Dread Mountain

The giant toad Gellick rules in Dread Mountain. The idea is shocking to anyone who knows Deltoran history, but it is true.

The Mountain in Deltora’s northwest corner has always been the domain of the Dread Gnomes. Tales of their courage and fighting skill stud the pages of The Deltora Annals like gems from their own treasure hoard. But Dread Mountain is very near the Shadowlands border. For years the Gnomes have had to battle wave after wave of the Shadow Lord’s Guards and fighting beasts sent to enslave them.

Now the toad Gellick, crawling from its lair deep in the rocks further north, has persuaded the Gnomes to serve it in return for a powerful weapon. Poisonous slime oozes from its skin — a venom so strong that a single drop is deadly. With this on their arrows, the Gnomes can defeat any invader.

I fear they have paid a terrible price. The toad speaks soft words for now, perhaps, but it is hiding its true nature. The Annals call it a vile beast, greedy, cruel and swollen with conceit. I heard of the Gnomes’ plight this way:

I had sold a gold chain — my last valuable possession — to buy paper, paint, and food. I was sitting in the market, eating ravenously, for I was starving. A small brown hand seized my wrist. Startled, I looked up at a figure in a hooded cloak. It was a Dread Gnome, the first I had ever seen. “I can trust you,” she said. “You eat, and you are warm.” Naturally, I thought she was mad. I was to learn otherwise.

Her name was Sha-Ban. She had fled from Dread Mountain planning to beg the king’s help for her people. But after a single day in Del she knew her quest was hopeless. The king was shut away, out of her reach. As he was out of the reach of all of us.

When she had told me of Gellick she began to speak of her journey, and the terrible things she had seen. I thought she had drifted into a nightmarish fantasy, and hoped the two old fruit-sellers near us would not hear her and be terrified. Fool that I was! Sha-Ban was doomed. It did not suit the Enemy to have her news spread in Del. I went to buy more bread. When I returned, she was lying, strangled and icy cold, in a pile of rotten fruit. The fruit-sellers had vanished.

I confess with shame that I left the brave Gnome where she lay, and ran. I knew I was a hunted man, for what Sha-Ban knew, I now knew also. But I vowed that the news she had given her life to tell would not die with her.