Lief raised his head from the message, and met his companions’ astonished eyes.
Jasmine was the first to recover.
‘I am astounded!’ she said. ‘And most of all, I think, to learn that Tom has a sister! It is impossible to imagine him as a child, and part of a family.’
‘Plainly he was a child once, however,’ growled Barda. ‘And it sounds as if his sister is as strange a bird as he is.’
‘Even stranger, perhaps,’ Lief muttered. ‘But who is to say we will ever meet her? Her shop could be anywhere.’
Still, he carefully tucked the bag of Peppermint Fancies away inside his jacket. He felt excited and uneasy, both at the same time.
Something about the note nagged at him. It was not just Tom’s knowledge that they were in the west. It was something else—something he felt he should see, but which eluded him.
Slowly he crumpled the paper and tossed it into the fire. It flared up. One line showed bright in the flames.
Perhaps it was always fated to come to this…
Then the paper blackened, and crumbled to ash.
The next morning, soon after dawn, the companions left the Sleeping Dunes. They left alone, yet not alone, for the thoughts of the Torans went with them, and sped them on their way.
Barda was the only one of the three who had not experienced the rush of Toran magic before. For a long time he could only stare, wide-eyed, as first the dunes, then the broad coast road that lay beyond them, slipped rapidly away beneath his flying feet.
At last, he managed to speak. ‘This is incredible!’ he muttered huskily. ‘Why—in minutes we have gone half a day’s march! If only this magic could be harnessed—used all over Deltora. Think what it would mean!’
‘The Torans have tried,’ Jasmine said. ‘Or so Marilen tells me. But beyond the borders of their territory, their power weakens, then dies. Only between Del and Tora is the path strong, because it was opened by the ancients.’
Filli was peeping from beneath her collar, chittering cheekily at Kree, who was flying close beside them. Kree squawked loudly.
‘Do not be jealous, Kree,’ Jasmine grinned. ‘Soon you will be flying ahead of us again, as is proper.’
Sure enough, it was not long before their speed slowed. They were still travelling far faster than normal walking pace, but their surroundings no longer flashed by in a blur. Now they could see pounding waves on their right, and the occasional ruined house amid the barren land to their left.
‘You see? We have crossed the border,’ Jasmine told Barda, as Kree drew ahead of them with a triumphant screech. ‘The magic is fading.’
And we are in the land of the diamond, Lief thought. He glanced down at the Belt of Deltora. The great diamond winked in the sunlight.
He put his hands to the gem, closed his eyes, and willed the diamond dragon to wake and come to him. But he felt no special warmth, no answering glow.
In his mind he saw Doran’s Dragon Territories map, and the broad, empty spread of the land of the diamond.
By the time we reach the Isle of the Dead, the diamond dragon will have sensed the Belt, he told himself. Wherever it lies, however far away, it will wake and come to me, as the other dragons have done.
It will come if it can, a voice in his mind replied. And Lief’s thoughts flew back to the amethyst dragon, as it had been when he bid it farewell at dawn.
‘So you are taking the amethyst away, though I am still too weak to fly,’ the great beast had said.
Lief had swallowed. ‘I am sorry,’ he had said stiffly.
‘There is no point in grieving over what cannot be helped,’ the dragon had replied. ‘Now I am a little stronger, I feel the poison in my land. Its evil source is south of here—beyond my border. The dragon of the diamond must help you defeat it. Is that not so?’
Lief still remembered the wave of relief that had flowed through him when he heard those words, spoken so calmly, and with such dignity.
‘I pray that the dragon of strength and purity will aid you as it should,’ the amethyst dragon had continued. ‘But if it should fail you, call me to your side. If it is within my power, I will come. I will do it for love of Dragonfriend. I know he would have wished it.’
‘Thank you, dragon of the amethyst,’ Lief had managed to say. He had been very moved.
‘And if you call me, king of Deltora,’ the dragon had finished, ‘it would be best, to make sure I hear you, that you call me by my true name. It is… Veritas.’
The last words were spoken softly, so softly that Lief had been forced to bend to hear them. He had straightened, very aware of the honour he had received.
‘I thank you, Veritas,’ he said humbly. ‘I swear that never will I use your name unwisely, and that I will honour it. My true name is Lief.’
The dragon had nodded, but said nothing more. And quietly, Lief had left it where it crouched, motionless on the sand.
‘Look! Ahead! Lief, look!’
Lief’s eyes flew open at the sound of Jasmine’s voice. He blinked. His heart pounded.
They had rounded a bend in the road, and suddenly the end of their journey was in sight. Suddenly, they could see ocean not only to their right but to their left, and far ahead as well.
Before them stretched a long, narrow point of land. Like a thin flat finger tipped with rock and fringed with foam it jabbed through the blue of the sea, stretching away into the distance stretching to…
Lief eyes dazzled. Something was flashing at the end of the point—flashing like the Bone Point Light in Verity’s painting.
‘What is it?’ Barda exclaimed. ‘Can it be another lighthouse? I thought—’
Kree screeched wildly overhead.
‘It is the island!’ cried Jasmine.
And as Lief ran forward, squinting, he saw with wonder that it was so. The source of the dazzling light rose from the sea beyond the tip of the point.
High, steep and bare, the Isle of the Dead shone like glass. Every surface glittered and flashed in the sun, as if the Isle itself was one vast diamond.
In front of the great mass of light, separated from it by a strip of boiling foam, was a small gleam of scarlet.
The first island, Lief thought. The smaller one shown on the map. It shines like a ruby, just as the other is like a diamond.
And then, as his eyes moved on to the mainland, he saw something else that the brilliant light of the Isle of the Dead had caused him to miss at first glance.
A gleaming shape was floating above the ground at the tip of the rocky point, burning like a silver beacon against the blueness of sea and sky.
14 – Ava
Lief squinted at the gleaming shape. Almost instantly he realised that it was not some strange vision floating in mid-air, but a huge metal sign. The sign was attached to the roof of a small building that was so brown, low and rounded that it looked as if it had grown out of the rock.
Ava’s shop, he thought, his hand moving to the bag of Peppermint Fancies in his jacket pocket.
He knew he should be amazed to find Ava’s shop—any shop—here, in this wild and lonely place.
Yet he was not amazed. And slowly he admitted to himself what in his heart he had known all along.
Tom would not have sent that message and the gift for Ava unless he had been sure that Lief, Barda and Jasmine would pass this way. He had been certain that the companions’ goal was the Isle of the Dead. He knew his sister could help them.
… she sees more than most, and can tell you many things of use… She also has boats for hire…
Their eyes narrowed against the bright light of the island, the companions moved forward, barely noticing that their feet were now on the ground and that they were moving at normal walking pace.