Deltora Quest #6: The Maze of the Beast

Wildly, Lief swung to look at the figure now collapsed on the ground. His stomach heaved as he saw the face dissolving, the body collapsing into a writhing mass. The long, crooked hands of the pink-haired lady’s dancing partner pushed out of the whiteness, to be quickly followed by the head of a white water bird and many other eyes and mouths that Lief did not recognize.

“Ol!” he hissed.

“Of course!” Barda’s voice rumbled behind him. “How could you have been deceived?”

Hearing that gloriously familiar, irritable growl, Lief dropped the dagger with a cry of joy and flung his arms around Barda’s shoulders.

“Steady,” said the big man uncomfortably. But he did not pull away.

“When I saw you at the cave entrance, I could not believe it!” Jasmine had bounced over to Barda and was embracing him in her turn. “How did this happen?”

Barda shrugged. “The Ol thought I was dead. But I am not killed so easily. I crawled ashore and took much time to regain strength enough to follow your tracks.”

He shook his head. “One set of tracks puzzled me. But when I reached here, I understood.” He grimaced with distaste at the remains of the Ol, now just a bubbling pool on the cave floor.

“I should have known!” said Lief. “You — I mean, it — spoke of how we had escaped from pirates and an Ol! Yet you had gone over the side, Barda, before the Ol that was the pink-haired woman revealed itself. How could you have known about it?”

“And no wonder it was so quiet and gentle!” Jasmine exclaimed. “It could copy your appearance and voice, and learn about us from what we said. But it did not know how to behave. It had not had time to learn what you were really like!”

Barda raised an eyebrow and Jasmine realized, too late, that her words had not been very flattering. She busied herself picking up the second dagger and tucking it into her boot.

“I may not be particularly quiet and gentle by nature, Jasmine,” said Barda dryly. “But on the other hand, I would not have been persuaded to give up our quest because of one small problem.”

“One small problem?!” Lief exclaimed. “The pirates have the sixth gem, and the Belt! And they are far away!”

“How do you know they are far away?” Barda demanded. “Because an Ol told you so? The pirates could be sheltering in a bay just around the headland at this very moment, for all you know.”

He waved a hand at the hole in the sand. “And if they have found the gem, so much the better. I would prefer to get it from them than face the Beast.”

The sickening vision the opal had given him rose in Lief’s mind. Suddenly he longed for fresh air. He turned and blundered out of the cave …

Straight into the arms of a grinning man whose hooked nose nearly met his chin, whose yellowed teeth were filed to sharp points, and whose savage eyes gleamed with triumph.

There were only two pirates in all, but with a sword pressed against Lief’s throat, Barda and Jasmine had no choice but to surrender. Bound cruelly together, the three were hauled back across the rocks and into a rowing boat, with Kree swooping helplessly above them.

“Did I not tell you I saw movement in the cave, Nak?” chattered the man with the filed teeth. “Was it not worth making a landing?”

“They will make fine sport,” agreed his companion, the huge red-haired woman who had seized Jasmine on the River Queen.

She twisted her fingers in Jasmine’s hair and spitefully wrenched the girl’s head back, so that she could stare down into her face. “You will learn not to kick your betters, fine lady!” she snarled. “We have a special fate reserved for trespassers on our shore. A little pet we want you to meet. Is that not so, Finn?”

The man sniggered agreement. As he took his place in the boat, he unbuttoned his coat. He was wearing the embroidered belt. He noticed Lief’s eyes upon it, and grinned evilly. “Do you miss it?” he jeered. “I am not surprised. It is heavier than it looks — fine quality indeed! But you will not need it where you are going.”

And, still laughing, he bent to the oars.

Once the boat had reached the calmer water beyond the waves, it turned and began to go back the way the companions had come. It reached the place where the Tor joined the sea and moved on, Kree battling the wind overhead, Finn and Nak straining against the current.

At last they drew opposite the blowhole, skirting the sheet of rock with care. And there was the pirate boat, rocking in shallow water, sheltering in an enormous cavern in the headland.

“Do not follow us, Kree!” shrieked Jasmine to the sky. “Wait!”

“If he does, he will wait forever,” sneered Nak.

As the rowing boat slid into the cavern, Lief saw the rest of the pirate crew eating and drinking on a huge ledge above the water. The polypan ran to and fro, carrying dishes, ordered about by everyone. There was something different about it, Lief thought. It looked harried and unhappy, but that was not all. He thought about it for a moment, then noticed something else.

Dain lay in a corner, firmly bound. Another prisoner lay with him — a man in a tight blue coat.

Nak and Finn were greeted with cheers. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine were pushed and jeered at for a time, then thrown down with Dain and the other man.

“Their screams will be music to my ears!” screeched Nak, as she swaggered back to the crowd. “But it will be all the sweeter on a full stomach!”

As soon as she had gone, Lief saw Filli slip from Jasmine’s jacket and scurry to her boot. With all his might the little creature tried to pull the hidden dagger free, but the task was far beyond his strength.

Dain’s exhausted eyes were dark with misery. “I knew that if you were alive, you would come for me,” he breathed. “At first I prayed you would — then I prayed you would not. Now what I feared has come to pass. They have you.”

“What is to be done with us?” whispered Lief.

Dain licked his lips. “I do not know,” he answered. “But they speak of something called the Glus.”

The man in the blue coat moaned in terror.

Dain glanced at him. “This is Milne. They call him a traitor. He tried to kill Nak, when she said he was a fool for bringing me with them.”

Milne, thought Lief. Milne. Nak. Finn. Well, I hoped to meet the owners of those names, and so I have. If we have to die, at least we will be taking one of them with us.

The polypan had been sniffing around them. Now it pushed its face into Lief’s chest and whimpered. Lief tried to push it away. Its smell was horrible. It reminded him of something, but he could not think what.

“Are they still going to give you to the Grey Guards, Dain?” hissed Jasmine.

Dain nodded. “Yes, though there was bitter argument. Milne and the others liked the plan. But Nak and Finn were afraid.”

“Afraid?” Lief looked at Nak and Finn laughing around the fire. “They seem to fear nothing.”

A strange, baffled expression crossed Dain’s face. “They fear Doom,” he whispered. “Finn said that if Doom ever finds out that they have knowingly betrayed the Resistance, their lives will not be worth a handful of ash. Doom will hunt them down one by one, and they will never escape him.”

Cheat me, and you will wish you had died in the Maze.

So that is why the pirates are still here, thought Lief. They are too afraid to run from Doom.

“We leave tonight,” Dain was saying. “Nak and Finn refuse to go. They will stay here with the booty. The rest will sail with me up the river to meet the Guards near Dread Mountain.”

The polypan was pawing at Lief again. “What ails you?” he said angrily, trying to squirm away from it. “What do you want from me?”

Then, suddenly, he knew.