The Shadowlands

5 – In the Shadowlands

Lief lay very still, slowly realising that the thumping sound he was hearing was the pounding of his own heart. He was sprawled face down on hard earth. Wind was sweeping over him, a draught that seemed neither hot nor cold, carrying with it the bitter smell he had noticed before.

Cautiously he raised his head, blinking in the sullen light. Jasmine was crouching beside him, Kree on her shoulder. Barda was crawling to his feet not far away. Emlis, swathed in his cloak, was still on the ground, curled in a small ball.

With a chill Lief realised that they were in the open, on a windswept plain pocked with gaping craters. Barren white clay, as parched and cracked as a dry river bed, stretched in front of them as far as the eye could see. Thick grey clouds boiled low overhead, hiding the sun.

The land was dead. Dead as bleached, white bones.

Lief’s eyes burned as words from The Tale of the Pirran Pipe sprang unbidden into his mind.

Long, long ago, beyond the Mountains, there was a green Land called Pirra, where the breezes breathed magic…

Pirra, once a land of beauty, sunshine and flowers. The ancient home of the Kerons, the Plumes and the Aurons. Now… this wasteland.

And this is what Deltora might have been. Still might be. If you were wrong, Lief. If you were wrong…

Lief shook his head, trying to shut out the voice in his mind, the tormenting voice of his own conscience. But it would not stop.

You should have let Jasmine go. You should have remained in Del. That was your duty. Your duty…

Jasmine was pulling at his arm. ‘Lief! We must take cover, quickly,’ she hissed. ‘There are—things here. Coming closer.’

Lief tore his gaze from the barren horizon and looked at her. Her eyes were startled, wide, almost black.

‘People? Beasts? Ols?’ he asked quickly.

‘I—do not know,’ Jasmine whispered. ‘Things.’ She shuddered. Filli whimpered in his hiding place under her jacket.

Barda had scooped Emlis from the ground and was hurrying towards them.

‘Do not just stand there!’ he said roughly. ‘If an Ak-Baba should sight us, we are finished!’ He grabbed Lief by the arm and swung him around.

Only then did Lief realise that they were not marooned in the middle of the vast plain, as in his confusion he had thought. Behind them, rising like a great, jagged fence, were the mountains, their cruel peaks piercing the cloud, their foothills edging the plain. The great bulk of Dread Mountain hulked in the background, spreading away to the west.

Of course! Lief thought, sprinting towards the bare, forbidding foothills with the others pounding close behind him. The Kerons spirited us to the surface just inside the Shadowlands border. Of course the mountains are here! What was I thinking of?

He heard Emlis waking, protesting, demanding to be put down. Well, that was one good thing. Barda would have his hands free to climb, at least. Lief swerved around the first of the grey boulders that lay at the edge of the plain and began to scramble rapidly upward, aiming for the shelter of the larger rocks he could see further ahead.

Then, suddenly, a white flash of pain exploded behind his eyes as something slammed against his brow with shocking force. He staggered backwards, arms spinning wildly, fighting to keep his balance. Through the ringing in his ears he heard muffled cries of alarm, then, with relief, he felt a firm hand on his back. Barda was supporting him, pushing him back on his feet.

Trembling, he sank to his knees. Barda, Jasmine and Emlis crouched beside him, pressing closely together so that the great boulder hid them from the plain.

‘Lief, what happened?’ he heard Jasmine whisper.

‘Did you not see?’ he mumbled, pressing his hands to his aching head. ‘Something hit me.’

‘No!’ she whispered back. ‘There was nothing there. You just jerked backwards, suddenly, for no reason. One minute you were running, the next—’

Barda drew breath sharply. He picked up some pebbles and threw them at the empty air in front of them. Astounded, Lief saw the pebbles stop short in mid air, bounce slightly back, then fall to the ground.

‘An invisible wall!’ Jasmine breathed.

‘Yes,’ Barda said grimly. ‘I thought it strange that the mountains were unprotected. The Shadow Lord has sealed the border in his own way, it seems.’

As he spoke, they saw movement near where one of the pebbles had fallen. A small, brown striped lizard with bright eyes had scuttled into view.

‘But it came from uphill!’ whispered Jasmine excitedly. ‘From behind the magic wall. I saw it! Is it only humans who are stopped by the shutting spell?’

Lief felt ill. He had thought of another explanation, and he could see by Barda’s grim face that Barda had thought of it too.

The lizard’s tiny forked tongue flickered in and out for a few moments. Then, abruptly, it turned and scuttled back uphill. When it reached the invisible wall it stopped dead and fell back.

‘Yes,’ Barda said slowly. ‘That is what I feared. The spell does not stop people or creatures coming in. It only prevents them getting out.’

He, Lief and Jasmine looked at one another, the words hanging heavily between them. Then Lief began struggling to rise.

‘Stay still,’ Jasmine hissed, catching hold of his arm to hold him down. ‘You must rest. You hit your head—’

‘No!’ Lief gritted his teeth and pulled against her restraining hand.

Jasmine’s grip tightened and he fell back with a groan, his head swimming. ‘You said—you said something was coming!’ he mumbled. ‘We must—’

‘Do as you are told for once, Lief!’ said Barda grimly, drawing his sword. ‘We are as safe behind this rock as anywhere, at present. And whatever Jasmine can hear, I can still see nothing.’

The little lizard was scrabbling frantically at the invisible wall now, running along it for a short distance, then turning and running the other way. Every now and then it would raise itself and push with its front legs at the empty air, its tail thrashing frantically.

‘But—but why does the Shadow Lord not protect his border?’ asked Emlis in a high, trembling voice. ‘He has many of your people! Does he not fear that an army—or a small group such as yours—might cross the mountains and invade his territory?’

‘That is what he hopes for, I would say,’ muttered Barda. ‘He has left the way open, after all.’

‘But why?’ asked Emlis, his voice rising to a squeak.

The lizard fell back, exhausted. Instantly, an orange, spiny beetle-like creature sprang from a crack in the clay just behind it. In the blink of an eye the orange creature had seized the lizard, bitten off its head, and dragged the still twitching carcase back under the earth.

‘Does that answer your question?’ asked Barda dryly.

Emlis stared at him, open-mouthed.

Lief turned his face to the rock, his stomach churning. Then he saw it. A mark had been scratched laboriously into the rock’s hard surface. He stared, hardly able to believe his eyes.

‘The sign of the Resistance!’ he breathed, tracing the mark with his fingers. His heart was pounding.

Another Deltoran had sheltered here. A Deltoran who had somehow escaped from captivity and made for the mountains, only to find the way to freedom barred. A Deltoran who had used, perhaps, his or her last strength not to weep and curse fate, but to scratch a message of defiance on the rock.

The despairing confusion that had clouded Lief’s mind ever since arriving in this dread place seemed suddenly to lift. Suddenly he was able to think again.

Barda was touching the sign now. ‘It is not fresh, but it is not very old, either,’ he said slowly. ‘A year or two at most, I think.’

Lief was remembering another Resistance sign he had seen marked on rock. It had ended a message written in blood on a cave wall in Dread Mountain.

Doom had written that message: Doom, the only Deltoran captive ever known to have escaped from the Shadowlands. And he had escaped from…

Kree gave a low, warning squawk. ‘The light is changing,’ Jasmine whispered, reaching for her dagger.

Lief and Barda looked up quickly. The low, tumbling clouds were stained with faint, sullen scarlet, and the whiteness of the plain was dimming.

‘Surely something as small as a lizard would not have sounded a border alert,’ Barda muttered. ‘Such things must happen often.’

‘It is the setting sun,’ said Lief, looking to the west, where the clouds glowed more deeply. ‘Night is falling.’

They were silent for a moment. They had been in the caverns so long that they had almost forgotten that the days in the world above were ruled by the movement of the sun.

‘Doran said sunsets were glorious to see,’ said Emlis, gazing with disappointment at the clouds. ‘Doran said they were like red and orange fire blazing in the sky.’

‘Not here, it seems,’ Barda growled.

Jasmine was peering not at the sky, but at the plain. ‘Look,’ she breathed, pointing.

The plain was coming to life. Legs scrabbling, long feelers waving, spiny orange beetles were emerging in their thousands from the cracks in the clay.