Isle of the Dead

16 – Blood and Bone

The next moment Lief and Barda too were stamping, kicking, shuddering as they plucked from their bodies the hundreds of scarlet petal-shaped horrors that had cut through their clothes, then begun gnawing at their flesh.

Lief’s hands were slippery with blood. His head was spinning. As fast as he tore the creatures away, others were attacking, crawling up from the trampled lilies beneath his feet, slipping silently from the stems that nodded all around him.

His blood ran in streams into the rich earth, and it seemed to Lief that the lilies around them trembled with pleasure as they drank.

He felt disgust, horror, fear. But he felt no pain. Dizzy and unbelieving, he watched as a red creature fastened itself to his wrist and bit deeply. Blood flowed over the smears of yellow pollen that marked his skin. He pulled the creature off. A scrap of his flesh tore away with it, but he felt nothing at all.

It is the pollen, he thought hazily. The pollen numbs the skin. That is why we did not realise what was happening. The lilies shelter the creatures and prepare their victims. The creatures’ leavings feed the lilies. It is a partnership. A horrible partnership…

He stared, revolted, at the flowers around him, seeing them properly for the first time. He saw the scarlet petals fringed with black, the cluster of trembling stamens in the centre, heavy with pollen.

Blood Lilies. Blood Lilies… and Fleshbanes.

The names floated into his mind quite suddenly. And with the names came a picture—a vivid painting of scarlet flowers. For some reason the memory made him think of the library in Del. The library…

And suddenly his face burned as he realised that he had seen the painting in Josef’s book—The Deltora Book of Monsters. But he had read none of the text except the title.

Leafing quickly through the book so as to be able to tell Josef that he had read it, he had not even noticed the creatures that Josef had no doubt shown camouflaged among the lily flowers.

Fool! he told himself savagely. If you had taken the time to read the words you would have known the blood lilies were on this island. You would have known of the fleshbanes. You would have been warned—

Why did Ava not warn us?

The question pierced his mind like an arrow, but before he could think too much about it he became aware that Jasmine was shrieking to Barda.

The next moment Barda charged forward and, ignoring the fleshbanes still clinging to his body, began felling lilies by the dozen with great sweeps of his sword.

That will do no good, Barda! Lief thought in desperation. The lilies may die, but the fleshbanes will live on. They will keep attacking us from below.

He pressed his bloodstained hands to the Belt of Deltora.

‘Help us!’ he whispered, concentrating with all his might. ‘Dragon of the diamond, hear me! Help—’

His heart leaped as suddenly Barda jumped back and with a crackling roar the heap of slashed lilies burst into flames. The next moment juicy stems were spitting and hissing as they burned. Leaves and flowers were shrivelling. Fleshbanes in their hundreds were curling and dying.

Joyfully Lief looked up, searching the sky for the dragon that must at last have answered his call.

But no vast, glittering shape hovered above them. No matter how keenly he looked, he could only see Kree, swooping and screeching amid the slowly rising smoke.

Dazed with disappointment and confusion, he looked down again. Where the fallen lilies had been there was now a smoking circle of blackened earth littered with the charred bones of birds which had fallen victim to the fleshbanes in times past. And stepping onto the blackened patch, grinning in triumph, was Jasmine, the jar of fire beads clutched in her hand.

In seconds she was wreathed in steam as her wet boots sank into the hot ground. As Lief watched, she took more beads from the jar and threw them violently into the lilies ahead of her.

Flames leaped upward. The lilies caught fire, burning like torches, then collapsing into piles of soggy ash. The blackened patch lengthened.

Lief stumbled into the centre of the burned ground with Barda close behind him. Safe from further attack at last, they tore the remaining fleshbanes from their skin and crushed them into the steaming earth.

‘I think we have enough fire beads to clear a path to the other side of the island,’ Jasmine panted, turning back to them as Kree landed on her shoulder with a triumphant squawk. ‘But it will be a near thing. The lilies are damp and the fire will not spread.’

‘That may be just as well,’ Barda said. ‘It would be a pity for us to escape being eaten alive only to be burned to cinders.’

He looked ruefully down at his blood-soaked leggings. ‘I think we should try to stop this bleeding before going on.’

Jasmine nodded quickly, crouched on the scorched ground and began pulling balm and bandages from one of her bulging pockets.

‘I cannot believe that none of us felt those creatures attacking!’ she said, passing bandages to Barda. ‘If it had not been for Kree seeing what was happening from above, we would have been lost—staggering from loss of blood, unable to escape.’

She glanced at Lief and her face changed. ‘Sit down, Lief!’ he said abruptly. ‘Put your head between your knees. You are pale as a ghost.’

‘I am all right,’ Lief muttered. ‘I mean—I am not faint, only worried. When we were most in danger, I called the diamond dragon. It did not come.’

‘It is on its way now, no doubt,’ Barda said. ‘Never fear, it will be with us by the time we reach the other side of the island.’

‘If we do reach it,’ Jasmine said grimly, glancing at the lilies waving softly around them. ‘Those flesh-eating creatures are not going to give up. As soon as the ground cools, they—’

She broke off. She was staring along the short, blackened trail left by the fire. Lief followed her eyes and saw, in the newly burned area, something stretching across the path.

The obstacle looked like part of a huge cage. It had been scorched, but had remained standing while the lilies smothering it had fallen to ashes.

‘What is it?’ frowned Barda. ‘A fence? Could it be that these cursed plants were once kept in a field?’

They began walking quickly along the blackened path. But as they grew closer to the mysterious barrier, their footsteps slowed. There was something very familiar about the barrier’s shape. All of them had begun to have grave fears about what was ahead.

‘Jasmine—more fire beads,’ Lief said quietly.

Jasmine bit her lip. She threw fire beads to left and right of the blackened trail. The blood lilies on both sides of the mysterious object flared up, wilted and at last fell to ash, revealing what in life they had hidden.

Half-buried in ash and earth was the skeleton of a vast beast with enormous fangs, huge wings and ribs so mighty that they looked like a tall, curved fence. The beast’s huge skull rested peacefully on the long bones of outstretched forelegs. Its long, spiked tail curved gently around its body.

It had died in the hollow where it lay, without a fight.

His throat aching, Lief fell to his knees beside it and gently touched one bare, curved rib. He knew that he had at last found the diamond dragon.

‘The fleshbanes ate it while it slept,’ he muttered. ‘They stripped it to its bones.’

‘But why would it have risked sleeping here?’ exclaimed Barda. ‘This island was part of its territory. Surely it knew—’

‘Perhaps there were few blood lilies on the island then,’ Jasmine said soberly. ‘Perhaps they grew only around the margins—just enough to keep intruders away. The dragon did not count on their spreading so vastly over the centuries.’

‘No doubt it did not think its sleep would last so long,’ said Lief.

He was filled with a terrible sadness. His heart ached to think of the mighty beast sinking into enchanted dreams at the bidding of the man it called Dragonfriend, not knowing that it would never wake.

But he knew that he had no time for grief. The dragon was dead. It could not help them to destroy the Sister of the West. He bowed his head and put his hands to the amethyst on the Belt of Deltora.

Veritas! he thought fiercely. Veritas, I need you! Come to me if you hear me. Come to me if you can!

He felt the amethyst warm feebly beneath his fingers.

‘What is that sound?’ Jasmine hissed suddenly.

Lief glanced over his shoulder at her, very startled. Jasmine was frowning, bending forward. Filli was clinging to her collar, his eyes wide, his grey fur standing on end. Kree was standing rigidly on her shoulder, his head on one side. Plainly whatever Jasmine could hear, they could hear too.

‘What sort of sound?’ Barda put his hand on his sword.

‘A ticking,’ Jasmine breathed. ‘There.’

She pointed to the huge, scorched skull. Cautiously she moved closer and bent to listen again. Then she kneeled and began scraping away earth and ash from beneath the tip of the mighty lower jaw. Kree squawked uneasily.

‘Jasmine, take care!’ Barda exclaimed.

But Jasmine did not even look up. By the time Lief and Barda reached her she had made a sizeable hole in the soft earth.

And now all of them could hear the ticking, tapping sound.

‘It is under the tip of the jaw,’ Jasmine breathed, as her companions peered into the hole. ‘Between the bones of the forelegs. Almost as if—’

And at that moment her eyes widened. Her fingers had touched something.

Lief watched, holding his breath, as slowly she brushed the remaining earth away. And there, clasped between the long white bones of the dragon’s forelegs, protected beneath the jaw, was something smooth, pale and glittering.

It was a giant egg. And within it, something was tapping.

Carefully Jasmine eased the egg out of its hiding place. Earth and ash showered from its shining surface as she lifted it into the sunlight and wordlessly held it out to Lief.

Lief took the egg in his hands. The tapping sound stopped abruptly. For a moment there was silence. Then there was a sharp crack, and the smooth surface split from end to end.

A sharp snout forced its way through the opening. Small clawed feet scrabbled violently. The egg shell separated into halves and fell to the ground. And there, squirming in Lief’s hands, was a tiny, perfect, glittering dragon, blinking in the sunlight.