The companions watched, horrified, as the grey liquid covered the rat’s twitching body and flowed on, moving very fast. The remaining rats shrieked and ran away from it, scattering outward across the plain.
‘It is poisonous,’ hissed Barda.
‘And it is alive,’ Lief muttered. ‘It is alive—and growing.’
He knew it was true. The thick, grey fluid was making more of itself, and more, feeding on the earth and the air.
There was a blaze of fire as the opal dragon swooped, roaring at the spreading circle of grey. Multi-coloured flame seared a great patch at the edge of the flood. The patch stiffened and hardened. The grey mass of liquid on either side of it closed in and flowed on, covering the burned place swiftly, as the rat had been covered.
The opal dragon wheeled and roared again. Again flame seared the moving ground, and again the burned place was smothered in an instant and the circle of grey grew larger.
‘We should return to the air, king of Deltora,’ the topaz dragon murmured, watching its rival’s efforts placidly. ‘The rainbow beast is well occupied. It will not trouble us. And the grey poison is spreading fast. This ground will not be safe for long.’
Plainly it was right. The companions scrambled back onto its neck, and in moments were gasping in the cold air, clinging for their lives as the dragon soared upward.
The beast flew a little way across the river, then turned in the air and hovered. ‘It is fortunate we did not delay,’ it commented.
Shivering, Lief, Barda and Jasmine looked down.
In the few minutes that had passed since the dragon took flight, the place where they had been standing had become a sea of grey. The whole of the land enclosed by the river bend was almost covered. Driven back to the river banks, hundreds of rats had begun leaping for the water, squealing in terror. Other rats were running for their lives across the plain to the north, just keeping ahead of a sweeping grey tide.
The opal dragon was wheeling over the grey sea, blasting it with rainbow fire. But the grey was still increasing, and every moment it seemed to be moving faster.
‘Nothing will stop it,’ Lief heard himself saying.
‘The river will stop it,’ Barda said firmly. ‘The Plain of the Rats is bounded by water on all sides. And the plain itself is no loss. There is no drearier place in the whole of Deltora.’
‘Very true,’ said the topaz dragon, yawning widely. ‘It is not territory worth saving.’
‘Would you feel the same if it was yours?’ Jasmine asked sharply.
The topaz dragon blinked.
The grey reached the river and began pouring over the banks into the water. And if anything the water seemed to strengthen it. The grey circle seemed to double in size almost instantly. The rippling water flattened and thickened. Squealing, swimming rats were overtaken and swallowed up.
Barda cursed in disbelief. Jasmine cried out.
The topaz dragon roared and arched its neck. Golden fire poured from its snarling jaws, searing the grey stream spilling over the river bank below.
But Lief was silent, looking back to the centre of the circle.
The collapsed yellow bubble was now hidden beneath a lumpy blanket of grey. The shapes of the ruins of the City of the Rats were visible around it—but only the shapes. Every ravaged building, every fallen tower, every brick and stone, was covered in a thick grey shroud.
And here the grey no longer moved, and no longer shone in the moonlight. It was setting hard.
Lief’s nightmare vision slid back into his mind, and his blood ran cold.
Grey, barren land. The skeletons of trees. A grey river, sluggish water thick as mud, with huge grey fish lying dead on the wrinkled surface … Monstrous creatures shrieking in the sky …
Not the Shadowlands, but Deltora. He knew that now.
This was a monster they could not fight. The grey tide would continue to spread. It would swallow rivers, forests and plains. It would cover towns and villages and farms. It would fill the valleys and smooth out the hills.
Nothing in its path would be spared. Death would come equally to the ferocious Sand Beasts and to the gentle Kin, to the flesh-eating Grippers and to the wondrous Lilies of Life.
Some of the grey would age and set hard, turning rivers to sludge, encasing houses, beasts, crops, trees and people alike in a shell of stone. The rest would move on.
The people who could outrun it would be driven to the coast, to fight over boats or mill helplessly at the water’s edge like the rats on the river bank. Or they would climb mountains and wait, freezing on the peaks, as the grey climbed, climbed …
And at last, Deltora, all its variety and strangeness lost forever, would be one great, cold, grey plain.
This was what the Shadow Lord’s malice and desire for vengeance had decreed must be, if the king who had been foretold did arise, restore the Belt of Deltora and rid the land of tyranny.
I never have just one plan …
The Shadow Lord knew that this new king would certainly attempt to destroy the magic crystal which was Deltora’s last link to the Shadowlands. He knew that, aided by the Belt, the king would be powerful enough to do it at last.
So the crystal was set to reveal the plot of the Four Sisters as it died. Then the king who had dared to defy the Shadow Lord would learn why his land was starving.
He would learn of the Four Sisters.
And, of course, he would set out to destroy them.
Lief gritted his teeth as one by one the pieces of the plan fell into place.
He had taken the bait offered to him without a second thought. The Enemy had set a trap for him, then dared him, forced him, to walk into it.
Looking back, Lief could hardly believe he had been so easily tricked.
Not once had he wondered why the map showing where the Sisters were had not been destroyed, but had been torn into four parts. Not once had he wondered why each fragment had been hidden with a Sister, to be easily found if that Sister and its guardian were destroyed.
Not once had he considered that the verse placed on the map might have a double meaning.
And not once had he wondered why the stone protecting the last Sister had not been a sober warning, but an insulting dare, almost guaranteed to make him take the last, fatal step.
But now, too late, he saw the reasons for all these things. And he saw that, from the beginning, the Shadow Lord had arranged things so that Deltora would be his, whatever happened.
Anger rose in him—a helpless, white-hot anger.
‘It has been the Enemy’s pleasure to make us choose unknowingly which way the land would die,’ he muttered. ‘If we failed in our quest, the land would die slowly. If we succeeded, death would come swiftly. Either way, the Shadow Lord would win.’
And as the last words left his lips, the first dead fish floated to the wrinkled surface of the dying river, and with weird, howling cries, the seven Ak-Baba came swooping in from the north.
19 - Dragon Night
Rage dissolving into numb horror, Lief saw the opal dragon swing to face the shrieking beasts hurtling over the horizon. He felt the muscles of the dragon of the topaz jerk violently beneath him. Then the dragon’s neck twisted, and the terrible head turned. Lief was caught and held by the fathomless gaze of a flat, golden eye.
‘The Enemy has sensed our attacks on the grey tide, no doubt,’ the dragon hissed. ‘He has sent his killing creatures to protect it. He must be using powerful sorcery indeed to defy the power of the Belt of Deltora.’
It glanced down at the seared section of river bank below, and snorted. ‘There is little enough damage. But the Enemy fears dragons, it seems. Even two are too many for him. I must set you and your companions down, king of Deltora. When the pack has finished with the dragon of the opal, it will come for me.’
‘No!’ Lief exclaimed. ‘There is still time for you to get away from here. Turn and—’