Return to Deltora

The caravan jolted on the rough road. Inside, it was dim and stuffy. Hour after hour Lief, Barda, and Jasmine sat, listening to the sounds of jingling reins, creaking wheels, and two voices singing.

Do I spy an Ol-io,

Ol-io, Ol-io?

Hello, wobbly Ol-io!

You don’t bother me!

It had been decided that it would attract too much attention if the whole party travelled together. Dain, Doom, Fardeep, and Zeean were moving overland.

“Steven and Nevets are more than capable of defending you, if need be,” Doom had said.

Lief was sure this was true. Still, his skin crept as he thought of the strange brothers singing together on the driver’s seat at the front of the caravan.

Barda, like the trained soldier he was, had taken the chance to sleep. Propped against a pile of rugs, he dozed as comfortably as if he were in a soft bed. But Jasmine was wide awake. Kree hunched beside her, his feathers ruffled indignantly. Filli slept inside her jacket. She frowned as the singing voices were raised once more.

“It is all very well to be jolly,” she muttered. “But must they sing such nonsense?”

Lief sighed agreement. Despite himself, he found he was following the foolish words.

Time to stop and take the air,

Ol-io, Ol-io.

Trees ahead, the sky is clear,

No more Ol-io!

Lief sat bolt upright, his eyes widening. He had suddenly realized that the song was far from nonsense. All along, Steven had been sending them messages!

“Soon we will be able to get out and stretch our legs,” he told Jasmine gleefully. “There are trees ahead, and no sign of Ols or Ak-Baba.”

Jasmine stared at him, her frown deepening. Plainly, she thought he was losing his wits.

Far away, a round old woman, her face as red and crinkled as a wizened apple, bent over clear water. Around her head swarmed a black cloud of bees.

The woman was listening. Large silver fish hung in the water below her. Bubbles streamed from their mouths, making strange patterns on the surface.

At last, the woman straightened and turned, settling her many shawls around her shoulders. The bees swirled before her. The patterns they made in the air mimicked the trails of bubbles that marked the water.

“So,” she said to them. “You have learned your lesson well. Passed on from your sister bees in the south, to the fish, to you. Go, then!”

And the bees were off, a humming black arrow, carrying the message on.

Jinks emerged from the Resistance stronghold of the west and shivered in the cold wind. The sky was clear except for a flock of blackbirds, dark specks against the blue. Jinks shaded his eyes and peered at them.

Birds? Or Ols? Ols did not usually fly so high. But, on the other hand, the flock was heading for Dread Mountain. And what real bird would go there?

Suddenly Jinks saw a tiny flash in the center of the flock — as if the sun had struck something made of bright metal. But what would an Ol — or a bird, for that matter — be doing carrying such a thing?

My eyes are deceiving me. I must be tired, Jinks thought. Yawning, he returned to the cavern.

Tom the shopkeeper was serving ale to Grey Guards in the little tavern he kept beside his shop.

“There are many of you about at present,” he said lightly. “Some of your fellows were here only yesterday.”

One of the Guards grunted, reaching for a brimming mug. “They are ordered to the west,” he said. “And many others, too. We are to stay in the north-east, worse luck. We will miss the real fighting.”

“Fighting?” Tom’s lean face creased into a broad smile as he passed the other mugs around.

“You talk too much, Teep 4,” grunted a second guard.

Tom raised his eyebrows. “Old Tom is no threat!” he exclaimed. “What is he but a poor shopkeeper?”

“A poor innkeeper, too!” snarled Teep 4. “This ale tastes like muddlet droppings.”

Amid loud guffaws, the shop bell sounded. Tom excused himself and went through a door, closing it behind him. Waiting in the shop were a man and a woman, well muffled against the cold.

“Greetings! How can I serve you?” Tom asked.

Without a word, the woman made a mark on the dust of the counter.

Tom casually swept the mark away as he pulled a package from under the counter. “This is your order, I believe,” he said. He gave the package to the woman, then glanced quickly at the tavern door.

“I have news,” he murmured. The customers bent towards him, and he began speaking rapidly.

High on Dread Mountain, Gla-Thon saw a flock of blackbirds approaching and fitted an arrow to her bow.

The gnomes still placed filled glass bottles at the base of the mountain for the Grey Guards to take to the Shadowlands. The fact that the liquid in the bottles was now water and Boolong sap instead of deadly poison was something the Guards would discover only when they tried to use the blisters made from it.

Perhaps, at last, that time had come. Perhaps the blackbirds were the first sign that the Shadow Lord had discovered the Dread Gnomes’ treachery.

If so, we are ready, thought Gla-Thon grimly. She heard rustling behind her and spun around. But it was only Prin, the youngest of the Kin.

“Birds!” Prin gasped. “Blackbirds —”

“I have seen them,” grunted Gla-Thon.

The flock was wheeling close, now. Gla-Thon’s arrow strained against her bowstring. Then one of the birds separated from the rest and plunged towards her. In its beak was something that flashed golden in the sun.

And even before the bird had landed, Gla-Thon was shouting. Shouting that the sign had come.

Manus lifted his head from his work in the vegetable beds of Raladin to swat the flies that were swarming around him. Then he stared.

The flies were not flies at all, but bees. The air seemed full of them. As Manus watched, easing his aching back, he frowned.

The bees were acting strangely. They were not hovering around the flowers, but buzzing in the sky. They were clustering together, making patterns. And the patterns …

Manus’s jaw dropped. The spade fell from his hand. With his long, blue-grey finger he began tracing in the soil the patterns the bees were making, black against the blue.

Manus sat back on his heels and read what he had written. The message was clear. “One person — travel to — friends — quickly. For freedom!”

Many days passed. Slow days for Lief, Barda, and Jasmine, cooped up in the caravan. They knew from Steven’s songs that Ak-Baba had flown overhead and Ols in all shapes had stared as the caravan passed by. But the caravan was a familiar sight to the Ak-Baba, and the Ols were not interested in it. They had been ordered to keep watch — but not for that.

Road forks just ahead I see,

Ol-io, Ol-io!

Night is falling, we seem free

Of Ol-i, Ol-ios!

Steven was singing again, giving the news.

A few minutes later, the caravan stopped, the back doors were thrown open, and the companions scrambled out. It was just past sunset. A rocky hill rose in front of them. The main road curved around the hill to the right. Another track wound off to the left. A signpost stood at the fork. Lief’s throat tightened as he read it.

“We must take the Del road, but it will be a journey into the unknown,” said Steven. “I know nothing of it, and neither does Doom. He always travels overland in these parts. The hills that hide the coast are treacherous, he says. But he prefers them.”

“I would prefer them, also,” muttered Jasmine.

“And I,” growled Barda. “But we must stay hidden. If we are sighted here, the decoys in the west will have risked their lives to no purpose.”

Lief was looking at the Del road. Endon and Sharn had no doubt followed it from the city, the night they escaped. They would not have tried to go overland, with Sharn so close to giving birth to her child.

He tried to imagine how it would have been. The road would have been crowded. Many fled from Del that night. He remembered his father’s sad voice, telling him about it. “Your mother and I stayed shut up in the forge all through the uproar. When at last we opened our gates, we found ourselves alone. Friends, neighbors, old customers — all were gone. Killed, captured, or fled.”

“We had been expecting something of the sort,” Lief’s mother had added. “But the confusion was worse than even we had imagined. It took a long time for life in Del to begin again. When it did, we were ready. And so grateful — because we were safe, and so were you, my son, for by that time you had been born, and were the light of our lives. But …” Her strong voice trembled. “But we feared for those who had fled.”

Those who had fled.

Unrecognized in their humble working clothes, Endon and Sharn would have lost themselves in the panicking crowd. They would have hurried along with others moving west, suffering who knew what terrors. Then, when the blackbird carrying Tora’s message reached them, they would have realized that there was no point in continuing.

What would they have done then? Moved off the road. Found a place to hide. Endon knew the Belt would never again shine for him. Deltora’s only hope lay with his child. He and Sharn had to find a place where the baby could be born in safety. Where?

Lief was roused by Jasmine’s sharp voice. “Lief! We must go, so we can find a place to stop for the night.”

Lief turned to the caravan. But his thoughts still dwelled on a time before he was born, and on two desperate people he had never known, searching for refuge.