Dragon's Nest

5 - The Four Sisters

A wave of fury swept over Lief, burning like the coals of the fire. He swung the hammer high and smashed it down with all his strength. The hammer head sank deep in the softened glass of the crystal, bending rather than breaking it. Grey ooze ran into the hot coals, sizzling, burning.

Lief wrenched the hammer free and prepared to strike again.

‘No more, Lief,’ Doom said quietly. ‘Let the fire finish its work.’

The buzzing was patchy now, coming in short, harsh bursts. Somewhere deep inside the glass, a feeble red light flickered.

‘What was that other voice?’ Jasmine shivered. ‘Why did it speak of Endon—of your father, Lief?’

Lief wet his lips. ‘It was a memory,’ he said. ‘It was my father’s chief advisor, the spy Prandine, talking to the Shadow Lord just after Father became king.’

‘The crystal must somehow keep a record of everything that has passed through it,’ said Jasmine in wonder. ‘But now it is broken and dying, and it is spitting out snatches of talk meant to be locked up forever. Those buzzing sounds … I think they are voices.’

‘The sounds of centuries of plotting, betrayal and wickedness, no doubt,’ said Barda grimly. ‘I have no wish to hear them.’

He leaned over the slowly melting glass and spat on it, his face heavy with hatred. Then he moved to Doom’s side.

‘Your arms are tired,’ he said abruptly. ‘Give me the bellows. We need more heat.’

Doom nodded, and Barda took his place beside the forge and began working the bellows steadily.

The glowing coals flared. The crystal began to lose its form and colour. There was a faint clicking sound from deep within the clouded glass. Then the red light flickered dimly, and the voice of the Shadow Lord came again.

‘The Four Sisters are in place, Slave. The Sisters of the north, south, east and west. Have you done your part?’

‘Oh, yes, Master. Everything you ordered.’ This voice was different from Prandine’s. It was higher and more whining.

An earlier chief advisor to an earlier king or queen, Lief guessed. He felt ill, and began to turn away.

Then he heard something that turned his blood to ice.

‘Good. The Sisters will do their work well. And the wretches of Deltora will never know what killed their land, even as they leave it, or die,’ hissed the voice of the Shadow Lord.

‘But you will know, Master. And I,’ said the other speaker eagerly.

There was a long, low laugh. ‘You, Drumm? Oh, no. Like all good plans, this will take time to bear fruit. By then, I will have tired of your flattery, and you will be long dead.’

Drumm whimpered, but wisely made no other protest.

‘I have many plans, Drumm,’ the harsh, whispering voice went on. ‘Plans within plans, and all of them with one aim. Deltora must be mine. I need it for the gems and metals beneath its earth, and for its calm southern harbours, perfect for launching ships of war.’

‘I—I understand, Master,’ stammered Drumm. ‘And Deltora will be yours, as you wish. The Four Sisters will ensure that—’

‘You understand nothing!’ hissed the Shadow Lord. ‘If all goes well, Deltora will be mine without the Sisters’ help. I would prefer to take the people alive. Even miserable wretches like them can work, and provide … entertainment.’

Lief pressed his hand to his mouth to stifle a groan. He felt Jasmine grip his arm, heard Barda and Doom whispering curses. Straining every nerve, he bent towards the melting, collapsing crystal, shut his eyes, and listened.

Barda had let the bellows fall, but the coals still raged with heat, and the hissing voice of the Shadow Lord was growing more faint, more jerky and buzzing every moment.

‘But if what that idiot soothsayer dared to say, before I tore out her tongue, is true,’ the evil whisper went on. ‘If there should come a time when a king rises from the people, like the accursed Adin, to wear the Belt and overthrow my plans … Then, Slave, I will have the pleasure of knowing that this king defied me only to watch his land sicken, and his people die. And I will have Deltora despite him.’

‘But—’ There was a muffled sound, as if Drumm was clearing his throat nervously. ‘But, Master, if such a king should ever exist—which of course I hope he will not—perhaps he will hear of the Four Sisters, and try to find and destroy them. The enemy, the upstart whose name you have forbidden me to utter, dared to mark their places on a map, and—’

‘That has been dealt with,’ his Master whispered. ‘The upstart has the fate he deserves. Also, the map has been removed, and my marks have been put upon it.’

‘But it was not destroyed!’ wailed Drumm. ‘Surely it should have been—’

Too late he realised he had spoken too hastily. His next sound was a high-pitched scream of agony.

‘Do not question my decisions,’ the voice of the Shadow Lord hissed. ‘Did you not tell me that you had followed my orders? That the part of the map you were given is safe?’

‘Yes, Master, yes!’ sobbed Drumm. ‘It is in a place where it could not be safer. Under my eye—and yours.’

‘Then this king will never find it. I dare him to try, and go more quickly to his death,’ sneered his master, and laughed.

The laughter was still echoing in Lief’s ears when the glass of the crystal began to boil, and the red light, at last, went out.

… this king will never find it. I dare him to try, and go more quickly to his death.

The ancient sneer burned in Lief’s mind.

He knew that he was the king who had been foretold by the unfortunate soothsayer. He was the one for whom the Shadow Lord had laid a trap. He was the one who was destined to save his people from tyranny, only to watch them die.

It was long past midnight. The twisted lump of melted glass that had once been the Enemy’s crystal had been cooled, then smashed to powder and trodden underfoot. But the triumph the four companions in the forge should have felt had been snatched away from them.

They knew they should hurry to the palace, ring the bells to signal to the people that they were safe and the crystal had been destroyed. But none of them had the heart to do it.

They wandered into the forge yard and sat down together in the moonlight.

‘It seems we keep solving one problem only to be faced with another,’ said Barda wearily. ‘It reminds me of those painted wooden birds travellers sometimes show—the ones that you can pull in half. Open one bird and there is a smaller one inside. Open the smaller bird, and you find one still smaller. And so on, until there is a bird no bigger than your thumbnail. And inside that is a tiny egg.’

I have many plans. Plans within plans …

Lief stiffened. But the voice in his mind was only a memory.

The crystal is destroyed, he reminded himself. That menace, at least, is gone. My mind is my own again.

‘The Four Sisters,’ muttered Doom. ‘Sisters of the north, south, east and west. It is like a riddle!’

‘The man they called enemy and upstart knew the answer, for he drew a map to show where the Sisters were,’ said Lief. ‘If only we could find out who he was! Our one clue is that he lived in the time of a chief advisor called Drumm. Josef can surely tell us when that was.’

‘The man himself is not important, Lief!’ exclaimed Jasmine. ‘The important thing is his map! Drumm had part of it, hidden in a safe place. It may still exist.’

‘After hundreds of years?’ jeered Doom.

‘Why not?’ Jasmine flashed back. ‘The palace is full of things that have been there for hundreds of years. That is one of the reasons it seems to me a tomb! And surely the palace is where Drumm would have hidden something valuable. He lived there.’

‘Yes. And he told the Shadow Lord that his part of the map was under his eye,’ Barda put in.

‘“Under my eye and yours”,’ said Lief slowly. ‘That is what he said.’

Suddenly, a startling idea came to him.

He jumped up. His heart had begun to beat very fast.

‘And what was under the Shadow Lord’s eye?’ he exclaimed. ‘Under the Shadow Lord’s eye, as well as Drumm’s?’

‘Is this another riddle?’ growled Barda. ‘If so, I am in no mood for it.’

But Lief was already running towards the forge. In moments he was back, dragging the blackened table frame that had supported the crystal.

‘Under their eyes!’ he panted. ‘What else can that mean, but this?’

‘But it was in the fire!’ cried Jasmine in horror. ‘If the map was fastened to it —’

Lief shook his head and threw the table frame onto the ground in the full glare of the moonlight.

‘Drumm would have been more careful than that,’ he said. ‘If the map is in this frame, there must be a secret compartment somewhere.’

He crouched and began running his fingers over the scorched wood. In moments Jasmine, Doom and Barda had joined him.

The search was long. The varnish on the wood had swelled and bubbled in the fire, leaving the surface of the table frame so rough that Lief soon despaired of finding a secret compartment by touch, as he had hoped.

Then Jasmine cried out excitedly. As they all crowded to look, her finger traced a small rectangle on the inside of one of the table legs.

‘A piece has been cut away here, then replaced,’ she said. ‘Do you see? The patch fits very tightly, but the grain of the wood does not quite match.’

Lief, Barda and Doom stared blankly at the table leg. They could see no change in the grain at all. But none of them doubted Jasmine. She had grown up in the Forests of Silence, and knew trees in all their forms as no-one else did.

They watched as she fitted the point of her dagger into the edge of the patch only she could see. Soon a small block of wood had fallen to the ground, and Jasmine was slipping her fingers into the shallow hole now visible in the table leg.

‘There is something in here,’ she whispered. ‘I—I have it!’ And, very carefully, she withdrew her fingers.

Between her fingertips was a folded scrap of yellowed paper.

‘I cannot believe it,’ breathed Barda.

Gently, Jasmine unfolded the paper. It was a fragment of map, old and creased but strangely familiar.

‘It is Deltora’s east,’ Lief breathed. He pointed to the large ‘S’ marked on the map fragment. ‘And that, I imagine, shows where the first Sister lies.’

‘In a place called Dragon’s Nest,’ said Barda. ‘I do not like the sound of that.’

‘It is the rhyme I do not like,’ said Doom.

And they all stared at the two lines of verse, which had been added to the map in a strange, bold hand.

Sisters four with poisoned breath

Bring to the land a long, slow death.