Shadowgate

15 – The Pass

And so, for the second time, Lief, Barda and Jasmine flew with a dragon. But this time was very different from the first.

It was not just that this time they were flying with a dragon who sang merrily as it flew. Or that this dragon seemed to glide through the air like a shooting star, with barely a beat of its wings.

It was not just that this dragon knew exactly where it was going because, unlike the dragon of the ruby, it prided itself on having learned about maps from the man it called Dragonfriend.

It was because, this time, they were not beginning a journey, but hurtling towards a journey’s end. Mingled with their thoughts about what might be ahead were their thoughts of what had passed—thoughts they did not wish to share.

Barda was cursing himself for allowing the Masked Ones to overpower him, when he caught up with them on the road to Purley. As a result of that failure, he had been useless to his companions just when they needed him most.

He scowled as he remembered waking in the caravan, with no idea where he was or what was happening. Kree had just arrived, and was screeching angrily at Steven’s horse. Filli was chattering in his ear. His companions were nowhere to be seen. He had gone in search of them, but by the time he reached the waterfall, all the excitement was over.

Steven had filled his place admirably, of course. Without Steven, the quest would have ended in disaster.

But now, thought Barda, Steven is back in the caravan with Zerry and I am flying to Shadowgate. All is as it should be. I will not fail again.

Jasmine was thinking of the horses yoked to Laughing Jack’s wagon. She was bitterly regretting that she had not been able to release them.

She had tried. If she had had more time, she could have done it. But Lief had called and she had run to him, leaving the horses to their fate.

Should she tell her companions the terrible thing that she had discovered as she followed Lief past the wagon after their fruitless effort to find the Belt?

No, she thought, hugging Filli and Kree closer, drawing comfort from their warmth. I must keep it to myself. Why grieve Lief and Barda to no purpose? Nothing can be done about it now.

Lief was fighting waking nightmares.

Again and again he relived the moment when the mask of Bede’s adulthood settled over his face. Again and again he saw the Happy Vale noticeboard, its sad main message surrounded by the notes that Laughing Jack had left for Fern.

Again and again he saw the dread black shape rising above Otto’s wagon, the green gleam that was its face, the smooth white fingers oozing back into its robes. Again and again he saw the Shadow Lord’s brand burning on Fern’s tortured face, and heard those last, whispered words.

Beware the Masked One…

He shook his head. Why could he not clear his mind of these things? They were in the past, and could not harm him now.

Bess was dead. Fern was dead. Laughing Jack had fled. And whoever had conjured up the deadly phantom was in the camp of the Masked Ones, far away. Further away every moment, as the lapis-lazuli dragon sped through the dawn, following the line of the mountains towards their goal.

But instead of fading, the visions were growing brighter. The feeling of something left undone, something not understood, was strengthening. The whispered warning was hissing more loudly in his ears.

Beware the Masked One…

And now another sound was mingling with the memory of Fern’s dying breath. A faint, ringing tune—

four notes, repeated again and again, like a bird call, or the chiming of bells.

The Happy Vale clock, no doubt, Lief thought. The chime that comes before the striking of the hour.

His skin prickled, and he shut the sweet notes out of his mind. But always they returned, calling him.

The sky was still dark when the dragon landed, in a dreary place of rock and dead, twisted trees.

The mountains rose all around them, black and brutal, capped with snow. Thick grey clouds smothered the rising sun. A chill wind moaned through the cliffs, bringing with it the howls of distant beasts.

Lief, Barda and Jasmine slid to the ground, and stood shivering in the gloom.

‘This is the place,’ said the dragon. ‘Or very near it.’

It glanced over its shoulder, and its skin twitched. Its eyes were no longer sparkling, but dull as stones.

‘There is a small village through there,’ it muttered, jerking its head towards a gap between two cliffs. ‘I saw it from the air. It has a wall of sticks around it. I saw humans creeping about within, like sick mice in a cage. And beyond it, I saw… other things.’

It shuddered.

Bess’s voice seemed to whisper in Lief’s mind.

There are beasts, deep in the mountains. Monsters beyond imagining. Things that crawl in the shadows. Things that growl deep below the rock… Shadowgate lies among them.

Lief drew his sword. He heard Barda do the same. He heard Jasmine murmur to Kree, and the clatter of wings as Kree took to the air.

The raw patches on his face stung in the icy wind. The four notes of music rang in his ears. Louder now. And again came the whisper…

Beware the Masked One…

He felt like screaming to drown out the sounds.

Will I never be free of this? he thought desperately. Did that cursed mask change me forever?

The dragon shifted its feet. ‘What will you do?’ it asked. Grimly, Lief noted that it had not said ‘we’.

‘We will go to the village,’ he said. ‘It is the village of Shadowgate. You can guide us from there.’

Silently Barda and Jasmine came up beside him. Together they moved towards the gap. The dragon shuffled behind them, its tail rasping on the rock, its claws scrabbling.

The gap was long and straight, and broader than it had looked from a distance. The cliffs that towered on either side of it were pitted with holes and caves. The wind howled through it like a lost soul. And they could hear other sounds—growls, scratchings and chitterings, from deep within the rock.

Here the Masked Ones came, seven years ago, Lief thought.

He could almost see the wagons rumbling through the pass, the drivers sitting rigidly, alert to every sound. He could almost see Otto, Rust, Quill, Plug, and all the rest… and in the lead wagon, the mammoth figure of Bess, her beloved son beside her.

Jasmine’s voice broke sharply into his thoughts.

‘Lief! I beg you to stop humming that tune!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is driving me mad! What is it?’

Lief clapped his hand over his mouth. The four notes had been ringing in his head, but he had not realised he was humming them aloud.

‘It is the Happy Vale clock, I think,’ he mumbled. ‘It seems to be stuck in my brain.’

‘This pass does not smell safe, king,’ called the dragon behind him. ‘And it is too narrow for me. You must find another way.’

‘There is no other way,’ Lief said. ‘You will have to fly, and meet us on the other side.’

The dragon made an unhappy, gurgling sound, but spread its wings and soared upward.

‘I have my doubts about that beast,’ muttered Barda. ‘I would not be surprised if it deserted us.’

‘It is not in its own territory,’ Jasmine snapped. ‘Naturally it is uneasy.’

Barda hunched his shoulders and did not answer.

Lief looked up. Kree was sailing between the cliff tops, riding the wind, yellow eyes searching the ground. Above him soared the lapis-lazuli dragon, almost invisible, its underside matching the dark grey sky.

Keeping close together, glancing often behind them, Lief, Barda and Jasmine began to walk through the pass. Lief saw Jasmine frown at him, and realised that he had begun humming again. He pressed his lips together.

‘That is not the Happy Vale clock chime, Lief,’ Barda said. ‘The Happy Vale clock went like this.’

He whistled a quite different tune, a tune with five notes instead of four.

‘You are right,’ Lief said, suddenly remembering. ‘But then, why do I keep hearing—’

‘It is probably some tune Bess taught you!’ Jasmine broke in impatiently. ‘What does it matter? With everything—everything else we have to think of!’

She turned her head away, biting her lips.

And at that moment, Kree screeched a warning.

Instantly the three companions drew together, back to back. There was nothing ahead of them, nothing behind. Weapons raised, they scanned the cliff walls.

Eyes glinted in every hole, every crevice. The cliff walls were alive with stealthy movement. Here, a dripping, pointed snout poked out of a tunnel. There, a bundle of blunt claws scrabbled against the rock. Bubbles of grey slime frothed silently from cracks and slid downward.

‘Move on!’ Barda breathed. ‘On!’

They began to run. But Kree was still screeching above them, screeching warning again and again. And suddenly there was a thunderous roar that seemed to shake the rock.

The eyes in the cliff face blinked out. The snouts and claws disappeared as if they had never been.

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.