“Somewhere far away, in any case,” Crian muttered, as they sat by the fire on the second night. “Such luxuries could not be found here.”
“It is said that Deltora was once a land of peace and plenty,” Anna added. “But that was a long time ago.”
“The new king knows nothing of this!” Jarred cried. “Neither did the old king. You should have told him —”
“Told him?” Crian growled angrily. “We told him time and again!” He swung around in his chair and pulled an old tin box from the shelf. He thrust the box at Jarred. “Open it!” he ordered.
Jarred lifted the lid of the box. Inside were many small rolls of parchment edged with gold. Confused, he picked out one of the rolls and straightened it.
Frowning, Jarred thrust the parchment back into the box and picked out another. It was exactly the same. And so was the next he looked at, and the next. The only difference in the fourth was that it spoke of “The Queen” instead of “The King” and was signed “Lilia.” Queen Lilia had been Alton’s mother, Jarred remembered.
He scrabbled through the parchments. There were hundreds of them, all stamped with the royal seal. Some were much older than others, signed with royal names he remembered from his history lessons.
“They are all the same,” Crian said, watching him reading one after the other. “The only difference between them is the name at the bottom. For centuries messages have been sent to the palace, begging for help. And these accursed parchments are all the people have ever received in return. Nothing has ever been done. Nothing!”
Jarred’s throat tightened with pain and anger. “King Alton, at least, never received your messages, Crian,” he said, as calmly as he could. “I think they were kept from him by his chief advisor. A man called Prandine.”
“The king signed these replies and fixed to them his royal seal,” Crian pointed out coldly, flicking his finger at the box. “As did his mother and grandfather before him.”
“It is the Rule — the custom — that the chief advisor prepares all replies for the king to sign,” exclaimed Jarred. “The old king signed and sealed whatever Prandine put in front of him.”
“Then he was a fool and a weakling!” Crian snapped back. “As no doubt his son is also! Endon will be as useless to us as his father.” He shook his head. “I fear for Deltora,” he muttered. “We are now so weak that should invasion come from the Shadowlands we could do nothing to protect ourselves.”
“The Shadow Lord will not invade, Grandfather,” Anna soothed. “Not while the Belt of Deltora protects us. And our king guards the Belt. That, at least, he does for us.”
Jarred felt a chill of fear. But he could not bring himself to tell Anna that she was wrong. If she found out that the king did not wear the Belt but let it be shut away, under the care of others, she would lose the last of her hope.
Oh, Endon, he thought, as he went to bed that night. I cannot reach you unless you wish it. You are too well guarded. But you can reach me. Go to the hollow tree. Read my note. Send the signal.
From that time on, before he started work each morning, Jarred looked up at the tree rising against the misty cloud on the hill. He would look carefully, searching for the glint of the king’s golden arrow at the top. The signal that Endon needed him.
But it was a long, long time before the signal came. And by then it was too late.
Years passed and life went on. Jarred and Anna married. Then old Crian died and Jarred took his place as blacksmith.
Sometimes Jarred almost forgot that he had ever had another life. It was as if his time at the palace had been a dream. But still, every dawn, he looked up to the tree on the hill. And still he often read the small book he had found in the palace library. Then he feared for what the future might hold. He feared for his beloved Anna and the child they were expecting. He feared for himself, for Endon, and for the whole of Deltora.
One night, exactly seven years after the night Endon was crowned, Jarred tossed restlessly in his bed.
“It is nearly daybreak and you have not slept, Jarred,” Anna said gently, at last. “What is troubling you?”
“I do not know, dear heart,” Jarred murmured. “But I cannot rest.”
“Perhaps the room is too warm,” she said, climbing out of bed. “I will open the window a little more.”
She had pulled the curtains aside and was reaching for the window fastening when suddenly she screamed and jumped back.
Jarred leapt up and ran to her.
“There!” Anna exclaimed, pointing, as he put his arm around her. “Oh, Jarred, what are they?”
Jarred stared through the window and caught his breath. In the sky above the palace on the hill, monstrous shapes were wheeling and circling.
It was still too dark to see them clearly. But there was no doubt that they were huge birds. There were seven. Their necks were long. Their great, hooked beaks were cruel. Their mighty wings flapped clumsily but strongly, beating at the air. As Jarred watched, they swooped, rose again, and then separated, flying off swiftly in different directions.
A name came to him. A name from the school room of his past.
“Ak-Baba,” he hissed. His arm tightened around Anna’s shoulders.
She turned to him, her eyes wide and frightened.
“Ak-Baba,” he repeated slowly, still staring at the palace. “Great birds that eat dead flesh and live for a thousand years. Seven of them serve the Shadow Lord.”
“Why are they here?” Anna whispered.
“I do not know. But I fear —” Jarred broke off abruptly and leaned forward. He had seen something glinting brightly in the first feeble rays of the sun.
For a moment he stood motionless. Then he turned to Anna, his face grim and pale.
“Endon’s arrow is in the tree,” he said. “The call has come.”
In moments Jarred had dressed and run from the house behind the forge. He hurried up the hill to the palace, his mind racing.
How was he to reach Endon? If he climbed the wall, the guards inside would certainly see him. He would be hit by a dozen arrows before he reached the ground. The cart that collected the food scraps would be of no use to him. Prandine must have guessed that Jarred had used it to escape, because it was no longer permitted to enter the palace. These days it waited between the two sets of gates while guards loaded it with sacks.
Endon himself is the only one who can help me, Jarred thought as he ran. Perhaps he will be watching for me, waiting for me …
But as he slowed, panting, in sight of the palace gates, he could see that they were firmly closed and the road outside was deserted.
Jarred moved closer, his spine prickling. The long grass that ringed the palace walls whispered in the breeze of dawn. He could be walking into a trap. Perhaps at any moment guards would spring from their hiding places in the grass and lay hands on him. Perhaps Endon had at last decided to betray him to Prandine.
His feet brushed something lying in the dust of the road. He looked down and saw a child’s wooden arrow. A small piece of paper had been rolled around the arrow’s shaft and tied there.
His heart beating hard, Jarred picked up the arrow and pulled away the paper. But as he flattened it out and looked at it, his excitement died.
It was just a child’s drawing. Some palace child had been playing a game, practicing shooting arrows over the wall as he and Endon once had done.
Jarred screwed up the paper in disgust and threw it to the ground. He looked around again at the closed gates, the empty road. Still there was no movement, no sign. There was nothing but the wooden arrow lying in the dust and the little ball of paper rolling slowly away from him, driven by the breeze. He stared at it, and the foolish little rhyme came back to him.