The Valley of the Lost

After copying the words from the mirror onto a scrap of paper that Jasmine found among her treasures, the companions sat and talked.

“The first line means simply that the name is to be found from clues within the palace,” Lief said. “Agreed?”

“Even I can see that!” exclaimed Jasmine, as Barda nodded. “But what of all the rest?”

“The next line means that the first letter of the name we seek is the same as the first letter of Pride’s great sin.”

“Well, that appears simple, too,” said Barda. “The first letter of Pride is P.”

“But that is hardly a puzzle at all!” Jasmine objected. “Surely it cannot be so easy.”

“It is not,” Lief said gloomily. “Do you not see, Barda? ‘Pride’ has a capital letter. It is a name. The name of one of the Guardian’s pets.”

“And the Guardian told us that none of his creatures had the fault for which it was named,” groaned Jasmine. “Pride’s sin must be envy, greed, or hatred. Ah — I begin to see now how this puzzle works. The first letter of the Guardian’s name must be E, G, or H.”

“But how are we to guess which one?” Barda exploded. “I do not even remember which creature was which! The Guardian is not playing fair, for all he said!”

“I am sure he is,” said Lief, tapping the pencil on the paper. “The triumph he hopes to enjoy would be meaningless otherwise. Somewhere in the palace there must be another clue.”

“Then we had better find it! Quickly!” exclaimed Jasmine, jumping up with a nervous glance at the candle. It was burning down alarmingly fast.

Her fear was catching. Lief felt his heart begin to pound. He forced himself to be still, and put his hand on the Belt of Deltora. His fingers found the amethyst, and as they pressed against it, his heart slowed and a soothing calm settled over him. He took a deep breath.

“We must not panic and begin rushing around without a plan,” he said quietly. “Panic will stop us from thinking clearly. It is our enemy.”

“Time is our enemy also, Lief,” Barda reminded him sharply. “We have been at this task hours already, and we are no further ahead.”

“But we are,” said Lief. “We know that the Guardian’s name has five letters, because the rhyme speaks of ‘my first,’ ‘my second,’ ‘my third,’ ‘my fourth,’ and ‘my last.’ We know that the first letter is E, G, or H. And we know that the second and the last letters are both the same.”

“How do we know that?” Jasmine was fidgeting, anxious to be away.

“The rhyme tells us so.” Lief read the words aloud.

My second and my last begin

The sum of errors in the twin.

As Jasmine nodded anxiously, Lief glanced over the rest of the rhyme, and suddenly saw something else.

“And I believe — I believe I know what the fourth letter is!” he exclaimed. Again, he read aloud.

My fourth, the sum of happiness

For those who try my name to guess.

“How much happiness has come to those who have tried to guess the Guardian’s name?” he asked.

“None, from what we hear,” said Barda grimly.

“Exactly. And because the word ‘sum’ is used, I would guess that the Guardian is playing a little trick here. The fourth letter is in fact a number. Zero. Which when written down is the same as O.”

As the others stared, he began scribbling under the rhyme. When he had finished, he turned the paper so they could see what he had done.

“There,” Lief said. “Now we can begin filling in the blanks.”

He stood up, wishing that he felt as confident as his words had sounded. “We will search the palace room by room,” he said. “Wherever we go, we will look for things that match the rhyme.”

Together they left the study and began the search. One room, then another, and another, yielded no clue, though they looked carefully at every piece of furniture, every rug, every ornament.

The palace was vast. They moved on and on, the lilting music following them, trying to keep calm and alert. For a while there were small sounds of movement other than their own — echoing, faraway sounds as of soft footsteps, of doors opening and closing. But at last the music stopped, and the other sounds stopped also.

Now they worked in complete silence. It was hard not to hurry. Hard not to begin rushing, skimping the search. In all their minds was a picture of the candle, dripping, dripping, relentlessly burning away.

Finally they came to a room which, like the Guardian’s study, was screened by curtains and sealed by a closed wooden door. Soft light glowed behind the door’s small window of patterned, colored glass.

Gently Lief turned the knob and looked in. Despite the candle that flickered on a stand beside the door, the room was dim. It took a moment for him to make out the huge pile of soft cushions in one corner.

The Guardian was lying there, asleep. But he was not alone. His four pets shared his bed, their fleshy leads tangling around them like pale snakes. And the creatures were awake. They turned their terrible heads to the door. Their teeth gleamed as they growled, long and low.

Hastily, Lief jerked backwards and closed the door again.

“We cannot go in there,” he whispered. “It is his bedroom. And the creatures are with him.”

“We will surely have to face them in the end,” Barda whispered back. “How else will we have any hope of finding out what Pride’s fault is?”

They stood, undecided, staring at the closed door. Then Jasmine’s face grew puzzled. She pointed to the colored glass window. “There is something strange about this,” she murmured. “I have just noticed it. Look!”

“It is certainly odd. There is a diamond or a star in every square except the last,” said Barda, peering at the glass.

“Yes!” Jasmine snatched the paper from Lief’s hands and read out two of the lines from the rhyme:

My third begins a sparkle bright —

The treasure pure? The point of light?

She looked up eagerly, to see if they understood. “Diamonds and stars are both bright sparkles,” she said. “The rhyme is asking us which one of them should go in the last square. A diamond, which is a treasure. Or a star, which is a point of light.”

“So the third letter of the Guardian’s name is the beginning letter of one of those two. It is D, or S.” Lief took the paper from Jasmine and made a note on his diagram, gnawing at his lip, fighting down his excitement.

They stared at the panes of colored glass till the pattern blurred in front of their eyes, but with no result.

“There is not any sense to it!” growled Barda at last. “There are sixteen squares in all. But they seem to be arranged simply according to someone’s fancy.”

Lief agreed. And Jasmine, now that her excitement had died, was growing more and more uneasy.

“Perhaps the mystery is connected with sixteen,” Barda muttered, refusing to be beaten. “Sixteen is a useful number, for it divides easily into smaller, equal parts. The platoons at the palace numbered sixteen. Often, when we were marching in formation on the parade ground, we would begin together, then split into eights, then fours, then …”

His voice trailed off. His jaw had dropped. He was staring fixedly at the window. “Look!” he said huskily.

His blunt finger drew a cross through the center of the window, dividing it into four equal parts.

“The whole makes no sense,” he said. “But if instead of seeing it as one large square made of sixteen smaller squares, we see four squares, each containing four smaller squares, what happens then?”

Lief looked, and it was as if he was seeing the window with new eyes. Now it was made up of four blocks. Two on the top, two on the bottom.

In the first block, there were three stars and one diamond. In the block next to that, there were two stars and two diamonds. In the third block, the one directly below the first, there was one star and three diamonds. And in the fourth block, the one that contained the blank square …

“One diamond is added each time,” hissed Barda, his eyes alive with relief, “and one star taken away. So the last square must contain no stars, and — four diamonds!”

“Yes!” Lief could hardly believe how simple it was. But it had not seemed simple until Barda worked it out. And all because he remembered his days as a palace guard, thought Lief, writing a D above the third dash on his paper.

Barda watched with satisfaction. “Two letters filled in!” he said. “Now — shall we face the creatures?”