“Agreed.” The companions said the word together, without flinching.
The Guardian again rubbed his hands. “I wish you good night, then,” he smiled. “Explore as you wish. The first clue is in this room, as I told you. In one way it is hidden. In another, it is as plain as the nose on your face.”
He walked to the door, but before going on he turned once more. “A word of advice. You have one chance to open the door, and one chance only. Do not waste your chance on a guess.”
He smiled thinly. “I will see you in the morning. To claim my victory.”
With that, he swept from the room, with his creatures following him. But as soon as he was out of their sight, his triumphant, cackling laughter began. It echoed around the glass walls of his palace like a hundred voices, fading slowly into the distance, as he went to his rest.
For an hour the companions searched the room, seeking anything, anything at all, that would give them a clue to the Guardian’s name.
The books on the shelves were of no use. They crumbled to dust as Barda pulled them from their places. The papers in the drawers of the cabinets were yellowed and brittle. They, too, cracked and crumbled at a touch. The pictures revealed no clue. There was nothing behind the curtains but glass and mist.
“He thinks he has everything — but he has nothing!” exclaimed Jasmine. “His wonderful food is ashes. His beautiful books are dust. His companions are disgusting, drooling beasts. His kingdom is a place of misery. How can he be so blind?”
“It is we who are blind,” Barda said through gritted teeth, his eyes on the slowly dripping candle. “He said there was a clue in this room, and I am sure he was telling the truth. But what clue? Where?”
“He said there was a clue hidden in this room!” Lief buried his face in his hands, trying to concentrate. “We have looked under everything, behind everything, inside everything. So that means it is hidden in another way.”
“Hidden by magic!” Jasmine looked around the room in desperation. “And that would make sense of the other thing he said — that in one way it was hidden, and in another it was as plain as the nose on your face.”
“The nose on your face! Why, of course!” thundered Barda, leaping to his feet. As his companions watched, astonished, he strode across the room and looked into the mirror. For a moment the others saw his face, strangely softened and youthful, reflected in the glass. Then the image disappeared and words appeared, shining white in the flickering light of the candle.
“But it makes no sense!” cried Jasmine in dismay. “No sense at all!”
“It does,” said Barda. “I have seen things like it before. It is a puzzle.”
“The rhyme tells us how many letters are in the Guardian’s name,” said Lief slowly. “It tells us how to find out what the letters are. But it is more difficult by far than any puzzle I have ever solved.”
He gripped the Belt of Deltora, wishing with all his heart that the topaz was at its full strength. Often before it had cleared and sharpened his mind. But its power increased as the moon grew full, and lessened as the moon waned. Tonight there was no moon at all.
If he and his companions were to solve this puzzle, they would have to solve it alone.
After copying the words from the mirror onto a scrap of paper that Jasmine found among her treasures, the companions sat and talked.
“The first line means simply that the name is to be found from clues within the palace,” Lief said. “Agreed?”
“Even I can see that!” exclaimed Jasmine, as Barda nodded. “But what of all the rest?”
“The next line means that the first letter of the name we seek is the same as the first letter of Pride’s great sin.”
“Well, that appears simple, too,” said Barda. “The first letter of Pride is P.”
“But that is hardly a puzzle at all!” Jasmine objected. “Surely it cannot be so easy.”
“It is not,” Lief said gloomily. “Do you not see, Barda? ‘Pride’ has a capital letter. It is a name. The name of one of the Guardian’s pets.”
“And the Guardian told us that none of his creatures had the fault for which it was named,” groaned Jasmine. “Pride’s sin must be envy, greed, or hatred. Ah — I begin to see now how this puzzle works. The first letter of the Guardian’s name must be E, G, or H.”
“But how are we to guess which one?” Barda exploded. “I do not even remember which creature was which! The Guardian is not playing fair, for all he said!”
“I am sure he is,” said Lief, tapping the pencil on the paper. “The triumph he hopes to enjoy would be meaningless otherwise. Somewhere in the palace there must be another clue.”
“Then we had better find it! Quickly!” exclaimed Jasmine, jumping up with a nervous glance at the candle. It was burning down alarmingly fast.
Her fear was catching. Lief felt his heart begin to pound. He forced himself to be still, and put his hand on the Belt of Deltora. His fingers found the amethyst, and as they pressed against it, his heart slowed and a soothing calm settled over him. He took a deep breath.
“We must not panic and begin rushing around without a plan,” he said quietly. “Panic will stop us from thinking clearly. It is our enemy.”
“Time is our enemy also, Lief,” Barda reminded him sharply. “We have been at this task hours already, and we are no further ahead.”
“But we are,” said Lief. “We know that the Guardian’s name has five letters, because the rhyme speaks of ‘my first,’ ‘my second,’ ‘my third,’ ‘my fourth,’ and ‘my last.’ We know that the first letter is E, G, or H. And we know that the second and the last letters are both the same.”
“How do we know that?” Jasmine was fidgeting, anxious to be away.
“The rhyme tells us so.” Lief read the words aloud.
My second and my last begin
The sum of errors in the twin.
As Jasmine nodded anxiously, Lief glanced over the rest of the rhyme, and suddenly saw something else.
“And I believe — I believe I know what the fourth letter is!” he exclaimed. Again, he read aloud.
My fourth, the sum of happiness
For those who try my name to guess.
“How much happiness has come to those who have tried to guess the Guardian’s name?” he asked.
“None, from what we hear,” said Barda grimly.
“Exactly. And because the word ‘sum’ is used, I would guess that the Guardian is playing a little trick here. The fourth letter is in fact a number. Zero. Which when written down is the same as O.”
As the others stared, he began scribbling under the rhyme. When he had finished, he turned the paper so they could see what he had done.
“There,” Lief said. “Now we can begin filling in the blanks.”
He stood up, wishing that he felt as confident as his words had sounded. “We will search the palace room by room,” he said. “Wherever we go, we will look for things that match the rhyme.”
Together they left the study and began the search. One room, then another, and another, yielded no clue, though they looked carefully at every piece of furniture, every rug, every ornament.
The palace was vast. They moved on and on, the lilting music following them, trying to keep calm and alert. For a while there were small sounds of movement other than their own — echoing, faraway sounds as of soft footsteps, of doors opening and closing. But at last the music stopped, and the other sounds stopped also.
Now they worked in complete silence. It was hard not to hurry. Hard not to begin rushing, skimping the search. In all their minds was a picture of the candle, dripping, dripping, relentlessly burning away.