Carefully she unfolded it, and shook it in front of Doom’s unconscious face. “I still have it,” she cried. “See?”
Scarcely able to believe what he was seeing, Lief looked up to meet Barda’s eyes. Endon’s childhood rhyme. The rhyme that told of the secret way into the palace. Repeated in this very room by Lief’s father when the story of Endon and Sharn’s escape was told. Here was the one proof that could not be denied. And Jasmine had been carrying it, all along.
His mind flew back to that moment at Withick Mire, when the seven tribes had sworn on the Belt. He had known then, known, that the heir was present.
And he had been right.
With shaking fingers he took the Belt of Deltora from his waist. He touched Jasmine’s arm. She turned to him, her face anguished. He held out the Belt.
Her eyes widened in shock as she understood him. She shrank away, shaking her head.
“Jasmine, put it on!” Barda thundered. “Doom is Endon. You are his daughter. You are the heir to Deltora!”
“No!” Jasmine cried. She shook her head again, scrambling away from Lief as Kree screeched, fluttering on her shoulder. “No! It cannot be! I do not want it! I cannot do it!”
“You can!” Lief urged. “You must!”
She stared at him defiantly for a single moment. Then, her face seemed to crumple. She crawled to her feet and stood waiting. Lief went to her and, holding his breath, looped the Belt around her slim waist, fastened it …
And nothing happened. The Belt did not flash, or shine. Nothing changed. With a great, shuddering sigh Jasmine pulled at the clasp and the Belt dropped to the floor at her feet.
“Take it back, Lief,” she said dully. “I knew it was wrong.”
“But — but it cannot be wrong!” Lief stammered. “You are the heir!”
“And if I am,” Jasmine said, still in that same, dead voice, “then all we have been told about the Belt is false. Doom — my father — has been right all along. We have pinned our lives, and our hopes, on a myth. An old tale made for people who wanted to believe in magic.”
Barda slumped into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
Lief stooped and picked up the Belt from the floor. As he fastened it about his waist once more, he felt numb. Why had the Belt not shone? Was it because Jasmine was unwilling?
Or — was the Belt itself at fault? Could one of the gems be false? No. The Belt had warmed to each of the gems in turn. It had sensed them. It knew them.
He moved away from the fire, away from the silent Barda, and Jasmine kneeling beside the sleeping Doom. He wandered out of the room, into the darkness beyond. Then he felt his way to his own small room, and lay down on the bed, hearing its familiar creak.
The last time he had woken in this room, it had been his sixteenth birthday. The boy who had lain here then seemed a stranger …
He leaped up, shocked, as there was a crash and a shout from the front of the house.
“I have him!” bawled a rough voice. “Now, the girl! The girl!”
Lief stumbled blindly towards the bedroom door, drawing his sword, hearing with horror the sound of smashing glass, cursing, the thumping of heavy boots. Kree was screeching wildly.
“Mind the bird!” roared another voice. “Ah — you devil!”
Desperately, Lief hugged the wall, feeling his way towards the sound.
“Keep away!” shrieked Jasmine. “Keep away! There are only three of us here, and there are ten of you! Ten!”
Lief froze. Jasmine was warning him that it would be useless to try to interfere. Warning him to keep away, and at the same time making the Guards think that only she, Doom, and Barda were in the house.
He heard a grunt of pain, then the sound of a sharp slap. “That’ll teach you to bite!” a Guard snarled. “Three of you, yes! Just where Fallow said you’d be. And one of you out cold. Easy pickings!”
There was a shout of laughter, and the sound of bodies being dragged across the floor. Then … there was silence.
Lief waited a few moments, then crept to the living room. The fire still crackled brightly. Warm light flickered over a scene of ruin. Furniture had been thrown everywhere in the struggle. Both windows had been smashed.
Kree hunched on an overturned chair. As Lief approached him, he turned his head and squawked hopelessly.
Lief gripped the hilt of his sword till his knuckles turned white. Suddenly, he was full of a cold anger. “I could not save them, either, Kree,” he said. “But it does not end here.”
He held out his arm, and Kree fluttered to him. At almost the same moment, through the broken windows came the sound of loud, clanging bells. Lief’s stomach churned. He knew what that meant. He had heard the bells before.
“The people are being summoned to the palace, Kree,” he said grimly. “And we must go there, too. But not to stand outside the walls with the rest. We must get inside.”
He walked to the fireplace and picked up the worn scrap of paper that Jasmine had dropped on the rug. Carefully he refolded it and put it in his pocket.
It was time for the bear to be woken once more.
The chapel was cold and empty as Lief crawled from the secret tunnel and slid the marble tile that had concealed it back into place. Shivering, he pushed open the chapel door and climbed the dark steps beyond, with Kree perched firmly on his arm.
Lief had no plan. No plan at all. But somehow it seemed right that he was here. Where this story began, so it will end, he thought. One way or another.
He peered from the darkness of the steps into the huge space beyond. The ground floor of the palace seemed deserted. But echoing down the vast stairway which wound up to the top floors was a distant, murmuring sound. The sound of a huge crowd.
Lief knew where the sound was coming from. It was floating through the huge open windows of the great hall on the first floor. The people of Del were thronging the hill beyond the palace garden. They were looking up at the Place of Punishment. This was a wooden platform supported on great poles, stretching all the way from the windows of the great hall to the wall that ringed the palace garden. The flag of the Shadowlands, a red hand on a grey background, hung from a flagpole directly above it.
The Place had been built when the Shadow Lord came. The sight of it, even from a distance, had chilled Lief from babyhood. For even tiny children were forced to witness the executions that took place there, and forbidden to turn their heads away. The Shadow Lord wanted all in Del to know the price of rebellion.
And so they did. Once or twice a year they saw terrible sights at the Place of Punishment, and in between those times it remained a constant reminder. The ground below it was heaped with bones. The wall was spiked with skulls. And the edge of the platform itself was hung with a thick fringe of dangling, rotting bodies, each branded with the Shadow Lord’s mark.
“People of Del! Behold these traitors!” Lief gripped his sword as the thin, penetrating voice echoed faintly down the stairway. Fallow himself was standing on the Place, addressing the crowd. Usually, one of the Grey Guards conducted the executions. But this, of course, was a special occasion.
Running the secret way, Lief had reached the palace very quickly. Toiling the long way, up the hill, the Guards who had raided the forge could not yet have arrived. But Fallow had six other examples to show the crowd while he waited for news of the capture of those he wanted the most.
Rapidly, Lief looked around him. He knew that there was no chance of reaching the Place from inside the palace. Guards and palace servants always clustered in the windows that edged the platform.