Isle of the Dead

20 – Old Friends

For a moment there was utter stillness. Then there was a creaking groan, and slowly the hulk of The Lady Luck tilted and sank beneath the surface of the sea. Great bubbles rose as it slipped into the depths, and as it disappeared Lief saw that the prow was empty. The figurehead had gone.

He heard a strange mixture of sounds behind him—a whispering sound like sand falling, the snorting of horses, the clattering of hoofs and Jasmine’s loud squeal of joy.

And when he turned to look, he saw that the wagon had fallen into dust, and three horses stood pawing the ground among Laughing Jack’s possessions, still scarcely able to believe they were free.

Only one horse, the smallest, was still black. The second was a powerful chestnut. The last was golden, with a creamy white mane and tail. She pawed the ground and whinnied to Lief delightedly.

‘Honey!’ he breathed, holding out his hand to her in disbelief. ‘Bella! Swift! How…?’

Then he shook his head. He knew that he would never find out exactly how Laughing Jack had come to own the horses the companions had last seen at the edge of the Forests of Silence. Honey, Bella and Swift could not tell them, and the guards who had been in charge of them were all dead.

Perhaps Laughing Jack had found the horses straying. More likely a villager had caught them, and had later been forced to give them to the moneylender in payment of a debt.

It did not really matter. All that mattered was that their suffering at Laughing Jack’s hands was over.

He turned to Jasmine, who was hugging Swift, her face a picture of delight. Now he knew why she had not been able to forget Laughing Jack’s horses.

‘You knew the horses were ours, Jasmine!’ he said. ‘You have known ever since we saw Laughing Jack’s wagon at The Funnel, on the way to Shadowgate!’

‘And you did not tell us!’ Barda exclaimed. He was cutting Ava’s bonds and helping her to her feet, while Bella rubbed his shoulder with her velvety nose.

Jasmine shrugged. ‘I saw no point in making you as miserable as I was myself,’ she said. ‘We could do nothing to save the horses then.’

She shook her head, her eyes darkening as she remembered.

‘But I wanted to tell you. It would have been bad enough leaving any beast in slavery to Laughing Jack. But it was agony leaving our own three horses—’

Three horses…

Lief looked around, startled. ‘But there were four!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where is the last?’

‘Here,’ said a gruff voice from behind the horses.

And then, astounded, the companions saw, climbing unsteadily to his feet, a big man with a rough red beard and eyes as blue as the sea.

In that moment they understood how Laughing Jack had spent the largest part of the sorcerer’s powers given to him by his evil master. He had chosen to use it for spite—revenging himself on the one man who had defied his will.

For they all recognised the man standing, swaying, before them. He was Red Han, the lost keeper of the Bone Point Light.

Much later, when all the stories had been told, Bella, Honey and Swift had been fed and stabled in the boatshed, and Red Han and Ava had fallen gratefully to sleep in Ava’s cottage, Lief, Barda and Jasmine sat with the amethyst dragon, looking out to sea. The baby diamond dragon was beside them, gobbling fresh fish for the first time in its life.

The sun was setting as Lief opened Doran’s silver flask.

The flask was filled to the brim with sand. And hidden within the sand, as Lief had suspected, was a rolled scrap of parchment—the fourth and last part of Doran’s map.

Lief shook his head, dumbfounded. He had been certain that the Sister of the South would be in some wild, deserted place. But it was not so. It was in the city of Del, where their quest had begun!

‘No wonder poor Josef is half mad with worry,’ Jasmine murmured. ‘If he has guessed that the fourth Sister is in Del—’

‘We cannot be sure that he has,’ Barda broke in. ‘He may only have guessed that the Isle of the Dead was our third goal. According to Lief, Josef knows of the Blood Lilies and Fleshbanes on the red island. Surely that would be worry enough.’

‘Josef knows where the Sister of the South is,’ Lief said flatly. ‘He has worked it out. As we could have done ourselves.’

He took out the other three parts of the map and fitted them together on the rock.

‘You see?’ he said, pointing at each of the four Sister signs in turn. ‘The Sister of the East was hidden at Dragon’s Nest, Deltora’s most eastern point. The Sister of the North was at Shadowgate, Deltora’s most northern point. The Sister of the West was on the Isle of the Dead, our most western point…’

‘And the Sister of the South is in Del, Deltora’s most southern point,’ Barda finished heavily. ‘Yes, I see. The Enemy was taking no chances. He circled the land with evil.’

They sat for a moment in silence. The sky flamed as the sun slipped below the horizon.

Barda felt in his pocket and pulled out the little puzzle box. ‘At least I can now look at the sea without the fear of seeing The Lady Luck haunting us,’ he said.

‘I do not think it ever was haunting us,’ Lief replied. ‘It was haunting Laughing Jack. And now it has him, forever.’

He winced at the memory of those rotting hands pulling Laughing Jack below. He took care not to look at Jasmine.

‘I do not regret what I did,’ she said defiantly. ‘It was his choice to pick up the gold and claim it for himself. All I did was remember what you had told me of his oath, and make sure he saw the money bag.’

‘And that was very fortunate,’ said Barda, playing idly with the box. ‘If that villain had escaped, he would have taken not only our horses with him, but Red Han as well. Now the Bone Point Light can shine again. And Verity is released from the curse. She can rest in peace.’

‘As can Dragonfriend,’ the amethyst dragon murmured, rousing itself. ‘Yes. We have done well. It is a good ending.’

‘Not quite an ending for us, I fear,’ Lief said shortly. ‘We have more to do.’

He glanced down at the four parts of the map lying on the rock before him. In the dimness, the Sister sign beside the city of Del seemed to writhe like a snake.

Suddenly he was tired to his bones. His exhausted brain teemed with questions for which he had no answers.

What if we fail at this, the last hurdle? he thought. What if we have saved all the rest of the kingdom, but we cannot save our home? How could it be that the fourth Sister is in Del? Where in heaven’s name can it be hidden? How can we even begin to find it? And why do I feel, like Josef, that there is something I am not seeing? Some further mystery…

Barda gave a grunt of surprise and held out the puzzle box. A third little rod was sticking out of the box’s carved side.

‘I have no idea what I did to make that happen!’ Barda complained, tugging at the box’s lid. ‘And look at that! Three locks undone, and still it will not open. Curse the thing! I should throw it into the sea!’

‘If you did, you would be sorry,’ the dragon said shrewdly. ‘You would never know what was inside.’

Barda snorted. But Lief noticed that he pushed the box safely back into his pocket.

Tomorrow he will try again, Lief thought. Whatever he says, he will keep trying until all the locks are open, and all the secrets are revealed. But for now, he will put the problem out of his mind.

It came to him that he should do the same. Slowly he picked up the four map fragments and put them away.

‘Very good,’ Veritas said approvingly.

Lief looked up in surprise.

‘There is a time to plan, a time to act, and a time to rest,’ the dragon said. ‘It is wise to know which is which.’

Its eyes gleamed like dull purple stars in the gloom. Slowly Lief felt his tense muscles relax.

He felt the baby diamond dragon creep close to him, and curl itself to sleep as near to the Belt as it could.

Tonight is the time to rest, he thought. Tomorrow is the time to plan. After that—we will go to Del. And there, where this all began, it will end.

Then he thought no more, but only sat watching the empty sea, while the quiet night fell.