As the beast turned its neck to growl at the attacking bird, Lief’s stomach turned over. For at the back of its head was another face, narrow and ridged, with a cruel hooked beak and burning red eyes.
Pointless, then, to try to attack it from behind—or indeed, to do anything but try to escape. For even as Lief leaped down the stairs, raising his sword, he knew that ordinary weapons could not defeat this horror.
It was a thing of sorcery, like the false dragon at Dragon’s Nest, like the phantom that had hunted them on the way to Shadowgate.
The guardian of the south had been expecting them. Again, their movements had been known. Again, they had been betrayed.
‘Barda! Jasmine!’ he roared. ‘The doors are open! Get up to the doors!’
But as the words left his lips, he saw Jasmine fall, blood welling from a wound in her side. The stinger that had struck her held her fast, while a dozen more whipped forward to finish her. The dog face howled and snapped in triumph, flecks of foam spraying from its jaws. The beaked face behind it gave a wailing, unearthly cry.
With a roar, Barda slashed savagely at the attacking stingers. Their tips dropped and melted into puddles of oily liquid where they fell. Lief bounded recklessly down the last few steps, cut Jasmine free and began to lift her.
‘Get her inside, Lief!’ Barda panted. ‘I will try to hold—’
He grunted in agony as three stingers whipped around his neck. Blood began to flow freely from the wounds. The stingers tightened and pulled. As Barda staggered, choking, the beast lunged at him, its two faces howling, stingers hissing through the air like striking snakes.
Leaving Jasmine where she lay, Lief sprang forward, his sword sweeping in great arcs before him. Fragments of stingers fell, squirming, beneath his blade. The severed tips of the stingers that had been throttling Barda dissolved into trails of black slime. As Barda bent double, clutching his throat and drawing in great, rasping gulps of air, the trails joined into one and slid rapidly to the ground.
The beast shuddered and drew back. The blazing eyes of the dog face met Lief’s eyes, then dropped to the Belt at his waist.
‘Yes!’ Lief shouted, wild with rage and loathing. ‘I am the one you were told to destroy! But it is not so easy, is it? It is not so easy to face the Belt of Deltora. Get back—back to whatever foul place you came from!’
The foam-flecked lips of the dog face writhed back from its teeth in a snarling grin. And Lief’s heart seemed to leap into his throat as the hideous mound of flesh before him swelled to twice its size, and hundreds more stingers erupted from its rippling black surface.
And the next moment, it was upon him.
He was engulfed in oily, quivering darkness. He could not breathe. He could not see. Pain racked his body as stingers whipped around him, binding his arms and legs, squeezing him in a death grip.
But worse, far worse, was the sickening sound, the ghastly rippling, sucking sound that filled his ears as he was pulled further and further into the cold, jelly-like mass of the beast. His stomach heaved with the vileness of it. He wanted to scream, but his mouth was sealed.
He could feel the beast’s flesh twitching and quivering. The Belt of Deltora was burning it. But it did not release him. The blood was roaring in his ears. His chest ached with the need to breathe. His mind was growing hazy. Pictures of the past drifted in a sea of red behind his sealed eyes.
So this was what Ava meant, he thought dimly. This was the fate awaiting me. Death …
Not yet, king of Deltora. I am with you …
The voice of the topaz dragon whispered in his mind, echoing like a voice in a dream. At the same moment, he felt a jolt, as if the beast enfolding him had shuddered all over. And then he heard a roar like distant thunder, and knew—
Again the beast shuddered. There was a spitting, sizzling sound, like fat falling into a fire. And then Lief felt himself falling onto the hard stairs. He felt the cold, clinging flesh slipping away from him, sliding from his nose and mouth, from his arms and legs.
Air rushed into his aching lungs as he took great, sobbing breaths. The air was hot, and smelled of burning. It hurt him. But it was glorious, glorious!
He opened his eyes. He was lying on his side. The air was dark with smoke. A mighty wind beat on him, pinning him down. There was a blaze of golden light, a thunderous roar, and a wave of heat.
He could do nothing. He could only lie gasping like a stranded fish, staring wildly at the trail of oily black liquid snaking into the shadows at the side of the stairs and slipping out of sight.
Painfully, fighting the buffeting wind, he turned on his back and looked up. The topaz dragon hovered above him, wreathed in smoke, its vast wings glittering in the rising sun. Again he heard its voice in his mind.
What was that foul two-faced thing? In all my long life, I have never seen its like.
Lief tried to speak, but could not. So he thought his answer—the answer he knew to be true.
It is the guardian of the evil presence called the Sister of the South.
The dragon’s golden eyes narrowed. And this time it spoke aloud. Its voice was very cold.
‘When you awoke me, king, I felt evil in my land. But you told me that the centre of the evil was in the land of the ruby where I could not go.’
Lief wet his cracked lips. ‘I did not mean to deceive you,’ he managed to croak. ‘I told you there were four Sisters in all, and that we only knew the whereabouts of one—the Sister of the East, in Dragon’s Nest. Since then we have circled the land, and three Sisters have been destroyed. But one remains, and we have just learned that it is in Del.’
‘I knew it was so,’ hissed the dragon, dropping a little lower. ‘Its song has been tormenting me. I hear it now. It is here, hidden deep in the city’s heart.’
… the centre … the heart …
Josef’s voice echoed in Lief’s mind.
‘You feel the evil in the palace, dragon?’ Lief rasped urgently.
‘I do,’ growled the dragon. ‘Why else have I haunted this place, braving the weapons of your guards? I do not care for cities, where the air is foul, and humans run about shrieking at the sight of me, like granous in a trap.’
And as it spoke, there were frenzied shouts from the top of the stairs. The next instant, an arrow had flown through the air and buried itself in the dragon’s soft underbelly.
The dragon bellowed and rose into the dawn sky. Its dark red blood splashed to the stairs, spattering Lief’s face and hands.
Lief cried out in horror, struggling to rise, to shout to the guards to stop, stop! But the pounding wind of mighty wingbeats pinned him down, and his croaking voice could not be heard above the dragon’s roars.
The dragon flew clumsily away, slowly gaining height. Spears sped after it, but could not reach it, falling uselessly to the ground. Blood dripped from its wound as it flew. Lief watched helplessly, racked with pain, filled with dismay.
He heard the sound of feet clattering down the stairs. Then someone was crouching beside him. Through the haze of smoke still drifting in the air Lief saw a square, sharp-eyed face surrounded by a frizz of brown hair. He saw the well-worn bow slung over one sturdy shoulder, and knew whose arrow had pierced the dragon’s hide.
‘Gla-Thon,’ he croaked, trying to sit up. ‘How—?’
‘Be still,’ the gnome said gruffly. ‘You have lost much blood. Jasmine and Barda too. That vicious yellow beast nearly made an end of you.’
‘No,’ Lief mumbled. His head was swimming. Shadows were flickering at the edges of his vision.
Desperately he tried to hold the shadows back. He needed to explain. He needed to tell Gla-Thon, tell them all, of the two-faced beast, of the dragon’s rescue. But there was something even more urgent.
‘Josef. Paff,’ he whispered. ‘The Toran Plague …’
He saw Gla-Thon’s small eyes widen. He saw her lips move, as though she was speaking.