Emily Rodda - Cavern Of Fear

Nols’ face was alight with joy. ‘It is a miracle!’ she cried. ‘Our treasure has been returned to us. Now we can pay our debt to you.’

Lief, looking down at her beaming face and at the joyous faces clustered around her, wondered how he ever could have thought these people were ugly. He wondered, too, at the chance that had brought the mouthpiece of the Pirran Pipe back to its rightful owners.

And, finally, he wondered if it was not chance at all, but something else.

He turned to Barda, who was still staring at the gleaming mouthpiece in amazement. ‘We have reached our first goal, Barda,’ he murmured. ‘And the way is open to our second. According to the map, the island of Auron is next.’

Barda shook his head slowly. ‘First we must find our way back to Del. Doom is waiting for us there, with supplies, fighters—’

‘No!’ cried Jasmine fiercely. ‘There can be no delay! Time is running out! We must—’

She broke off as Lief and Barda turned to her.

‘Why do you say this, Jasmine?’ Barda demanded.

Jasmine wet her lips. ‘I heard… heard that the Shadow Lord was going to kill the prisoners. Very soon.’

‘Birds told you this?’ Lief asked sharply.

Jasmine hesitated. It was not in her nature to lie. But she did not want Lief to know that she had entered the sealed room, that she had spoken to the sister he had tried to keep from her.

She knew she could not bear to see the look on his face as he tried to deny, or explain, his deceit and betrayal of trust. She preferred to put it out of her mind. To focus on the task at hand. To lose her thoughts in action.

So she pressed her lips together, and nodded.

‘Then we must go on—the three of us,’ said Lief instantly.

‘No!’ Barda growled. ‘You, at least, cannot—’

‘I can,’ said Lief firmly. ‘And I think it was always meant that I should.’

‘But you are Deltora’s king!’ cried Jasmine. Lief was saying just what she had wanted him to say. Yet, suddenly, she found herself filled with doubt.

Lief met her anxious gaze squarely. ‘I have thought of this long and hard,’ he said. ‘I am the king, but I am still Lief. I must do what I must do.’

‘No!’ Barda protested, but Lief shook his head.

‘I cannot be a prisoner,’ he said. ‘That is what happened to the kings and queens of our past, and it was their ruin. It was not what Adin intended when he created the Belt of Deltora. He—’

Feeling a light touch on his arm, he turned to see Nols looking up at him.

‘I asked Azan to arrange sleeping quarters for you, on the high ground, where it is still dry,’ Nols said. ‘Your wounds must be tended, and you must rest. Ah, Azan!’ She smiled welcome at the young Plume who was running, panting, towards her. ‘Is all well?’

Azan shook his head, his face furrowed with anxiety. ‘No! I fear—I fear all is not well,’ he stammered. ‘The only dry sleeping quarters have been overtaken by two hideous monsters, the like of which I have never seen before.’

Nols looked alarmed. Azan looked piteously at Lief, Barda and Jasmine. ‘They are fearsome—as large as my head, with huge fangs, eight legs, and red eyes. And they are fighting with one another savagely, as though they will never stop!’ ‘

The companions glanced at one another. ‘I think we are familiar with the beasts,’ Barda said reluctantly. ‘Leave them to us.’

Azan’s face broke into a relieved smile. ‘I will take you to the house!’ he said eagerly, darting away.

‘Ah, what it is to have heroes among us!’ beamed Nols.

‘Indeed,’ said Lief glumly as he, Barda and Jasmine, with Kree fluttering overhead, trudged after Azan. ‘And if we can defeat The Fear, surely we can control Fury and Flash.’

‘I would not count on it,’ Barda muttered.

Jasmine turned to Lief. ‘What were you telling us, when Nols interrupted you?’ she asked.

Lief hesitated. He had thought again about what, in his excitement, he had been about to say. ‘Whatever it was, it does not matter,’ he lied. ‘If we three survived the quest to restore the gems to the Belt of Deltora, why should we not survive this?’

‘ This will end in the Shadowlands,’ said Barda gravely. ‘And all depends on the Pirran Pipe. We have its first part by a miracle. What of the second and third?’

Lief turned to look back at The Glimmer, shining across the scarlet sea. What perils lay beyond that mysterious gateway? That he could not know. But as he looked, he heard again in his mind that clear, sweet music, beckoning him.

‘They are waiting for us,’ he said simply. ‘I know it. All we have to do—is find them.’

DELTORA QUEST 2

1 Cavern of The Fear

2 The Isle of Illusion

3 The Shadowlands

Copyright

LEXILE™ 760

Scholastic Press

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First published in 2002.

This edition published in 2011.

Text and graphics copyright © Emily Rodda, 2002.

Graphics by Bob Ryan.

Cover illustrations copyright © Scholastic Australia, 2002.

Cover illustrations by Marc McBride.

Collectors’ Edition cover design by Nicole Leary.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, unless specifically permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 as amended.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Rodda, Emily, 1948-.

Cavern of the fear.

For children.

ISBN 978 1 74169 954 8.

1. Fantasy fiction. I. Title. (Series : Deltora quest 2 ; 1).

A823.3

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eISBN: 978-1-921-98964-3