Deltora Quest #7: The Valley of the Lost (7 page)

A
s soon as they were alone, Jasmine ran to the glass door and stared through it once more. “There is another door in there!” she whispered. “A door that leads to the outside. See? In the corner.”

“And so? What is your plan?” asked Barda warily.

Jasmine’s eyes were sparkling fiercely. “It is simple. We will tell the Guardian that we will play his stupid game. Then, when he is asleep, we will find a way of breaking into this room. We can steal the gem, leave by the other door, and be out of this valley before he wakes.”

“No!” Lief exclaimed impulsively.

Jasmine glanced at him in annoyance. “Are you afraid?” she demanded. “Afraid of his magic?”

Lief hesitated. It was not quite that. It was something else. That niggling memory at the corner of his mind. A warning. Something about the diamond …

“We would be foolish not to be afraid, Jasmine,” said Barda. “The man’s powers are great, and he is plainly mad. Whoever he once was, the Shadow Lord has possessed him body and soul.”

He was bending over the low table, sorting quickly through the books that lay there. Lief realized that Barda, practical as ever, was checking to see if the Guardian’s name, or part of it, was scribbled in the front of one of the volumes. He moved to help him.

“You will never find out his name that way!” Jasmine hissed furiously. “If it were that simple those poor souls outside the windows would have —”

Lief’s gasp of surprise interrupted her. At the bottom of one of the piles of books he had seen something familiar. A small, faded blue volume. He snatched it up and opened it.

As he had half-hoped, half-feared, it was
The Belt of Deltora.
The book he had so often studied, at home in Del. The book he had last seen in the dungeon where his father lay chained and helpless.

And now it was here. Here, in the Valley of the Lost! His heart pounding, he held up the book for Barda and Jasmine to see. Barda frowned.

“That the Guardian has a copy of this book means nothing,” he said. “For surely there were many copies made, not just one. They must lie in many forgotten places, all over the kingdom.”

“The Guardian is a servant of the Shadow Lord — that much is certain, from what he told us,” argued Lief.
“And if he has been studying this book, it is because the Shadow Lord has told him to do so. The Guardian pretends to think that we are ordinary strangers, seeking the diamond out of simple greed. But perhaps he has known all along that we are not.”

“Then why bother with all this talk of a game?” Jasmine muttered. “He could kill us whenever he chose!”

Lief shuddered. “Perhaps he is just entertaining himself. Playing with us, as a cat plays with a mouse.”

“Perhaps,” said Barda. “But perhaps not. He did not know
when
we would come. And if he has been warned of a boy, a man, and a girl with a black bird, he may not realize that we are the ones. Kree is not with us, Jasmine is dressed as a boy, and we came here with Neridah.”

“At least, then, she was of some use,” Jasmine sniffed.

Lief was frantically flicking through the little book. On every page were well-remembered words and phrases, but he was looking for just one thing. The passage about the powers of the diamond.

At last, he found it.

†
The diamond is the symbol of innocence, purity, and strength. Diamonds gained nobly, and with a pure heart, are a powerful force for good. They give courage and strength, protect from pestilence, and help the cause of true love. But take heed of this warning: Diamonds gained by treachery or violence, or desired out of envy or greed,
are ill omens, and bring bad fortune. Great evil comes upon those who gain them without honor.

“This — this is what I was trying to remember,” said Lief rapidly, showing the passage to his companions. “
This
is why we cannot steal the diamond!”

His friends looked at the book, then at one another. “This warning is not for us!” Jasmine protested. “Why, we do not want the gem out of greed or envy. We would be stealing it for a good reason. We would be rescuing it from the hands of evil and restoring it to its rightful place!”

Lief shook his head. “The words are clear,” he insisted. “The diamond must be gained without force or trickery. Otherwise it will bring us nothing but ill — as it has brought the Guardian!”

“And so …?” muttered Barda.

Lief sighed, closing the book and pushing it back into its place on the table. “The Guardian must give it to us freely. And there is only one way we can make him do that. His pride is his weakness, and this game of his is important to that pride. I believe if we can win it, he will be forced to —”

At that moment, they heard the sound of footsteps. The Guardian was returning. He swept into the room, his pets lumbering behind him.

“Well?” he demanded. “Have you made your decision?”

Lief and Barda looked quickly at Jasmine. She paused, then grimaced and gave a slight nod. Barda stepped forward.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “We will play.”

The monsters whined and pulled at their leads in excitement. The Guardian’s eyes burned.

“Excellent!” he hissed. He pointed at a tall, unlit candle that stood on the table below the mirror. A flickering yellow flame appeared.

“The life of this candle will be the time you have to open the door into the casket room,” he said. “If the door remains unopened when the candle dies, you will admit defeat and become mine. Agreed?”

“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.

A
fter 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.

Finally they came to a room which, like the Guardian’s study, was screened by curtains and sealed by a closed wooden door. Soft light glowed behind the door’s small window of patterned, colored glass.

Gently Lief turned the knob and looked in. Despite the candle that flickered on a stand beside the door, the room was dim. It took a moment for him to make out the huge pile of soft cushions in one corner.

The Guardian was lying there, asleep. But he was not alone. His four pets shared his bed, their fleshy leads tangling around them like pale snakes. And the creatures were awake. They turned their terrible heads to the door. Their teeth gleamed as they growled, long and low.

Hastily, Lief jerked backwards and closed the door again.

“We cannot go in there,” he whispered. “It is his bedroom. And the creatures are with him.”

“We will surely have to face them in the end,” Barda whispered back. “How else will we have any hope of finding out what Pride’s fault is?”

They stood, undecided, staring at the closed door. Then Jasmine’s face grew puzzled. She pointed to the colored glass window. “There is something strange about this,” she murmured. “I have just noticed it. Look!”

“It is certainly odd. There is a diamond or a star in every square except the last,” said Barda, peering at the glass.

“Yes!” Jasmine snatched the paper from Lief’s hands and read out two of the lines from the rhyme:

My third begins a sparkle bright —

The treasure pure? The point of light?

She looked up eagerly, to see if they understood. “Diamonds and stars are both bright sparkles,” she said. “The rhyme is asking us which one of them should go in the last square. A diamond, which is a treasure. Or a star, which is a point of light.”

“So the third letter of the Guardian’s name is the beginning letter of one of those two. It is D, or S.” Lief took the paper from Jasmine and made a note on his diagram, gnawing at his lip, fighting down his excitement.

They stared at the panes of colored glass till the pattern blurred in front of their eyes, but with no result.

“There is not any sense to it!” growled Barda at last. “There are sixteen squares in all. But they seem to be arranged simply according to someone’s fancy.”

Lief agreed. And Jasmine, now that her excitement had died, was growing more and more uneasy.

“Perhaps the mystery is connected with sixteen,” Barda muttered, refusing to be beaten. “Sixteen is a useful number, for it divides easily into smaller, equal parts.
The platoons at the palace numbered sixteen. Often, when we were marching in formation on the parade ground, we would begin together, then split into eights, then fours, then …”

His voice trailed off. His jaw had dropped. He was staring fixedly at the window. “Look!” he said huskily.

His blunt finger drew a cross through the center of the window, dividing it into four equal parts.

“The whole makes no sense,” he said. “But if instead of seeing it as one large square made of sixteen smaller squares, we see four squares, each containing four smaller squares, what happens then?”

Lief looked, and it was as if he was seeing the window with new eyes. Now it was made up of four blocks. Two on the top, two on the bottom.

In the first block, there were three stars and one diamond. In the block next to that, there were two stars and two diamonds. In the third block, the one directly below the first, there was one star and three diamonds. And in the fourth block, the one that contained the blank square …

“One diamond is added each time,” hissed Barda, his eyes alive with relief, “and one star taken away. So the last square must contain
no
stars, and —
four diamonds
!”

“Yes!” Lief could hardly believe how simple it was. But it had not seemed simple until Barda worked it out.
And all because he remembered his days as a palace guard, thought Lief, writing a D above the third dash on his paper.

Barda watched with satisfaction. “Two letters filled in!” he said. “Now — shall we face the creatures?”