The Shadowlands (13 page)

But there was no way out. No way out of the Arena, sealed with doors of stone. No way to reach the pass to freedom. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Gasping, staggering to his feet, Lief drew breath. The red smoke swelled and twisted above him, the shadow within it gathering strength. Again he blew, and again the piercing note echoed through the Arena, thunder cracked and the smoke recoiled.

Lief saw Pi-Ban rising, wide-eyed, a shrivelled worm falling from his ear and onto his shoulder. He saw Barda and Jasmine hauling themselves up, clinging to the cage bars.

Outside the cage, the guards milled, confused. Tira and Hellena had fallen to their knees, staring with dazed disgust at the worms which had dropped away from them onto the platform. Faith stood alone, pale as a ghost.

‘Faith!’ shrieked Jasmine. ‘Get the keys to the cage!’

The child turned and looked, unsmiling. Her lips opened. Then came the voice—a low, deadly whisper that chilled the blood.

‘There is no escape, Jasmine.’

Jasmine stared, frozen. The voice whispered on.

‘From the moment you looked into the crystal, from the moment you let me into your mind, you were
doomed. I knew you would come to me. I had only to wait. But do not think I cared about you. You were only bait. I knew that wherever you went,
he
would follow.’

Then the girl laughed, horribly. And laughing she shimmered, faded and disappeared in a drift of red smoke, like the phantom she was.

Jasmine screamed and screamed again, clutching the cage bars in shock, grief and horror. Shock that what she had thought flesh and blood had been a mirage. Grief for a child who had never existed. Horror as she realised how cunningly, how completely, she had been deceived.

Into Lief’s mind flashed a memory. Tirral, speaking on the Isle of Keras.

There are many ways to catch a fish. And if the fish you want rises to a simple bait, so much the better.

Jasmine rose to the Shadow Lord’s bait, and so did I in turn, Lief thought. How easy it all was! How easily he lured us into this trap. Using our weaknesses. Jasmine’s loneliness and impatience. My love for Jasmine.

‘For the Jalis!’ The words roared amid the thunder. Then Gers was leaping onto the platform—Gers, leading a ragged army of his tribe. Some of the Jalis flung themselves, roaring, on the panicking Baks and Perns. Others set their great hands on two of the cage bars and heaved.

The iron bent like butter. Pi-Ban scrambled through the gap. Barda followed, half-carrying Jasmine. Then came Lief, the Pipe still pressed to his lips.

Again Lief had to draw breath. Again the red smoke
writhed and lunged. Again it drew back as the Pipe sounded once more.

But the Enemy was gaining strength. Each time the Pipe repelled him, he drew back a little less. The seven Ak-Baba hovered around him, their unearthly cries mingling with the thunder. Within the smoke’s core, malicious eyes were gleaming.

How long could the Pipe hold the shadows back?

And then, Lief heard it. Through the sound of the Pipe, through the rumbling of the thunder, came a faint, exhausted wail.

Lief swung around. But Jasmine had heard the sound too. Jasmine and Barda had gone back to the cage. They were kneeling beside it, peering under its base, shouting to Gers.

Then the Jalis and Barda were heaving at the cage, tilting it while Jasmine slid underneath and emerged dragging a small figure in a green, hooded cape. Emlis!

Lief could not speak. Could do nothing but go on playing the Pipe. But he watched and listened as Emlis staggered to his feet.

Emlis was babbling of crawling under the cage in the tunnel, of clinging to the cage’s underside as it was rolled to the platform. He was telling of being trapped when the cage’s wheels bent beneath the force of the wind. Of being pinned, helpless, unable to scramble free, unable to make anyone hear him, until now…

Then Emlis was beside Lief, taking the Pipe from Lief’s hand. Emlis was playing. And for the first time in
countless centuries, the land that had once been Pirra heard the true song of the Pirran Pipe.

For as Ak-Baba shrieked and the red smoke shrank back into the boiling sky, as the Ols crouched, moaning, and the prisoners listened in awe, Emlis played like the Pipers of old. Emlis played on the Pirran Pipe the music of his own heart.

The exquisite sound filled the Arena, echoed from the mountains, rang on the the Factory walls and rolled on over the parched plain. In it was mourning for ancient beauties lost, anger at evil that seeks only to rule and destroy, fear for what might be. And then, a deep longing for home.

Not Pirra, despoiled, transformed and gone forever. But the only home Emlis knew.

A home where deep waters rippled and soft sands drifted on peaceful shores. A place where the light was soft and cool, and the gentle, lapping sound of water filled the air. A place missed, and ached for.

Lief stood, transfixed. His heart seemed to be breaking as the music rose, pleading for rescue, crying for release.

Then… the Arena disappeared.

Cold, freezing cold. Rushing darkness…

And the next instant Lief was struggling in black, icy water, the panicking cries of thousands ringing in his ears.

What had happened? What new sorcery was this?

‘Jasmine!’ he screamed.

‘Here!’ Barda bobbed up beside him, supporting Jasmine and Pi-Ban. Lief took Jasmine from him, held her head above the water, felt the rush of Kree’s wings.

‘My music!’ Emlis swam like an eel towards them. ‘My people heard it! They brought us home! The Shadow Lord will never know what became of us!’

‘Our people will drown, Emlis!’ choked Jasmine. ‘Oh, there are so many! Far too many for the Kerons to save in time. They will drown!’

Then Lief heard her gasp, and the next moment light flooded the darkness, pushing it back, back, as the magical music of the Pirran Pipe had made the Enemy shrink and retreat. And with the light came a rushing, rippling sound. Lief pulled himself around, shivering. He blinked, hardly able to believe his eyes.

For coming towards them was a vast fleet of boats. The shell-like craft of the Plumes, the elegant new boats of the Aurons, the heavy long boats of the Kerons, paddling together, scooping struggling people from the water, hauling them to safety.

Clef and Azan paddled furiously to keep up with Auron guards on twisting eels and stolid Keron leech-gatherers. Nols, Piper of the Plumes, rowed beside Tirral, Piper of the Kerons, as Tirral searched the black waters for her son, whose music had summoned them all.

But it was Penn, the Auron history-keeper, who lifted Lief and his companions from the water. And it was with her that they began their long journey home.

T
he people slept as they were carried through the caverns. Only Pi-Ban was woken, to wring the hands of Lief, Barda and Jasmine, and then to be spirited up to Dread Mountain, above the emerald sea.

‘I fear he will tell of his adventures, whatever my warnings,’ Lief murmured. ‘The Dread Gnomes are great storytellers, Penn.’

‘Pi-Ban will not tell,’ Penn said serenely. ‘He will forget with his first breath of the air above. Do you not know, Lief? You have read Doran’s rhyme.’

Lief bent his head, remembering. ‘“Where timeless tides swamp memory…”‘ he murmured at last.

‘Yes. The seas of the underground are the seas of forgetting,’ Penn smiled. ‘How do you think we have lived here in secret so long?’

‘But in the Shadowlands we remembered,’ Barda objected.

‘You had Emlis with you,’ said Penn. ‘And the minds
of all of us were focused on you, besides.’

‘But when we return home, we will forget?’ asked Jasmine, very grave.

Penn smiled, and took from her pocket three small, smooth stones. ‘Not if you keep these with you,’ she said, handing one stone to each companion. ‘They are soulstones. All Aurons carry one. Doran carried his always, so it is said. And these are yours.’

Lief, Barda and Jasmine looked down at the stones. They seemed to change hue every moment—gleaming gold, red, green, blue, black, purple and all the colours of the rainbow in turn.

‘I cannot tell the real colour,’ Barda said in wonder.

‘That is because there is none,’ Penn said simply. ‘It is the eye of the observer that makes the difference. And so it is with people, we found, when the Pipe sang in our caverns for the first time, not long ago.’

‘That is how…?’ Jasmine began.

Penn nodded. ‘We on Auron heard the Pipe. Its song made us remember that once our people were one. We set out to see for ourselves, at last, the others of our kind, and to find out what had happened to you. At the Forbidden Way we met the Plumes, who had travelled north for the same reason. They did not seem as savage as we had feared. And so together we called to the Kerons, bidding them to light the tunnel, and allow us entry to their territory.’

‘And Tirral agreed?’ asked Barda disbelievingly.

Penn smiled. ‘After a time,’ she said placidly. ‘It
seems that, like us, she and her people had been giving thought to the wisdom of keeping up old rivalries in times of trouble. We learned that her son had gone with you to the Shadowlands. Then, together, we all waited for the sound that would tell us that he, and you—and the Pipe—were ready to return. Together, at last, we heard it, and together we brought you back.’

‘Without you we would have perished,’ said Lief. ‘We owe you our lives.’

‘Without you, the Pirrans would have remained apart forever,’ Penn answered. ‘We owe you even more.’

The Pirran fleet skimmed through the caverns like leaves blown by the wind. There was much time for talk and for reunion, however, for many boats paddled for a time beside Penn’s own. Clef and Azan came, their craft riding low in the water under the sleeping weight of Claw, Brianne and Gers. Nols came, Tira and Hellena peaceful at her feet. And Tirral came with Emlis, who had thrown off his leech-gatherer’s cloak with relief.

‘My son seems taller than when he went away,’ Tirral said.

‘He has grown in more than stature,’ Barda answered. ‘He has a great heart.’

‘When I am a little older—old enough to wear a leech-gatherer’s cloak in comfort—I am going to be an explorer like Doran,’ Emlis said shyly. ‘I will explore and map the caverns. I will travel the seas of the Plumes and the Aurons, and unknown seas as well.’

‘Seas of soft purple,’ murmured Lief. ‘Black seas filled with stars. Caverns that glitter like diamonds.’

‘How do you know?’ Emlis asked in surprise.

But Tirral put her hand inside her cloak and brought out something that gleamed in the magic light. She passed it to Lief. He stared down at it, almost as if he had forgotten what it was.

‘I return the Belt of Deltora to you,’ Tirral said formally. ‘In exchange for the Pirran Pipe.’

‘Thank you.’ Lief hesitated. There was more he wished to say, but he decided it would not be wise. Very aware of Barda and Jasmine’s eyes upon him, he fastened the gleaming thing about his waist, and kept silence.

At last, in the golden cavern of the topaz, it was time to say farewell.

‘We have brought you to the place where the signs of life above are strongest,’ Penn said to the companions softly, as the fleet gathered around them. ‘From here, all your people can travel home.’

‘Lief! Barda! Jasmine!’

Lief turned and saw Emlis waving to them, not far off. He was still holding the Pirran Pipe.

The companions waved back. ‘And what of the Pipe, Penn?’ Lief asked. ‘Will it be separated into three parts once more?’

‘No,’ said Penn. ‘The Kerons will keep it for now. It was decided, before you returned, that if it should ever come back to us, it would remain complete. It will stay
with each tribe for one full year, to be played morning, noon and evening by the Piper as is the Pirran way. Then it will be passed on, in a great festival organised by the tribe who is giving it up.’

Her eyes twinkled. ‘I daresay there will be much competition,’ she added.’ The tribes will try to outdo one another, and every festival will be greater and more exciting than the last. But I, at least, will not complain. Festivals are far better than war. And no-one enjoys a feast better than I do. Well—are you ready?’