Just then there was the sound of banging from outside the cavern. Three slow taps, followed by three quick ones. Fleetingly, Jinks looked disappointed. Then he turned and scurried out, with Petronne and Thalgus close behind him.
“What is the password?” they heard him call.
“Weapon!” came the reply. The voice was muffled, but Lief thought he recognized it. Doom had returned.
Glock took no notice whatever. He was still intent on Jasmine.
“I should have been Champion, you little piece of slime!” he snarled. “If we had fought, your dancing, jumping tricks would not have deceived me. I would have crushed you to pulp with one hand tied behind my back!”
Jasmine stared at him in disgust. “Fortunately, your greed ensured that you did not have the chance to try,” she said.
Glock roared, and grabbed at her. She sprang aside, smiling disdainfully as he stumbled, his great paws clawing at empty air.
“That is enough!”
Doom was standing, scowling, in the entrance. His face was seamed with lines of tiredness, his long, tangled black hair and beard were streaked with dust, and the jagged scar showed pale on his deeply tanned skin.
“There is to be no fighting in this place!” he thundered. “Glock, you have been warned before. One more outburst and you will be turned out of the stronghold. Then you will no longer be under our protection when the Grey Guards come for you.”
Glock turned and lumbered off, grumbling and casting evil looks over his shoulder. No one made a sound, but Lief saw a tall woman put her hand over her mouth to hide a smile. The woman was Neridah. She saw Lief watching, and her smile grew broader and more teasing. He looked away, his face growing hot as he remembered the shame she had caused him in the Rithmere arena.
Doom’s angry eyes were now fixed on Jasmine. “And you,” he added coldly, “will guard your sharp tongue, if you know what is good for you.”
In the silence that followed he turned abruptly and went to the mattress where Dain was resting. By now, the boy had managed to sit up.
“So,” Doom said. “You have returned at last, Dain. You were expected days ago. Where have you been?”
Dain flushed deep red. “I saw a pair of Ols, Doom,” he mumbled. “Grade One only. I followed them —”
“Alone!” Doom snapped. “You followed them alone. You went out of your way, disobeying orders, failing to arrive here when expected.”
Dain hung his head. But Doom had not finished. “And I have been told” — he glanced at Jinks, who tried and failed to look innocent — “I have been told that you chose to endanger all our lives by telling these untested strangers the secret of the password.”
There was an angry murmuring in the cavern.
Finally Dain found his tongue. “Indeed — indeed I did not tell them, Doom,” he said.
“Then how did they gain entry?” Doom’s voice was icy. “You, I gather, did not even see today’s note. Yet they were able to give the word.”
“It was not difficult to work out,” Lief said, stepping forward hastily. “The note said, ‘WHEN ENEMIES AT PASS, ORDERS NORMAL.’ The first letters of those words spell the password — ‘WEAPON.’”
As Doom glared at him, he shrugged and threw caution to the winds. He was not going to be bullied like Dain. “I had a clue to the code, of course,” he said loudly. “I had already seen the label on Dain’s jar of honey. ‘Quality Brand.’ There, too, initials are used to disguise the truth. Why are you afraid for it to be known that you use Queen Bee honey?”
Another loud murmur arose from the crowd. Doom barked an order and immediately Lief, Barda, and Jasmine were seized from behind by several pairs of strong hands. They struggled, but it was no use.
“What are you doing?” Lief spluttered. “I meant no harm by my question! I was simply interested.”
“Then you would have done better to hold your tongue,” said Doom, his eyes hard as stones. “You have stumbled on a secret we are sworn to protect. It is forbidden to trade with the Resistance. And Queen Bee honey is even more rare and valuable than Queen Bee cider. It has amazing healing powers. The lady risks much by supplying it to us. She risks not only her own life, but the lives of her sons.”
Now it was Lief’s turn to stare. The idea of the wild old woman they had met after their escape from the Plain of the Rats being a mother seemed very strange.
“It is nothing to us if Queen Bee supplies you with honey,” growled Barda. “Who would we tell?”
“Your Master, perhaps,” called Jinks, his small eyes gleaming with excitement. “Is that why you were allowed to escape from the palace, Brave Guard Barda? Had you sold yourself to the Shadow Lord even then?”
Barda lunged forward in fury, but the hands that held him jerked him back.
“Be silent, Jinks!” roared Doom. He gazed at Barda thoughtfully for a moment.
“So,” he murmured. “You were a palace guard. Your real name is Barda. And where were you hiding for all those years, Barda — before you began travelling the countryside with your young companions?”
“That is my affair,” said Barda, meeting his eyes squarely. “I choose to keep it to myself. As, I think, you choose to keep to yourself your own whereabouts in those early years, Doom.”
“Your whereabouts — and your real name,” Jasmine muttered.
Doom glanced at her quickly. His mouth tightened. He turned once again to Barda.
“Were you in Tora?” he asked bluntly.
At this, Dain, who had been slumped on the mattress with his head bowed, looked up eagerly.
But Barda looked blank. “Tora?” he repeated. “What is this fascination with Tora, among you? No, I have never been to Tora in my life.”
Doom abruptly turned away. “Take them to the testing room,” he snapped. “I will speak to them again when the three days have passed.”
“Let us go!” Jasmine shouted, as they were dragged to the cavern door. “There is no reason to imprison us! You know that we are not Ols! You know it!”
Doom lifted his chin. “We shall see,” he said.
Locked in the small, brightly lit cave that Doom called “the testing room,” the three companions spent three weary days. A barred window was set into the heavy wooden door, and at all times a face stared through it, watching their every move.
Their possessions were with them. Even their weapons had not been taken from them. Trays of food were pushed under the door, and they had plenty of water. But there was no privacy, no darkness, no peace.
By the third day even Barda was desperate. Jasmine lay curled on a bunk, her hands over her face. Kree sat in a corner of the cell, his wings drooping. Lief paced in an agony of impatience, feeling time tick away.
He cursed the day they had met Dain — then remembered that if it had not been for Dain, he, Barda, and Jasmine would all be dead. He cursed Doom’s suspicion — then remembered his own shock when sweet little Marie had changed to a specter bent on killing.
But had Dain not said that Doom could sense an Ol? If so, then Doom knew full well that Lief, Barda, and Jasmine were what they seemed. Why then, was he keeping them here?
He wants to keep us by him. The three-day test is an excuse — something the others in the cavern will accept and understand. He wants to know what we are up to. He hopes that after this we will tell him.
The idea shone clearly in Lief’s mind. He knew it was the truth.
Well, you are wrong, Doom, or whatever your name may be, he thought grimly. We will never tell you of our cause. And that is because we still do not know whether you are friend, or foe.
They had lost track of time. They did not know whether it was day or night. But it was in fact exactly seventy-two hours and five minutes after they first entered the cavern that they heard a hiss from the window in the door.