Deltora Quest #4: The Shifting Sands (7 page)

A
short time afterwards, astounded by their unexpected release, the three companions sat back on their heels in the shelter of a cave and stared in amazement at their rescuer: Doom.

Impatiently, he waved away their thanks.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “We have little time. I am the leader of a group sworn to resist the Shadow Lord. We have been suspicious of the Games for some time — certain that they were not all they seemed. My purpose there was to see what was happening, from the inside. Your presence upset my plans. I tried to scare you off —”

“It was you who locked us in our room!” Lief broke in. “You who attacked us.”

“Yes — and got cut for my pains.” Doom grimaced, touching the cloth at his neck. “I was trying to stop you from competing — to protect you.”

“Why?” Barda asked bluntly.

“When first I saw you in Tom’s shop something about you interested me. I was hurrying on business of my own and could not stay. But ever since, wherever I have been, I have heard whispers about three travellers — a man, a boy, and a wild girl, accompanied by a black bird. Wherever these travellers go, it is said, part of the Shadow Lord’s evil is undone.”

Lief gripped Barda’s arm. If word about them was spreading, how long would it be before the Shadow Lord became aware of them?

But Jasmine, who still could not make up her mind to trust Doom, had something else on her mind. “You allowed us to be captured,” she accused. “You crept away after the finals, but you did not leave. You hid in the inn, watched, and did not lift a hand to help us.”

Doom shrugged. “I had no choice. I had to find out how the trick was worked. I had intended that animal Glock to be proclaimed Champion, and suffer whatever fate was in store for him. But he took the drugged drink intended for you, girl, and instead of losing to him, as I had planned, I had to find a way of pretending to lose to you.”

Jasmine drew herself up. “You played your part well,” she said coldly. “In fact, I would have sworn that you
did
lose. Or am I mistaken in thinking you hit your head on the wall, and slid down it almost unconscious?”

Doom’s grim face relaxed into a half smile. “You will never know, will you?” he said dryly.

“If it had been Glock who had been captured, would you have rescued him?” asked Lief curiously.

The smile disappeared. “You ask too many questions,” growled Doom. “What is certain is that I must save him now, for he and the woman Neridah will be following in your footsteps tomorrow, and I cannot release one without the other. It is unfortunate.”

He stared broodingly out into the rain for a moment, then turned to them again. “A group is waiting not far away. Among them is Dain, the boy who helped me at the Games. He will lead you into the mountains where we have a stronghold. You will be safe there.”

Barda, Lief, and Jasmine glanced at one another.

“We are grateful to you,” said Barda at last. “And I hope you will not take this amiss. But I fear we cannot accept your offer. We must continue our travels. There is — something of importance we must do.”

Doom frowned. “Whatever it is, you must abandon it for now,” he said. “I could not risk trying to kill the Guards. It was dangerous enough stealing your weapons and supplies from the cart while they slept below.”

“They have our gold, I think,” sighed Lief.

“Yes, I saw them take it,” Doom said. “But their master will care nothing for that. It is you he wants. When they wake and find you gone they will track you wherever you go. They will not rest until you are found.”

“All the better, then, that we do not lead them to your stronghold,” said Barda calmly. He put on his
sword and pack and began crawling from the cave. Doom put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“We are many, and at our base we have ways of dealing with Guards,” he said. “You had better join us. What could be more important than our cause? What is this mysterious mission that cannot wait?”

Barda, unsmiling, pulled the restraining hand from his shoulder and continued crawling from the cave. Jasmine and Lief followed. Outside, the rain still fell and the sky was black and starless.

Doom appeared beside them, silent as a shadow. “Go your way, then,” he said, his voice very cold. “But say nothing to anyone of what I have told you this night, or you will wish you had gone to the Shadowlands.”

Without another word, he disappeared into the dripping bushes, and was gone.

“How dare he threaten us!” hissed Jasmine.

“He is angry.” Lief felt very low-spirited. His head ached, he was cold, and he was sorry to have parted with Doom on bad terms. “I think he is a man who rarely trusts. Yet he trusted us. Now he fears that he was foolish to do so, for we would not trust him in return.”

Barda nodded slowly. “I wish it could have been otherwise,” he said. “He would have been a valuable ally. But we could not risk it. Doom would not be content to let us keep our secret. And there are spies everywhere — even his band may not be safe. Later, if we succeed in our quest —”

Kree squawked impatiently.

“We will not live to succeed in anything if we do not move on,” Jasmine said. “It is nearly dawn.”

“But which way do we go?” Lief looked around him in frustration. “We have no idea where we are, and we do not even have the stars to guide us.”

“You are forgetting Kree,” Jasmine smiled. “He followed us. He knows exactly where we are.”

They began to walk, Kree fluttering ahead of them. Soon they found a tiny stream which had been swelled by the rain. They plunged into it and splashed along its bed for as long as they could, hoping that the water would disguise their scent.

All of them felt bruised and ill and longed to rest. But the thought of the Grey Guards following them like evil tracking dogs drove them on.

Dawn came, and with it the sun, struggling feebly through the clouds. Soon afterwards they reached a narrow road heavily marked by puddled cart tracks. On the other side of the road was a wooden fence and beyond that a stretch of stony land ending at a row of low grey hills. Kree flew to a fence post and flapped his wings impatiently, hopping to the left.

“If we walk along the fence, we will at least leave no tracks,” murmured Jasmine. “Hurry!”

Gathering themselves for the effort, they leaped across the road, climbed the fence, and began moving along it, Jasmine balancing on the top, and Barda and Lief edging uncomfortably along with their feet on the middle rail.

After a short time they reached a crossroads. The fence continued around the corner and on into the distance where it was lost in the grey hills. And right beside the corner post stood a huge, weathered stone. It was as tall as Lief. Words had been carved on it, but so long ago that many of the letters had disappeared.

“The Shifting Sands. Danger!” Barda squinted at the stone. “That much I can make out, but what the smaller writing says I cannot say. Too many of the letters have been worn away by wind and weather.”

“I think the first word is ‘Death,’” said Lief in a low voice. He leaned out from the fence and touched the stone, tracing the letters with the tips of his fingers. Hesitantly, using touch as well as sight, he began to read.

“Death swarms within its rocky wall,

Where all are one, one will rules all …”

“Go on, Lief!” Jasmine urged, as he paused.

Lief shook his head, frowning. “The next two lines are more worn than the others. They seem to say something like: ‘Be now the dead, the living strive … With mindless will to survive.’ But that does not really make sense.”

“It makes enough sense to tell us that the Sands are not going to be pleasant,” said Barda dryly. “But we knew that, I think.”

Jasmine’s mind was busy with practical matters. “Since the verse talks of a ‘rocky wall’ I would guess that the Sands are just beyond the hills. But we will have to cross the plain to reach them. The stones may hide our tracks, but there will be no way to disguise our scent.”

“It cannot be helped,” said Lief. He climbed over the fence and jumped gratefully to the ground on the other side, flexing his cramped fingers. “Besides, we have been very careful. The Guards have surely lost our trail by now.”

“I would not count on that,” muttered Barda. But he also climbed to the ground and after a moment Jasmine jumped down to join them. They set off, almost running over the bare ground, glancing often behind them. Despite his hopeful words, Lief looked back as often as his companions did. The idea of Grey Guards silently following, the idea of a deadly blister flying unseen towards him to explode on his back, made his skin crawl.

It became warmer as the sun climbed steadily behind its veil of cloud, and steam began to rise from the wet ground. The grey hills ahead were also quickly shrouded in mist. So it was only when the companions actually reached them that they realized that these were not ordinary hills at all, but thousands of huge boulders heaped together to make a high, natural wall — the “rocky wall” of the verse.

They began to climb and soon lost all sight of the ground below. Everything around them was white. The air grew thick and all sound was dulled. Cautiously, one step at a time, they clambered to the top of the rock pile, then, even more cautiously, began to edge down the other side.

As they neared the ground, a sound met their ears — a low droning, so faint that at first Lief thought he was imagining it. And the next moment, without warning, he was below the cloud.

Slowly he turned away from the rocks to look at what was beyond. The breath caught in his throat. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

They had arrived at the Shifting Sands.

S
and. Nothing at all but deep, dry sand. As far as the eye could see, high red dunes rolled away under a low, brooding ceiling of murky yellow cloud. There was no sign of any living thing, but the low droning sound filled the place, as though the very air was alive.

Lief slithered down the last few rocks and his feet sank into the grainy softness beneath. A feeling of dread had settled over him — a feeling as strong and real as any taste or smell.

I have been here before.

This was the place he had seen in the vision of the future the opal had given him on the Plain of the Rats. The terror that had haunted his dreams was about to become reality. When? In an hour? A day? A week?

Through his fear, he heard Jasmine speaking. “It
is impossible,” she was saying, as she jumped down beside him. “If the gem is hidden here, we will never find it!”

“The Belt will grow warm when the gem is near,” Barda reminded her. He, too, was plainly sobered by the size of the task ahead, but refused to admit it. “We will mark the sand into sections and search it, square by square.”

“That could take months!” Jasmine exclaimed. “Months — or even years!”

“No.” Lief had spoken quietly, but they both turned to him. He struggled to keep his voice steady. “This gem is like the others. It has a terrible Guardian,” he said, staring out at the still and secret dunes. “And the Guardian is already aware of us. I feel it.”

Or is it the Belt that feels it? he thought, as he moved out into the sand, like someone in a dream. Is it the Belt that feels the danger?

But he dared not put his hands on the Belt of Deltora. He knew that if he touched the opal — if he saw the future again — he would turn and run.

He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the barren land, the glowering sky. But beneath his lids he still saw red sand. And the hungry, jealous will that was drawing him to itself, as it drew everything, everything in this place to itself, was stronger than ever.

He began climbing the first dune. His feet sank deeply into the rippled sand, making every step an effort. He struggled on.

“Lief!” he heard Jasmine cry. Her voice penetrated his dream, and he opened his eyes. But he did not stop.

“We have only to move on,” he called, without looking back. “The Guardian is very near. We will not have to search for it. It will find us.”

In a very short time they were surrounded by high dunes and had lost sight of the rocks. But their trail showed clearly behind them, so they were not afraid of becoming lost.

They had discovered that the dunes were not as empty of life as they had supposed. Red flies crawled from the sand as they passed and flew up to settle on their hands, faces, arms, and necks, biting and stinging. Scarlet lizards with long blue tongues wriggled out of unseen holes and preyed in turn upon the flies.

“But what eats the lizards?” asked Jasmine, and drew her dagger.

Shortly after that they passed a strange object lying on the sand. It was round, leathery, flat, and wrinkled — like an empty bag, or a gigantic, flattened grape that had been split along one side.

“Is it some sort of seed pod?” wondered Barda, looking at it.

“Like no seed pod
I
have ever seen,” Jasmine muttered. Filli chattered nervously into her ear and Kree, riding on her shoulder, made a worried, clucking sound.

Lief’s scalp was prickling. He was haunted by the feeling that they were being watched. Yet nothing moved but the flies and the lizards. There was no sound but the low, faint droning, which he had decided must be wind moaning around the dunes, though he could feel no breeze and the sand was still.

They had reached the bottom of one dune, and had just begun to climb another, when Jasmine, who was now in the lead, stiffened and held up her hand.

Barda and Lief stopped. At first they could hear nothing. And then, floating on the still air, there was a voice, growing louder by the moment.

“Carn 2! Never mind the flies. Keep moving!”

Lief looked frantically behind him. Their trail showed clearly in the sand. Their footprints were like arrows, pointing to their position. There was nowhere to hide. No escape.

The droning sound seemed to become a little louder, as though, Lief thought, the wind was excited by their fear. And just at that moment he remembered a trick he used to play back in Del. A trick that had fooled Grey Guards before, and, perhaps, could fool them again.

Gesturing to Barda and Jasmine to follow his lead,
he began to step backwards, carefully fitting his feet into his own footprints. When he had reached the bottom of the dune, he leaped to one side to lie motionless in its faint shadow.

His companions copied his every movement. When they were all huddled together, Lief covered them with his cloak, which blended quickly with the sand.

They waited, still as stones.

The Guards appeared, struggling in their heavy boots. They ran down the side of their dune, and began following the tracks up the next.

Then they stopped, puzzled. For, halfway up the dune, the tracks appeared to stop dead.

“They have been taken!” growled Carn 2. “As I told you they would be, Carn 8. I told you it was needless to follow them into the Shifting Sands. We are putting ourselves in danger for —”

“Be silent!” snapped his companion. “Do you not understand, you fool? We have disgraced the Carn pod. We let a Champion and two finalists escape. Our lives are worth nothing — less than nothing — unless we get them back. They may not have been taken. They could have buried themselves in the sand. Dig! Dig!”

He began to burrow into the sand with both hands. Grumbling, Carn 2 crouched to join him.

Then, suddenly, the dune seemed to erupt beneath them and, with shocking speed, a huge, hideous creature
sprang from the collapsing sand and seized them, lifting them off their feet.

The Guards shrieked in terror. Paralyzed with shock, hardly able to believe their eyes, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine lay rigid beneath the concealing cloak. The monster had been perfectly hidden in the dune. Waiting. One more step, and they, instead of their enemies, would have been its prey.

Lief stared in fascinated horror. The creature was eight-legged, with a tiny head that seemed all mirrored eyes. Dozens of leathery bags, like the one they had seen lying on the ground, hung from its body. Sand still poured from its joints and crevices. It regarded its captives without curiosity as they struggled and swung in its terrifying grip. Then it opened its mouth, leaned forward … and abruptly, mercifully, the screaming and the struggling stopped.

It had all happened in seconds. Sickened by what they had seen, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine remained huddled under the cloak, not daring to move.

Delicately, using its pincers, the monster picked the clothes from the dead bodies of its prey, like a bird shelling snails. The companions watched as clothes, boots, money bags, Jasmine’s medallion, metal canisters of blisters, slings, clubs, and water bottles thudded onto the sand. Then the creature sat back on its spiny haunches and began to eat, taking its time. Lizards and flies crawled out of the sand in
the thousands to feast on the scraps that fell from its mouth.

Lief buried his face in his arms. He had no love for Grey Guards. But he could not watch this.

The lowering yellow cloud blotted out the sun so completely that Lief lost all sense of time. For what seemed like hours he, Barda, and Jasmine lay motionless while the creature ate its fill and slowly the bags hanging from its body swelled till they looked like gigantic grapes hanging from a stalk.

“They are stomachs!” breathed Barda in disgust. Lief shuddered. And even Jasmine, familiar with so many weird creatures in the Forests of Silence, wrinkled her nose with distaste.

At last, the flies and lizards scattered and the beast stood upright. One of the swollen stomachs, bigger than all the rest, tore away from its body and rolled to rest in the sand, leaving only a ragged stump behind. Seemingly unconcerned, the creature crawled forward and settled on top of it.

“What is it doing?” breathed Lief, unable to keep silent.

“I think it is piercing the stomach and laying an egg inside,” Jasmine whispered back. “That way, the hatchling will have food while it grows.”

Barda turned his head away.

But the sand beast had already finished its
egg-laying and was moving again. Sluggishly, it ambled through the ruined dune in which it had hidden and climbed the next, soon disappearing over the top. The companions waited a moment to be sure it would not return, then climbed stiffly to their feet.

Without hesitation, but still gripping her dagger, Jasmine hurried over to where lizards and flies still swarmed over the Guards’ bones and the bloodstained tatters of their clothes. Beating away the scavengers, she began rapidly sorting through the rags, putting aside in a small pile things that would be of use: the Guards’ slings and blisters, their clubs and water bottles, the money bags. After a moment she looked up, startled.

“The money bags burst as they fell,” she called in a low voice. “Most of the coins spilled out. But they are not here any longer. They are gone! And so has my medallion.”

“That is impossible!” Barda strode towards her and himself began searching. Lief followed more slowly. His attention had been caught by a flat patch of sand just beyond where his friends were crouching. What he saw there made his flesh creep.

“The creature was blocking our view for hours as it fed,” Jasmine was insisting. “Something or someone crawled in unseen and took —”

“It cannot be!” Barda was growing impatient as he fruitlessly searched the tumbled sand.

“Look!” Lief’s voice sounded choked, even to himself. He cleared his throat, and pointed.

The smooth patch of sand was covered with hundreds of strange, circular marks. Marks that had not been there before.