Sister Of The South

17 - The Trap

Lief’s mind was in turmoil. Why had he not remembered Josef’s frailty? Why had he not realised that the old librarian must have been studying something that was already in his room?

Ranesh cleared his throat. Looking up, Lief realised that Ranesh was staring at him, holding out a stack of paper tied with pale blue ribbon.

‘It is the manuscript of Josef’s book,’ Ranesh was saying. ‘Josef wanted you to have it. I took it from his desk earlier, and it seemed right to give it to you now.’

Lief took the manuscript and, to please Ranesh, untied it. He lifted the top page, bearing the book’s title, and looked at the next.

It was not a contents page or an introduction, as he had expected. It was a tale copied from the Deltora Annals, and when he saw which one, he felt cold to his very bones.

Lief put down the second page with a shaking hand.

The Four Sisters … You … the sorcerer … you must stop …

Josef’s halting words were echoing in his mind. And now they had a new and terrible meaning.

‘It is too sad a tale to begin the book, I think,’ said Ranesh, who had been reading over Lief’s shoulder.

‘Josef wrote it last,’ Lief whispered, fighting the rising terror that was threatening to overwhelm him. ‘He copied it out of the Annals and put it at the front of his manuscript, so I would be sure to see it at once if anything happened to him. He sent me a note—’

I must see you. Urgent. Fearful news …

Lief swallowed. ‘The volume of the Annals was still lying open on his desk when I arrived. The tale was there, in its original form. But I did not read it.’

You are the sorcerer. You must stop …

Ranesh frowned in confusion. ‘It is only an old folk tale. And surely Josef had told it to you before?’

If only I had remembered! Fool! Fool!

‘His memory of it was hazy,’ Lief said. ‘He had forgotten the end. By the time he read it again, for his book, and realised what it might mean, I was far away.’

‘“What it might mean”?’ Ranesh exclaimed. ‘I do not understand you!’

Was Josef writing out this tale when Doom came into his room last night? Lief thought. No. The Annals volume was far to his right—too far away for him to see it clearly. The manuscript was on his left, already neatly tied. And Josef was using a ruler. There are no ruled lines upon these pages.

So Josef must have been working on something else—something that was proof of what the tale had made him suspect.

After Doom left him, Josef must have hidden the proof somewhere close by, Lief thought. But surely he would have tried to tell me, or Ranesh, where it—

His heart jolted.

‘Ranesh,’ he said slowly. ‘When Josef told you he wanted to be buried in his librarian’s tunic, what exactly did he say?’

Ranesh stared. ‘I told you—he could hardly speak. He just said, “In my tunic”. He repeated it several times, very urgently, as if he thought I did not understand. But of course I knew exactly what he meant. Joseph had always said he wanted to be buried in the uniform of his office when the time came.’

‘Was there anything in the tunic pocket?’ Lief asked. He had begun to shiver all over.

Ranesh went very still. ‘I did not look,’ he said.

Plot … Treachery …

Lief stood up unsteadily, and staggered. Ranesh exclaimed in alarm, and took his arm.

As Ranesh half-carried Lief back into the kitchen, and lowered him into a chair, the talk and laughter around the table abruptly stopped. Jasmine, Barda and Doom leaped up. Sharn tried to rise.

‘Look after him,’ Ranesh said, and left the room.

Lief was already fumbling in his jacket pocket for the four fragments of the Four Sisters map. Suddenly he was sure he knew what Ranesh would find in Josef’s tunic, and he could not wait.

He thrust the Four Sisters tale into Barda’s hands.

‘We have been tricked,’ he muttered. ‘The Enemy took more than the Sisters’ names from this tale. He took the idea, and twisted it to fit his own purpose. If the Deltora Annals had been burned as he ordered—if Josef had not saved them—no-one would ever have known.’

He pulled the map fragments from his pocket and with trembling hands put them on the table in front of him. ‘But Josef read it—realised the danger—tried to tell me. Perhaps, at the end, even Paff suspected it.’

My master has many plans …

As Barda, Jasmine and Doom began to read, Lief pushed the edges of the map fragments together. He took one look at the result, and his face began to burn.

… evil … the centre … the heart … the city … of …

‘Doom, give me your knife,’ he whispered, feeling for the blunt pencil that he had carried for so long.

Doom looked up from his reading, grim-faced. Without a word, he pulled the huge knife from its sheath, and put it on the table.

North … to south, east … to west … lines … map …

Lief placed the straight edge of the knife across the map and using it as a ruler, drew a line between Dragon’s Nest and the Isle of the Dead. Then he moved the knife and ruled another line between Shadowgate and Del.

Everyone had crowded around now. The tale of the Four Sisters was being passed from hand to hand, and all those who had finished it were staring at the completed map, and at the lines Lief had drawn—the lines that crossed at the place marked ‘Hira’.

Danger … Fearful … Here …

‘Josef did not say “here”, but “Hira”,’ Lief breathed aloud. ‘The danger he was trying to warn me of was not the Sister of the South at all. It was an even greater peril, hidden in the centre of Deltora. In the City of the Rats.’

‘I have always wondered why the people were driven out of the City,’ Doom muttered. ‘The Shadow Lord could have enslaved them where they were, if he had wished. But now I see. He wanted the City for his own purpose.’

‘It was the place he wanted,’ Lief said. ‘The place where the Sister song lines would cross.’

Ranesh ran into the room, a paper in his hand. His face looked bleached. His eyes were wild.

‘There was something in Josef’s tunic!’ he panted. ‘It—’

Then he saw the map fragments lying on the table and put his paper down beside them. As Lief had expected, it was a copy of Doran’s Dragon Territories map. The positions of all the Sisters had been marked, in Josef’s handwriting. And between them Josef had ruled the same lines that Lief had just drawn—lines crossing in the territory of the opal, at Hira, the City of the Rats.

Lief pressed his hands together, trying to stop his hands from trembling.

‘This was what Josef wanted me to see,’ he said. ‘He summoned me so urgently not to help me destroy the last Sister as I thought, and as Paff thought, too, but to stop me. He knew that if the voice of the last Sister was silenced, a terror worse than hunger would be unleashed upon Deltora.’

‘So now we know why the Sister of the South was so easily destroyed,’ Jasmine said quietly. ‘With the other three Sisters gone, and the Bone Point Light restored, the Shadow Lord’s game of starving us was all but over. He was impatient to spring his trap. He withdrew the last Sister’s power, and abandoned Paff to fight on alone.’

His face set like stone, Barda read aloud the verse printed on the map.

Sisters four with poisoned breath

Bring to the land a long, slow death.

But death comes swiftly if you dare

To find each sister’s hidden lair.

Their songs like secret rivers flow

To hold the peril deep below …

And if at last their voices cease

The land will find a final peace.

‘“Final peace”,’ murmured Zeean. And suddenly the words, which had seemed so hopeful, were chilling.

‘But Deltora is not a tiny island!’ cried Gla-Thon, throwing down Josef’s manuscript. ‘No beast in the centre, however terrible, could destroy this whole land!’

‘You are right, gnome,’ growled Gers. ‘Just let it try to invade the territory of the Jalis!’

‘The Shadow Lord is not known for idle threats,’ said Doom grimly. He swung around to Steven, who had remained silent ever since he saw the map.

‘We must go at once to the City of the Rats,’ he said. ‘The bees and Mellow would be our fastest way. Will you—?’

Steven nodded shortly. His fists were clenched. His golden eyes were flickering brown. ‘Our mother’s orchard lies at the edge of the Plain of the Rats,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Mellow will fly like the wind to defend it.’

I will be faster, king of Deltora. And a full moon is rising.

The voice of the topaz dragon filled Lief’s mind. The topaz grew hot beneath his hands. He felt Barda and Jasmine, close beside him. He turned to Doom.

‘You go with Steven,’ he murmured. ‘Take as many from here as are able, with every weapon you can carry. We will meet you there.’