The Shadowlands

4 – The Grey Zone

Tirral sat silently through the celebration that followed her playing of the Pipe. There was food, drink and laughter around the fire, but she joined in none of it. Only when the Kerons brought out their small pipes of fungus wood did she raise her head.

The sweet, breathy music was worth listening to, indeed. And to the companions’ surprise, the sweetest tunes of all were played by Emlis.

When they congratulated him, as he put down his instrument and came to sit beside his mother, Emlis bit his lip. ‘Playing has always brought me joy,’ he said. ‘But now I have heard the Pirran Pipe I know that the sounds I make are just a pale reflection of what music can be.’

Awkwardly he wiped his pipe on his sleeve and held it out to Barda. ‘Perhaps you would play for us now?’ he asked. ‘I long to hear above-worlder music.’

Barda laughed. ‘It is very like your own. But, I am sorry, I cannot play for you—and neither can my companions. None of us is musical.’

‘What?’

Tirral’s high-pitched exclamation cut startlingly through the music and laughter. Silence fell.

‘Are you saying,’ cried Tirral, ‘that you cannot even play a pipe?’

‘We cannot play music as you do,’ Lief agreed, with sinking heart. ‘But it is the magic of the Pirran Pipe that counts, not the skill of the player. A single note will be enough to stay the Shadow Lord’s hand.’

‘You cannot know that!’ Tirral cried. ‘In ancient times the Pipe was only played by Pirra’s finest musicians!’

Her face glowing with renewed hope, she appealed to the silent people around her. ‘Our beliefs do not require us to give or lend to a cousin if the cause is pointless, Kerons! Is that not so?’

Heads nodded reluctantly.

‘Well, then!’ Tirral cried. ‘What could be more pointless than to give the Pirran Pipe to those who cannot even play it?’ She gazed around triumphantly.

‘It does not matter!’

Everyone jumped as the high, nervous voice broke the silence. Everyone stared as Emlis stepped forward, blushing to the roots of his golden hair.

‘It—it does not matter if our cousins cannot play the Pipe,’ Emlis stammered, meeting his mother’s angry stare defiantly. ‘It does not matter because—because I can play very well. And I am going with them!’

Much argument followed, but there was no point at all in Tirral’s raging, or the companions protesting. For the people of Keras, Emlis’s announcement had removed the last objection to the Pirran Pipe’s being taken to the Shadowlands.

‘So you have won, and I have lost,’ Tirral said bitterly, as she returned the companions’ weapons to them. ‘I have lost not only the Pirran Pipe, but my son. You have won the right to destroy them both, as well as yourselves. I hope your victory brings you joy.’

Her face was ashen. The moths around her head were barely moving.

‘Tirral—’ Lief began. But already the Piper was turning and walking rapidly away.

‘It is not our fault that her son is coming with us,’ hissed Jasmine. ‘It is all her own work! If she had let us go in peace Emlis would never have thought of the idea.’

‘Yes he would,’ Barda said shrewdly. ‘That young man is as anxious as we are to escape this island. I think he saw his chance and seized it with both hands.’

‘But he does not realise what he is doing!’ muttered Lief.

‘No,’ growled Barda. ‘And do we?’

Within hours, two long boats rowed by silent, craggy-faced leech-gatherers were setting out from the north side of the island. Lief, Jasmine, Barda and Emlis sat in the stern of one boat. In the other were the frozen-faced Tirral and two of her closest advisors.

Green water stretched ahead, gradually darkening to grey. The horizon was shrouded in darkness.

Kree clucked uneasily.

‘The Grey Zone,’ Jasmine said, staring at the ominous horizon.

Emlis nodded. Fear mingled with excitement on his thin face, which was almost covered by the hood of the thick, dull green leech-gatherer’s cloak he wore.

‘It is not too late to change your mind, Emlis,’ muttered Barda, who was sitting beside him. ‘This is not one of Doran’s tales. It is real, and deadly.’

‘I cannot change my mind now,’ said Emlis. ‘You need me. They will not let you take the Pipe without me.’

‘Your skin is not fit for the world above, Emlis,’ whispered Jasmine, leaning forward. ‘The sun will burn you. The light will blind you.’

Emlis shook his head stubbornly. ‘The cloak will protect me from the sun. And I am not the first Pirran to leave the caverns. Doran told of seven who did so, in the time of Alyss and Rosnan.’

‘They all died, Emlis,’ said Barda brutally. ‘They died, and never saw their homes again.’

‘They were killed by above-worlders, not by the sun,’ Emlis said, his voice trembling. ‘And in any case, they were Plumes, and the Plumes are as foolhardy and stupid as the Aurons are wicked.’

‘Plumes and Aurons are not stupid and wicked!’ cried Jasmine. ‘They are your own people! Your kinsfolk! Far more closely related to you than we are.’

The leech-gatherers who were paddling their boat turned and frowned ferociously. One made a low sound in his throat. The other bared his teeth unpleasantly. Jasmine pressed her lips together and returned their stares without flinching until at last they turned to face the front and began paddling once more.

Emlis hunched his bony shoulders. ‘I beg you, do not argue with me any more,’ he mumbled. ‘This is my one chance to fulfil the dearest wish of my life. To see a world that is not my own. If I die in the attempt, that is surely my choice.’

Barda ran his hands through his tousled hair in despair. ‘Three of them,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Three young hot-heads. By the heavens, were not two bad enough?’

Gradually the emerald light failed and within an hour the fleet was paddling through a grim realm of grey. They were far beyond the scope of Doran’s map now. Beyond Deltora’s border.

When they looked up, all they saw was swirling darkness. They knew that far above them towered the treacherous peaks that clustered behind Dread Mountain—iron-hard rock filled with dank, secret caves where hideous beasts like the giant toad Gellick thrived.

The boat was moving more slowly, and the rugged faces of the leech-gatherers had become strained and watchful.

Ahead loomed an ink-black shadow. The cavern beneath the Shadowlands.

‘When are they going to leave us?’ Jasmine murmured.

‘We must go to the edge of the Shadow,’ one of the leech-gatherers said unexpectedly, without turning around. ‘So the Piper says. And there we stop, praise be to Keras, and send you up, to the evil place above.’

‘Send us up?’ Lief blinked, confused. He had imagined that the Kerons were going to show them a secret way to the surface. But this sounded like…

‘The magic of seven may not be needed for the task,’ said the leech-gatherer, ‘but we thought it best to be on the safe side. Who knows how deep the rock is, up above. For all your strange ideas, we would not want you caught mid-ways, would we now?’

His companion chuckled grimly.

Lief felt Jasmine shudder, and knew that she had been gripped, as he had, by a nightmarish vision of being trapped in the midst of solid rock.

‘Do not fear,’ said Emlis. ‘Our ancestors sent Doran to the surface without harm many times.’

‘That was long ago,’ muttered Barda, who was looking rather sick. ‘And I presume Doran was not sent into the Shadowlands.’

‘Oh, no!’ Emlis agreed. ‘Doran always left the caverns in a place to the west of Keras. He said that in the land above, just at that spot, there was a great waterway, and boats to help him make the journey home.’

‘The River Tor!’ Lief exclaimed. ‘So that was how Doran did it so secretly. He would reappear in the brush below Dread Mountain. Then he would walk down to the river and wait for a boat. There would not have been so many pirates then.’

‘Or Ols,’ said Jasmine. Kree squawked nervously on her shoulder, but she did not turn to him. Her eyes were fixed on the mass of darkness looming before them.

The Shadowlands. Soon, very soon, she would be able to begin the search for Faith, her lost sister. And Lief and Barda would be beside her.

Jasmine had not forgiven Lief for trying to keep knowledge of Faith hidden from her. But after all they had been through together since entering the caverns, her anger had lost its bitter edge. Now she felt sure that Lief had kept Faith a secret only out of a desperate wish to keep her, Jasmine, from harm.

He was wrong to deceive me, Jasmine thought. But he did it for reasons he thought were good.

Her eyes stared, unfocused, at the growing Shadow ahead. Waiting for Lief in Del was his bride-to-be—that well-read, noble Toran girl who would make a fitting queen, and one day bear a child to wear the Belt of Deltora after Lief. But Jasmine was here with Lief now. And she was his friend—his true friend.

And that is enough, Jasmine told herself. That is how it must be. For what do I know of palaces and politeness and fine clothes? Nothing at all, and nor do I want to. Lief knows that.

Filli whimpered softly beneath her collar, and she raised a hand to comfort him, unconsciously drawing her own comfort from his warmth.

‘The first time Doran came to the caverns, he did not reach Keras,’ Emlis was chattering meanwhile to Barda. ‘Some Plumes found him drowning in the topaz sea. They saved him, but sent him straight back to the surface! That is how stupid Plumes are!’

He broke off and glanced guiltily at Jasmine, but she was still staring fixedly ahead.

‘The Plumes thought Doran would forget what had happened,’ Emlis said. ‘But a song they sang as they paddled their boat stayed in his head and made him remember. So he returned. And this time he—’

His eager voice broke off in a squeak.

Darkness had fallen like a curtain. The water surrounding them was black as night. They could see nothing. They could only hear the sound of the water lapping and the small craft that surrounded their long boat bumping together gently.

‘It is time.’ Tirral’s trembling voice floated in the darkness. ‘Now is the last chance for you to change your minds. Will you return with us to Keras, and safety? Lief… Barda… Jasmine… Emlis?’

There was a long pause.

‘Very well.’ Tirral’s voice was rigidly controlled now. ‘I have one piece of advice for you, and I urge you to attend to it, for I feel its worth in every bone of my body. Shadows have sunk deep into the soil of Pirra now. Whatever the Plumes and Aurons may think, Pirra is lost forever. It can never be reclaimed.’

‘We know this,’ Lief said. ‘And neither the Plumes nor the Aurons expect—’

‘I have not finished,’ Tirral snapped, speaking over him. ‘Listen! The Shadow Lord’s power is far greater now than when the Pipe kept him from Pirran soil. Played well or ill, the Pipe will stay his hand only for a time, and only if he is taken by surprise. Keep its magic for when it is most needed.’

‘We will,’ Lief, Barda and Jasmine murmured together.

‘There is nothing to do, then, but to wish you well,’ said Tirral from the darkness. ‘Put your arms about one another. Close your eyes. Think of nothing.’

Feeling as though he was in a dream, Lief moved into the centre of the boat. He knelt down on the hard, wet boards, spread his arms wide and gripped his companions tightly. He bent his head, forced his mind to go blank.

‘Good fortune, cousins.’ The rough voice of one of the leech-gatherers rumbled low in the silence. Then…

Cold, freezing cold. Rushing darkness. Sick dizziness, unbearable…

There was a sudden, terrifying stillness. A bleak, bitter smell. A rapid, thumping sound, very close, mingled with the moaning wail of wind. And Lief opened his stinging eyes, took his first, gasping breath, in the Shadowlands.