Awkwardly he wiped his pipe on his sleeve and held it out to Barda. ‘Perhaps you would play for us now?’ he asked. ‘I long to hear above-worlder music.’
Barda laughed. ‘It is very like your own. But, I am sorry, I cannot play for you—and neither can my companions. None of us is musical.’
‘What?’
Tirral’s high-pitched exclamation cut startlingly through the music and laughter. Silence fell.
‘Are you saying,’ cried Tirral, ‘that you cannot even play a pipe?’
‘We cannot play music as you do,’ Lief agreed, with sinking heart. ‘But it is the magic of the Pirran Pipe that counts, not the skill of the player. A single note will be enough to stay the Shadow Lord’s hand.’
‘You cannot know that!’ Tirral cried. ‘In ancient times the Pipe was only played by Pirra’s finest musicians!’
Her face glowing with renewed hope, she appealed to the silent people around her. ‘Our beliefs do not require us to give or lend to a cousin if the cause is pointless, Kerons! Is that not so?’
Heads nodded reluctantly.
‘Well, then!’ Tirral cried. ‘What could be more pointless than to give the Pirran Pipe to those who cannot even play it?’ She gazed around triumphantly.
‘It does not matter!’
Everyone jumped as the high, nervous voice broke the silence. Everyone stared as Emlis stepped forward, blushing to the roots of his golden hair.
‘It—it does not matter if our cousins cannot play the Pipe,’ Emlis stammered, meeting his mother’s angry stare defiantly. ‘It does not matter because—because I can play very well. And I am going with them!’
Much argument followed, but there was no point at all in Tirral’s raging, or the companions protesting. For the people of Keras, Emlis’s announcement had removed the last objection to the Pirran Pipe’s being taken to the Shadowlands.
‘So you have won, and I have lost,’ Tirral said bitterly, as she returned the companions’ weapons to them. ‘I have lost not only the Pirran Pipe, but my son. You have won the right to destroy them both, as well as yourselves. I hope your victory brings you joy.’
Her face was ashen. The moths around her head were barely moving.
‘Tirral—’ Lief began. But already the Piper was turning and walking rapidly away.
‘It is not our fault that her son is coming with us,’ hissed Jasmine. ‘It is all her own work! If she had let us go in peace Emlis would never have thought of the idea.’
‘Yes he would,’ Barda said shrewdly. ‘That young man is as anxious as we are to escape this island. I think he saw his chance and seized it with both hands.’
‘But he does not realise what he is doing!’ muttered Lief.
‘No,’ growled Barda. ‘And do we?’
Within hours, two long boats rowed by silent, craggy-faced leech-gatherers were setting out from the north side of the island. Lief, Jasmine, Barda and Emlis sat in the stern of one boat. In the other were the frozen-faced Tirral and two of her closest advisors.
Green water stretched ahead, gradually darkening to grey. The horizon was shrouded in darkness.
Kree clucked uneasily.
‘The Grey Zone,’ Jasmine said, staring at the ominous horizon.
Emlis nodded. Fear mingled with excitement on his thin face, which was almost covered by the hood of the thick, dull green leech-gatherer’s cloak he wore.
‘It is not too late to change your mind, Emlis,’ muttered Barda, who was sitting beside him. ‘This is not one of Doran’s tales. It is real, and deadly.’
‘I cannot change my mind now,’ said Emlis. ‘You need me. They will not let you take the Pipe without me.’
‘Your skin is not fit for the world above, Emlis,’ whispered Jasmine, leaning forward. ‘The sun will burn you. The light will blind you.’
Emlis shook his head stubbornly. ‘The cloak will protect me from the sun. And I am not the first Pirran to leave the caverns. Doran told of seven who did so, in the time of Alyss and Rosnan.’
‘They all died, Emlis,’ said Barda brutally. ‘They died, and never saw their homes again.’
‘They were killed by above-worlders, not by the sun,’ Emlis said, his voice trembling. ‘And in any case, they were Plumes, and the Plumes are as foolhardy and stupid as the Aurons are wicked.’
‘Plumes and Aurons are not stupid and wicked!’ cried Jasmine. ‘They are your own people! Your kinsfolk! Far more closely related to you than we are.’
The leech-gatherers who were paddling their boat turned and frowned ferociously. One made a low sound in his throat. The other bared his teeth unpleasantly. Jasmine pressed her lips together and returned their stares without flinching until at last they turned to face the front and began paddling once more.
Emlis hunched his bony shoulders. ‘I beg you, do not argue with me any more,’ he mumbled. ‘This is my one chance to fulfil the dearest wish of my life. To see a world that is not my own. If I die in the attempt, that is surely my choice.’
Barda ran his hands through his tousled hair in despair. ‘Three of them,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Three young hot-heads. By the heavens, were not two bad enough?’
Gradually the emerald light failed and within an hour the fleet was paddling through a grim realm of grey. They were far beyond the scope of Doran’s map now. Beyond Deltora’s border.
When they looked up, all they saw was swirling darkness. They knew that far above them towered the treacherous peaks that clustered behind Dread Mountain—iron-hard rock filled with dank, secret caves where hideous beasts like the giant toad Gellick thrived.
The boat was moving more slowly, and the rugged faces of the leech-gatherers had become strained and watchful.
Ahead loomed an ink-black shadow. The cavern beneath the Shadowlands.
‘When are they going to leave us?’ Jasmine murmured.
‘We must go to the edge of the Shadow,’ one of the leech-gatherers said unexpectedly, without turning around. ‘So the Piper says. And there we stop, praise be to Keras, and send you up, to the evil place above.’
‘Send us up?’ Lief blinked, confused. He had imagined that the Kerons were going to show them a secret way to the surface. But this sounded like…
‘The magic of seven may not be needed for the task,’ said the leech-gatherer, ‘but we thought it best to be on the safe side. Who knows how deep the rock is, up above. For all your strange ideas, we would not want you caught mid-ways, would we now?’
His companion chuckled grimly.
Lief felt Jasmine shudder, and knew that she had been gripped, as he had, by a nightmarish vision of being trapped in the midst of solid rock.
‘Do not fear,’ said Emlis. ‘Our ancestors sent Doran to the surface without harm many times.’
‘That was long ago,’ muttered Barda, who was looking rather sick. ‘And I presume Doran was not sent into the Shadowlands.’
‘Oh, no!’ Emlis agreed. ‘Doran always left the caverns in a place to the west of Keras. He said that in the land above, just at that spot, there was a great waterway, and boats to help him make the journey home.’
‘The River Tor!’ Lief exclaimed. ‘So that was how Doran did it so secretly. He would reappear in the brush below Dread Mountain. Then he would walk down to the river and wait for a boat. There would not have been so many pirates then.’
‘Or Ols,’ said Jasmine. Kree squawked nervously on her shoulder, but she did not turn to him. Her eyes were fixed on the mass of darkness looming before them.
The Shadowlands. Soon, very soon, she would be able to begin the search for Faith, her lost sister. And Lief and Barda would be beside her.