Deltora Quest #5: Dread Mountain (6 page)

B
arda stood his ground. He knew that to turn, to step aside, to show any fear at all, would be fatal. Behind him, Lief and Jasmine glanced at each other. The creature moved like lightning. The remaining blisters, which were in Jasmine’s keeping, were useless while Barda stood between her and the enemy. The only hope was for her to creep to one side without being seen.

Without warning, the Vraal lashed out. Barda’s sword flew up in defense and the creature’s claws rang against the shining steel. Barda twisted and lunged, and this time the Vraal defended, hitting the flat of the sword with such a mighty thump that Barda staggered.

Lief sprang to his friend’s side, his own sword held high. The Vraal hissed with pleasure. Two foes were
even better than one. It had not fought for a long, long time, and fighting was what it had been bred for.

It had missed using its skills. It had missed the joy of battle and the screams of defeated enemies. Snatching squealing, wriggling gnomes from the stream as they bent to drink was no sport. Dodging arrows was too easy. But this — this warmed its cold blood.

Growling, it sprang at the two swords, beating them away effortlessly, driving the two weaklings who held them back, and back. Twice the weapons pierced its armoured skin. It cared nothing for that. It cared nothing for the black bird that dived at its head, snapping with sharp beak then wheeling to dive again.

The Vraal did not fear pain, did not fear death. Its mind was not fitted for such thoughts, or indeed any thoughts but one — that any creatures not of its own species were enemies, to be fought and defeated. In the Shadow Arena or here — it did not matter.

Once only in its life had it lost a fight. But that was long ago, in the Shadowlands. The Vraal no longer remembered the loss, or the pursuit that had left it marooned and wandering in this place. It no longer remembered the Guards who had accompanied it. Their gnawed bones had sunk beneath the earth of the forest long ago. The steel ring that hung from the back of its neck was all that remained of its old life. That, and the need to kill.

It saw that the third enemy, the small female with the dagger in one hand and Guards’ poison in the other, was edging from behind the others, moving away. She was going to attack from the side, or from behind. She was moving slowly, carefully. She thought the Vraal, occupied with her companions, would not notice her. She was wrong. It would deal with her presently.

The Vraal sprang suddenly, slashed, and with satisfaction saw the smaller of the two swordsmen falter, and smelled fresh, red blood. The smell stirred vague memories of times long past. Gnomes’ blood was thin and bitter, like stale green water. This was better. Much better.

The little one, the female, was clear of the others now. Where was she? The Vraal opened one of its side eyes. Deeply buried in ridges of scaly skin over its ear slits, the side eyes did not see quite as well as the eyes at the front, but they were useful.

Ah, yes, there she was. Raising her arm, taking aim. Time to dispatch her. A single lash of the tail … there!

As the female fell, the black bird flying above her head screeched and the injured swordsman cried out — a single word. The Vraal understood few words and did not know this one, but it knew fear and grief when it heard them. The Vraal grinned, its mouth stretching wide.

“Jasmine!” Lief shouted again. But Jasmine lay where she had fallen, silent and still as death.

Barda cried out in warning. Lief ducked the Vraal’s swinging claws just in time and staggered, falling backwards, hitting the ground hard. He scrambled to his knees. His head was pounding. The breath was sobbing in his throat. Blood was streaming from the long cut in his arm. He could barely hold his sword.

“Lief,” panted Barda, leaping in front of him and beating the Vraal back as it lunged again, kicking with hard, deadly hooves. “Go! Get the Belt away!”

“I will not leave you,” Lief gasped. “And Jasmine —”

“Do as I tell you!” Barda roared savagely. “You are injured. No use to either of us. Get away! Now!”

Furiously he swung his great sword, attacking with all his strength, pushing the Vraal back one step … two.

Lief began to crawl painfully away. Spines from the fallen, smashed Boolong trees pierced his hands, stinging and burning. He staggered to his feet and took a few more steps. Then he stopped and turned.

Flight was useless. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. When the Vraal had finished with Barda it would come after him. Better, surely, to die fighting here than to die cringing among the Boolong trees, crushed into the thorns.

A flash of lightning lit the clearing for an instant, showing the scene in hideous clarity. Barda battling with the gleaming, hulking Vraal, Jasmine lying motionless on the ground. And Prin … Prin toiling from the stream, her eyes enormous with fear, her front paws clasped together in front of her, clutching a mess of purple slime. As Lief watched, amazed, she spread her wings.

Then the air exploded with a terrible clap of thunder. The very earth seemed to shake. Barda faltered, lost his footing, and fell to one knee. The Vraal sprang, its slitted orange eyes gleaming. With one swipe of its huge arm it beat away the big man’s sword. The gleaming steel turned in the air, once, twice, and fell to the ground far out of reach, its point buried in the earth. The Vraal hissed, grinning, pre-paring for the kill.

“Barda!” Lief cried out in agony. He staggered forward. But Prin — suddenly Prin was springing forward and up, straight at the Vraal, landing squarely on the back of its neck and clinging there, slime-filled paws wrapped around its head, wings flapping wildly.

The Vraal roared and staggered. Its terrible claws flailed around its head, now smeared all over with purple. Prin leaped backwards, landing on her strong back legs and stumbling back to the stream, her paws, still purple-streaked, held out in front of her.

“No, Prin! Run into the trees! It will see you there!” shouted Lief.

But he was wrong. The Vraal was seeing nothing. It threw back its head, screaming in rage and pain.

“It is the moss!” sobbed Prin, frantically washing her paws. “In its eyes, its ears! The purple moss! The green moss cures, the purple moss harms. They told me! They told me so often, and it is true!”

Lightning flashed and there was another huge clap of thunder. Then, as if the sky had cracked open, rain began pelting down — hard, icy rain mixed with hail. Barda staggered to his feet and stumbled towards his sword. Lief also gathered his wits and started forward. On the ground, Jasmine stirred as Kree screeched frantically.

But the Vraal had had enough. With a final roar it turned and, as Prin jumped aside, it blundered blindly to the stream, fell into it, and splashed away.

Later, soaked, exhausted, and chilled to the bone, the companions crouched together in the shelter of a small cave made by a rock that overhung the stream. Stinging hail still pounded the earth outside. They had managed to light a fire, but so far it was doing little to warm them. There was not one of them, however, who felt like complaining.

“I thought our hour had come,” said Barda, lighting a torch by dipping it into the fire. “That beast would not have stopped until all of us were dead. Lief — how is your arm?”

“It feels much better already,” Lief said. He was
lying with his back propped against his pack. His injured arm was bound with what looked like a green bandage, but was in fact clumps of green moss taken fresh from the stream and tied in place with vines.

Having seen the moss’s effect on the Vraal, and the terrible blisters it had raised on Prin’s paws, Lief had at first been unwilling to have it near him. But Prin had assured him that the moss in its green state had amazing healing powers, and to prove it she had padded her own burned skin with the stuff, and asked Jasmine to bind it on tightly.

“Often I have heard the others speak of the green-purple moss,” she said now, as Barda raised the torch to send light and shadows leaping around the cave. “The gnomes use it for their wounds, and Kin who were injured by Vraal in the old days could be saved by green moss also. It is only when the moss is old and water-soaked, when it has fallen under the edge of the rocks that line the stream and has turned purple, that it clings and burns. Of course, it is not a real poison, like the gnomes use on their arrows. It only troubles Vraal in their eyes and ears. And even they recover quickly. Our Vraal will be ready to fight again in a few days.”

Lief glanced at her. She smiled at him, her padded paws tucked into her pouch for warmth and comfort. “You were very brave, Prin,” he said. “You saved us all. Your people would be very proud of you.”

“Indeed,” Jasmine said warmly, and Filli chattered agreement.

Prin sat up a little straighter. “The Kin have always used the purple moss to defend themselves from the Vraal and Grey Guards who used to come here in great numbers,” she said, plainly proud of her knowledge. “Mother and Crenn have told me about it, many times.”

“I wonder then that Ailsa, Bruna, and Merin did not show it to us,” Jasmine said, frowning.

Prin shook her head. “In their dreaming they have never seen a prowling Vraal, or a Grey Guard either,” she said. “In the mornings they speak only of the Boolong trees. They think the gnomes are the only dangers on the Mountain now.”

“Perhaps that is the trouble with dreaming,” Barda said slowly. “You see only what the dream shows you, and then for only a little time. For example, did your people ever tell you, Prin, of seeing a traveller of our kind on the Mountain?”

The little Kin shook her head. “They say no one comes here now. They say the gnomes’ poison arrows keep everyone away.”

“Not everyone, it seems,” said Barda quietly. He jerked his head towards the back of the cave and held the torch high.

Everyone turned to look. Lief drew a sharp breath. There were faded words on the pale, soft stone. Written, Lief was sure, in blood:

L
ief, Barda, and Jasmine stared at the scrawled words on the cave wall. All of them were imagining the lonely, suffering man who, it seemed, had used his own blood to write the message.

Why had he written it? To keep himself sane, perhaps, thought Lief. To convince himself that, in the nightmare of terror and confusion that his life had become, some things were real. That he himself was real.

“Who was he?” breathed Jasmine. “Where is he now?”

“Dead, perhaps,” said Barda. “If he was wounded, then —”

“He did not die here, at least, for the cave is empty of bones,” Lief broke in. “Perhaps he recovered, and escaped from the Mountain.” He found himself hoping against hope that this was so.

“He says, ‘I know where I have been,’” Jasmine murmured. “Surely that means that he came here from somewhere else, not long before he wrote the message.”

“He could have come from the Shadowlands, like the Vraal,” Prin put in helpfully.

“That is impossible. No one escapes from the Shadowlands,” Barda growled.

Lief leaned back, his head suddenly swimming. He felt Jasmine’s hand on his arm and struggled to look at her.

“You have lost much blood, Lief,” she said, in a voice that sounded far away. “That is why you feel weak. Do not fight the urge to sleep. Barda and I will keep watch. Do not fear.”

Lief wanted to speak — to tell her that he too would take his turn to keep watch. To say that she had been knocked unconscious by the Vraal and was also in need of rest. To beg her to make sure that Prin stayed safe. But his eyelids would not stay open, and his mouth would not form the words. So at last he simply did as she asked, and slept.

The storm raged on all that night and through the next day. Thunder roared without ceasing. The hail became icy rain. Wind lashed the Boolong trees, and many crashed to the ground.

The companions could do nothing but stay huddled in their shelter, eating, resting, drinking from the stream that rushed by the cave’s opening, taking turns
to keep watch. By the time night fell again they were fretting about the delay. Lief’s arm and Prin’s paws were healing wonderfully, and they feared that the Vraal might be recovering just as quickly.

“Only if it has learned that the green moss heals,” Prin reminded them, nibbling a Boolong cone. “And I do not think that is likely. Vraal are clever only in fighting and killing, Mother says.”

At the mention of her mother her voice faltered, and she swallowed hard.

“It is very fortunate for us that you were with us when the Vraal came. But your mother, and the other Kin, must be worried about you, Prin,” said Lief after a moment.

“They know I am safe,” Prin said softly. “I am sure they visited us last night, in their dreams.”

She looked around. “And now it is night again. They could be here at this very moment. They would all fit, because, after all, it is only a dream.” She bent her head. “If they
were
here, I would tell them I was sorry for causing them pain,” she murmured. “And I would say I missed them very much.”

The others were silent. It was eerie to think that they might be surrounded by Kin spirits, yearning to speak to Prin, to touch her, but unable to do so. It was sad to realize that Prin was deliberately saying aloud the words she wanted her family to hear, just in case.

By the following morning, the wind had died and the storm had retreated, leaving steady, light rain in its place. The travellers decided that it was time to move on.

They began climbing through the rain in single file, following the swollen stream, alert for the sound of the gnomes above them and the Vraal below. The way was steep, slippery, and dangerous. Prin went first, doing the best she could to beat a safe path, but despite her best efforts the companions were soon covered in scratches.

After an hour or two of this miserable tramping, the rain stopped and a few weak rays of sun began to struggle through the clouds.

“That is something, at least,” muttered Barda. Then he jumped as Prin stopped suddenly in front of him and darted off the path.

“What is it?” whispered Jasmine from behind.

“I do not know!” Barda whispered back irritably. “Prin! What are you doing?”

Prin had disappeared into the trees and was thrashing around, breaking down branches with new energy and purpose. “Come and see!” she called softly to them, after a moment.

Unwillingly, shielding their faces from the thorns, they crept into the small, cleared area she had made. Then they stopped, staring.

Right in the center of the clearing was a small round stone hut roofed with bark. Two rusted metal
spikes stood on either side of the low door, each crowned by a grinning skull. To the door itself was fixed a beaten metal shape.

“I am sure this is a gnome-rest,” Prin whispered. “The huts where gnomes shelter if they are caught out in storms. They are forbidden to strangers. That is what the sign means. But —”

She looked at them anxiously.

“But this has been abandoned for a very long time,” Barda reassured her. “You were right to uncover it.” He strode to the door and pulled at it. It sagged open and the companions went inside.

If they had hoped to find weapons, they were disappointed. The little building was festooned with webs and crawling with spiders and beetles. Otherwise it was empty except for a few mugs, some woven rugs which had almost rotted away, and a pile of what had probably once been food, but which was now black dust.

“It is strange,” murmured Prin, as they backed out again with relief. “Mother told me that in the old days there were gnome-rests scattered all over the Mountain, all of them linked by paths that crisscrossed everywhere. But this is the first gnome-rest we have seen, and it was completely overgrown by the trees.”

Lief looked around at the dark and silent forest that surrounded the clearing. “The Boolong trees have run wild since the Kin left. But that cannot be the only reason why the gnomes have abandoned their buildings and their paths. Surely they would have fought to save some of them, at least.”

Jasmine too had been looking around her. “Something else has happened. Some change we do not know about,” she said slowly.

There was a sound behind them. Prin glanced over her shoulder nervously, then gave a start. Barda had begun pulling sheets of bark from the roof of the little hut. Already three large pieces lay beside him on the ground.

“Oh, do not do that!” she begged, hurrying over to him. “The gnomes will be angry. Do you not see their warning sign?”

“I care nothing for that,” snorted Barda, pulling a fourth sheet onto the ground. “They have already shown they are our enemies. In any case, they have plainly abandoned this hut to the forest. And this bark will be very useful to us.”

Prin stared at him, and Lief and Jasmine also raised
their eyebrows in surprise. Smiling, Barda tapped the bark sheets with his foot. “This is Boolong bark,” he said. “See how hard it is? Yet it is light to carry, and slightly curved too. With vines to bind them, these pieces will make excellent shields. Shields that will stop any arrow — and will protect us from the Boolong thorns.”

They spent the next half hour binding vine strongly around the bark pieces so that they could be held easily from the back. Standing behind their shields’ protection all the companions felt safer.

“You must always carry your shield in your weaker hand,” Barda instructed. “Then your strong hand is left free for fighting. It is tiring at first, but you will soon get used to —”

He broke off, startled, as Jasmine suddenly jumped up and raised her finger to her lips. “I hear voices,” she breathed. “And feet. Marching feet.”

Lief and Barda listened carefully and at last heard a faint, buzzing, rhythmic sound, like harsh chanting or singing, coming from further down the Mountain.

“Gnomes,” whimpered Prin.

The sound was coming closer, growing louder by the moment.