at the top of his lungs. ‘It is with us! It is helping us! Do not harm it!’

But his voice was drowned by the sound of the emerald dragon’s fury.

‘Flee, then, coward!’ it roared. ‘You have no honour! Turn tail like the snivelling sneak you are! You will not escape me!’

The great mass of green turned in the air and in an instant it was gone.

Suddenly there was nothing to see between the cliff tops but sullen grey cloud. They could still hear roaring, but every moment the sound grew fainter.

Barda let out his breath in a long sigh.

‘The lapis-lazuli dragon will escape,’ Jasmine said confidently. ‘It is smaller, but it flies very fast.’

‘No doubt,’ Barda said grimly. ‘But now they have both left us. What are we to do now?’

‘We must go on alone,’ said Lief doggedly.

He was trying not to think of what this meant.

The ruby dragon had uncovered the Sister of the East. Then the dragon’s power had joined with the power of the Belt to destroy it.

But what would happen if he tried to face the Sister of the North alone? And how, without the dragon, would they find it?

Kree squawked urgently. Filli chattered. Lief looked up and saw that slowly the eyes were appearing in the cliff faces once more.

‘Let us move on,’ said Jasmine uneasily.

They ran the rest of the way to the end of the pass, and with relief burst out into the open. When they looked back, they could see that the cliff faces were crawling with movement, and bubbling with slime.

‘We are well out of that,’ Barda said heavily.

But Lief’s stomach was churning. His knees felt weak. Cold sweat was stinging his face. His head was ringing with sound.

Slowly he sank to the ground.

‘The village is ahead,’ Jasmine urged, pointing to a wall visible beyond the rocks.

Lief made no answer. He feared that if he spoke he would be sick.

He felt in his pocket for something to dry the sweat, and his fingers touched something hard. Dimly puzzled, he pulled the object out.

It was the little set of chimes Bess had given him. With it came the paper on which she had written the musical notes he was to learn, and the stub of a pencil.

Only half aware of what he was doing, Lief tapped a chime with the pencil. A soft, clear note rang out.

Yes, that is right, he thought. He tapped another note. And another. And then the second note again.

‘Lief, what are you doing?’ Jasmine was kneeling beside him, her face pale with strain. ‘That tune again! What is it?’

Again Lief tapped out the four notes.

Music is like another language, Lewin… This is how we write it down .

Blankly he stared at the paper in his hand. Then, rapidly, he began to draw in the clear space at the bottom.

His pencil hovered over the paper. He glanced up at Bess’s far neater writing. His face began to burn.

‘What are you doing?’ Jasmine repeated, frowning at the marks.

Lief shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled.

This is madness, he thought. It cannot be! Quickly he turned the paper over, to conceal it.

On the other side, there was a mass of his own writing. He realised that he had used the back of Bess’s lesson to write out the notices on the Happy Vale noticeboard.

With glazed eyes Lief stared at the writing. It seemed to shimmer before his eyes. Then, suddenly, letters seemed to move around, slip into new places.

And then he saw it—saw what his innermost mind had been trying to tell him for so long.

The names! The final secret of the notices was in the names. And as slowly he realised what that meant, his blood ran cold.

16 – Shadowgate

Lief met Jasmine’s worried eyes. He saw Barda crouching behind her, watching him in concern. He knew he had to speak, though his head was swimming and his face and neck felt bathed in fire.

‘We did not understand,’ he whispered.

‘Did not understand what, Lief?’ Barda asked quietly, glancing at Jasmine.

They fear my mind is wandering, Lief thought.

He thrust the paper towards them.

‘The names,’ he said. ‘They are not real names. Laughing Jack invented them.’

Jasmine’s frown deepened. ‘I daresay he did,’ she muttered. ‘No doubt his little joke amused him.’

Lief shook his head. ‘Not a joke,’ he said. ‘A threat. A warning to Fern not to ignore—’

He swallowed. ‘All these names—Dean the Smoke, Dame Henstoke, Andos the Meek, Hank Modestee, Kate Mend-Shoe—are made up of the same twelve letters. Do you see?’

There was a puzzled silence as Barda and Jasmine scanned the names.

‘Yes,’ Barda said at last. ‘It is true. “Seek the Nomad” is the same.’

‘And do you remember the sign we saw on the way to the Broad River Bridge?’ Jasmine exclaimed. ‘Someone had scrawled upon it, calling himself “Mad Keeth Nose”—the same twelve letters again!’

‘It was just after we passed that sign that Fern first spoke to us,’ Lief said in a low voice. ‘The sign alerted her—made her suspect who we were. The Happy Vale noticeboard told her everything else she needed to know.’

‘But—’ Jasmine shook her head. ‘But I do not understand this! What is so special about those letters?’

Lief took a deep breath. ‘Arranged correctly, they spell another name,’ he said. ‘The name of the guardian of the north. The name Fern spoke with her dying breath. The Masked One.’

His companions stared at him, speechless.

‘But—but the Masked Ones fled!’ Barda said at last. ‘I saw them all, on the road to Purley. And Bess—’

Lief nodded. ‘Bess is dead,’ he said. ‘Rust, Quill and all the rest are far away, and know nothing of this. The evil being who calls himself The Masked One—the enemy who commands Laughing Jack, as Laughing Jack once commanded Fern—is someone else.’

Slowly he turned over the paper to show the four musical notes he had written at the bottom of the page. He sang the notes one by one, as Bess had taught him. And as he sang them, he wrote down their names.

‘Bede!’ whispered Jasmine. ‘Bess’s son? But—he is dead!’

Lief shook his head. ‘All we know is that he disappeared into the mountains here, seven years ago, and was never found,’ he said. ‘So close to the Shadowlands border, who knows what evil thing he met, and what promises of power were made to him?’

‘Of course!’ muttered Barda. ‘He was vain and spoiled, by all accounts. Once he grew tired of the poor girl he had lured away from her home, the Enemy would have found him easy prey.’