by Emily Rodda
The great cavern was revealed in all its splendour. Rainbow light radiated from the gem-studded walls, colouring the twining wraiths, playing on the face of the being seated on a golden throne, gripping a tall, black Staff.
He looked no older than he had looked when Britta had last seen him on the deck of the Star of Deltora, over eight years ago. But he was no longer a man like other men. The pale skin that covered his wasted frame glowed faintly blue, as if he were a creature of the deep, and his eyes were deep black pools that did not reflect the light. The rich fabric of his scarlet robe flowed in liquid folds from his shoulders and pooled like blood around his feet.
Britta stared at the mighty King of Tier and saw a shrivelled soul in a crimson shroud. There was a great thundering in her ears. She looked at the hand that held the Staff and saw the flesh twitch beneath the glimmering skin as the Staff leaned very slightly towards her. Words that she had seen carved in the death chamber of the pirate Bar-Enoch burned in her mind.
BY THE MAGIC OF THE TURTLE
MAN THE STAFF FIRST CAME TO ME.
IT KNOWS MY FLESH. IT KNOWS MY NAME.
IT CLEAVES TO ME ALONE.
The straining fingers tightened on the Staff. A red spark flickered in the depths of the dead eyes. The right hand rose, and beckoned. Britta forced herself to move, forced her trembling legs to carry her step by step to the golden throne.
‘Father,’ she said, and the wraiths twined around her sadly, lovingly, as she bent to kiss the offered cheek that was as smooth and cold as a gravestone.
‘Go now,’ the King said, turning his head away. ‘And tell your friends to take their dead with them.’
9 - The Path
Britta did not remember leaving the cavern. She came to herself stumbling back along the forest path, supported by Healer Kay, with Captain Hara on her other side, Mab a dead weight in his arms.
The wraiths had not followed. Perhaps they had been ordered to stay where they were. Or perhaps they had chosen to remain with the Staff and to twine about the King, praising his sacrifice.
A feeling of desolation, loss and waste settled over Britta like a heavy cloak. Her heart felt as if it had been turned to stone.
You must forget whose daughter you are. You must forget what has passed between us this day. You must put me out of your mind, and never speak my name again to any living soul...
Jewel, Sky and Vashti were hurrying along together a little way ahead. Now and again they disappeared from view as the path curved. Britta wondered if they were talking about her—talking of the shameful secret she had kept from them. Vashti’s horror and spite she could easily imagine, but what of Jewel and Sky? She had saved them by the bargain she had struck, but they would never know what it had cost her.
A soft moan escaped Britta’s lips. Healer Kay glanced at her quickly then looked away, her face taut with anger.
‘How could you do it?’ Kay muttered. ‘It was wicked—monstrous! Do not pretend you did not know it!’
Britta did not even try to reply. Then Hara spoke, and with a shock she realised that Kay had not been talking to her at all, but to him!
‘I am past pretending, Kay,’ Hara growled, brushing aside a trailing orchid that dangled over the path. ‘Nothing matters now. Of course I knew who the girl was! Why do you think I ignored the Keeper’s warning in Maris? Because I was sure he was sensing Britta’s bond with Larsett and the Staff! We kept the facts from you because Mab thought you’d react just as you have done. She knew you wouldn’t see reason, and she needed you.’
‘Reason!’ hissed Kay. ‘Blind selfishness, you mean! To search for the Isle of Tier was one thing— though frankly I never thought we would find it. But to take Britta from her home, to deceive her so cruelly, to put her in such appalling danger—’
‘Mab said that Larsett loved the girl,’ Hara said sullenly. ‘She was sure he would not keep her with him unless she wished it.’
‘Mab was sure of many things about Larsett,’ snapped Kay, glancing down at the ugly burn on the old trader’s temple. ‘Too many.’ And suddenly tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Britta looked down. She stared blankly at the flounce of her red skirt, swinging softly against her boot tops as she walked. In slow wonder she remembered how happy she had been when she put the skirt on for the first time. Only a few days had passed since she stood admiring her reflection in the mirror of that dressmaker’s shop in Illica. It seemed years.
‘This is no time to despair, Kay,’ she heard Hara mutter. ‘We cannot be far from the shore now. If Larsett keeps his word and luck is with us, we—’
His voice broke off in a choking cry. At the same moment, Kay yelled in alarm. Britta’s head jerked up. She looked round, and thrilled with horror.
Hara was staggering backwards, clawing at his neck, with Mab still clutched awkwardly in one arm. Something was bobbing between his fingers—a hideous, flabby creature as big as his hand, with a gaping, speckled throat ...
Not a creature—an orchid! The cloying smell of it gusted into Britta’s face, turning her stomach, as she sprang to Hara’s aid, shouting for Jewel and Sky.
Bruised petals spilled onto Hara’s chest, onto Mab’s body, onto the ground. Hara had torn the flower apart, but he could not break the long stem, tough as rope, that had stretched from an overhanging branch to wind tightly around his neck. He had managed to slide two fingers under the stem and was straining it away from his throat, just enough to give him a little air. But he was weakening. His knees were sagging. His breath came in shallow, wheezing gasps.
‘We are betrayed!’ cried Kay, frantically hauling at the stem to try to break it. ‘Ah, what will become of us? Take Mab, Britta! Make haste!’
Mab was already slipping from Hara’s grip. It was easy to pull her free. But bone thin as the old woman was, she was still surprisingly heavy. All Britta could do was cushion her fall as they both tumbled backwards onto the ground.
Stunned and winded, Britta sat up, gasping for breath. Her head was spinning, and pinpoints of light danced before her eyes. Mab had rolled out of her arms and was sprawled on the damp earth beside her like a discarded rag doll. A few paces away, Kay was still struggling to help Hara, but Britta could hardly hear the healer’s voice. Her ears were suddenly filled with a strange, liquid, hissing sound that she did not recognise, but which seemed to be all around her.
Something as cold and flabby as a drowned man’s hand brushed her cheek. She screamed and batted it away, her heart pounding wildly.
And there, swinging slowly away from her, was another huge, dangling festoon of orchids. Clumps of flesh-coloured petals wriggled horribly along the rope-like stem. Dark-spotted throats gaped.
The tip of the stem slapped the ground and instantly writhed towards Mab. At the same moment, a great tongue of purple fungus pushed up from the earth of the path and pressed hungrily against the old trader’s neck.
‘Jewel!’ Britta screamed, seizing Mab’s shoulders and struggling to drag her out of danger. ‘Sky! Help!’
No one answered. No feet pounded towards her. All Britta could hear was the gurgling, hissing sound that seemed to be growing louder, louder ...
She twisted her neck to look around her, and what she saw turned her heart to ice. In the few seconds that had passed since she fell, the entire path, except the small patch where she crouched with Mab, had become a thrashing sea of orchids.
A sickening odour rose from the heaving, hissing mass. Every moment more ropey stems snaked out from the forest floor and reached down from overhanging branches. Every moment more quivering tongues of fungus erupted from the quaking earth.
Sky and Vashti were staggering, waist deep, in tangling thongs of vine that were slowly dragging them off the path. Jewel was the only one moving freely. She was fighting furiously, something bright gleaming in her hand as she turned and slashed through a stem that was snaking around Sky’s neck. Somehow Jewel had found a weapon. What—?
And the
n Britta saw what the gleaming object was. It was Jewel’s armband—the gold armband that had so impressed Madam Bell-Slink in Illica. Its razor-sharp edges were slicing through the strangling stems like butter. Jewel was wielding it ferociously, expertly, as if she had been trained to fight with it from her earliest days.
As, of course, she had, Britta realised in dazed wonder. The armband was Jewel’s secret weapon—a weapon disguised as a handsome ornament, never to be used except in a matter of life and death.
Jewel was using it now, to save herself, to save Sky and Vashti, to cleave her way back to Britta, Mab, Hara and Kay. But even Jewel could not fight a whole forest—a whole, hungry island. Sooner or later even her great strength would fail, and then ...
With a thrill of horror, Britta felt something plucking at her sleeve. But when she looked down, she could only see Mab’s fingertips, feebly tugging the bright silk. The old trader’s eyes were open. She was trying to say something. Britta bent till her ear was close to the dry lips.
‘He ... has broken the bargain,’ she heard Mab breathe. ‘You ... are no longer bound. Go back! Only you can stop ...’
The whisper faded. The bony hand fell heavily to the ground.
Her heart swelling till it seemed it would burst, Britta staggered to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a stem bobbing with orchids snaking eagerly towards Mab. With a cry she swung round.
‘Leave me, girl!’ Mab croaked. ‘Do what you must! I order you!’
Britta ran. She heard Kay shouting after her, screaming to her to stop, but she did not look back.
Fate has brought you here ... Fate has brought you here ... The words hammered in her mind as she ran, her eyes fixed on the path ahead, her stomach boiling with the bitterness of grief and betrayal. She ran as she had never run in her life before, dodging the wagging pillars of fungus that jutted from the churned earth, crushing orchids beneath her feet.
Only when she reached the great tree where the path ended, and paused to gasp for breath, did she wonder how she had managed to come so far without being brought down. The trailing orchids that shrouded the tree were rearing, hissing and thrashing like serpents, but most did not reach for her, and those that did recoiled at her touch.
She started violently as something knocked against her leg, then realised that it was only the goozli, twitching violently in her skirt pocket. The little creature wanted to help her, no doubt, but it was safer where it was.
She pressed her hands to her aching chest, trying to calm her ragged breathing, trying not to think of what might be happening to Mab, to Hara, to Kay. She had to be able to speak when she entered the cavern— and speak loudly and clearly too. She would not have much time.
Still the orchids on the tree kept back. Still they did not strike. It seemed that she alone was immune to the attack of the Hungry Isle. She shuddered at the thought that her bond with her father, with the Staff of Tier, might be keeping her safe.
Larsett’s daughter ... child of the Staff...
It was horrible, horrible! She could not bear it! Again a picture of Bar-Enoch’s vain boast swam before her eyes, more completely this time.
BY THE MAGIC OF THE TURTLE
MAN THE STAFF FIRST CAME TO ME.
IT KNOWS MY FLESH. IT KNOWS MY NAME.
IT CLEAVES TO ME ALONE. SHOULD I GROW
WEARY OF THIS LIFE, MY DEATH WILL NOT
DIVIDE US. ANY LIVING SOUL WHO TRIES TO
TAKE IT FROM ME WILL BE SLAIN.
And suddenly, understanding burst into Britta’s mind, burning like flame. For an instant she stood motionless as a wave of heat surged through her body to the very tips of her fingers.
Then she bent and unbuttoned the heaving pocket. The goozli shot out into her hand. With high, bubbling hisses, the orchids shrank away from it.
‘So it is you they fear, goozli,’ Britta said softly. ‘I was not protecting you—you were protecting me. And it was because you were close by that Mab was not killed outright by the Staff—is that not so?’
The little clay figure bowed, and waited.
It came to Britta that now she had a choice. She did not have to enter the cavern and face what waited for her there. Instead, she could run back to the others with the goozli in her hand, and lead them through the forest to the shore. She could trust that the goozli’s magic, the pure, unchanged magic of the turtle man Tier, would be powerful enough to calm the waters of the Hungry Isle, and carry the landing boat across the reef, into the open sea.
Almost, she was tempted. But then she looked at the misty cavern mouth ahead. She thought of the father she had loved so much, lost to her forever. She thought of the king of lies who crouched beyond the mist—the cold, croaking sorcerer who had asked for a kiss and then betrayed her, as he had betrayed so many others who had trusted him.
She curled her fingers around the goozli and held it to her cheek, whispering to it softly. Then she set it down on the ground.
‘Whatever happens to me, do what you can for the others,’ she breathed, barely moving her lips. ‘For my sake, goozli!’
The goozli’s eyes were grave. Sadly it shook its head and touched its brow and its chest. Britta could only hope that it had understood.
She thought she could hear it scuttling close behind her as she crept quickly and quietly to the cavern mouth, but she could not be sure. Agitated whispers were drifting from the starry mist. The wraiths were chanting her name.
Britta, Britta, Britta ...
‘Be still, curse you!’ an angry voice rasped. ‘You must stay here, to comfort me in my grief, until—until it pleases me to let you go. Your senses are deceiving you, I tell you! By now my daughter and her friends are safely at sea. If they were in danger I, the Master of the Staff, would know it!’
White-hot rage took Britta by the throat. Suddenly it was not hard to do what she had to do.
‘Liar!’ she shouted, running blindly into the mist. ‘You are not—’
With a sharp crack, flame shot from the centre of the cavern like a bolt of lightning. The whirling stars vanished. Flung backwards by the blast, Britta fell senseless to the ground. The wraiths howled piteously.
And in the shadows the goozli raised its head, then moved to do what it could.
10 - Fate
The King of Tier sat trembling on his golden throne, wraiths flying about his head like wailing smoke. The shock had left him feeling empty, and feeble as a child. He looked at the body of the girl lying on the cavern floor and a cold, yawning hollow seemed to open in his chest.
He had fully intended to keep his part of the bargain and let the intruders go. Why else had he made Britta swear to forget him? But once he had what he wanted, once the wraiths were content, he had thought again.
Was the Master of the Staff, the King of Tier, to be bound by a common trader’s oath? The very thought had angered him. Had he not said at the beginning that no one escaped the Hungry Isle?
Suddenly it had begun to seem weak and foolish to keep his promise, when he could choose to do otherwise. And as time went by it had seemed to him more and more likely that Britta was thinking the same thing. So he had sent the command for the forest to feed, to kill.
But then Britta had returned to the cavern raging, accusing ... and in panic he had struck her down.
He had killed many times before, but this death was different. Something had ended for him when Britta fell—he could feel it. It was as if he had crossed an invisible line, as if from this point on there would be no turning back.
Yet surely there had never been a chance of turning back. From the moment he saw the Staff of Tier, from the moment he felt its power and knew that he had to possess it at any cost, his fate had been sealed.
The wraiths swooped around him, wild in their mourning, bright as exotic birds in the rainbow light. Their grief had made them daring. The King knew he had to quell them. He roused himself.
‘You are to blame for this!’ he rasped. ‘If you had not angered me, it wou
ld never have happened! Plainly my daughter had changed her mind. She was coming back to me—to be with me always! And because you had distracted me I struck at her blindly, thinking she was a stranger. Cease your wretched howling! Your grief can be nothing to mine! Nothing!’
The wraiths moaned, their eyes dark pits in their gaunt, rainbow-painted faces. Images of Britta had begun flickering among them. Some the King had seen before. Others he had not. He gnawed his lips as the images appeared and vanished, appeared and vanished: Britta behind the counter of a shop in Del. Britta on the deck of the Star of Deltora. Britta struggling in the mud of the Two Moons swamp. Britta smiling at a little clay doll balanced on the palm of her hand. Britta reading words carved on a smooth rock wall. Britta bending to kiss a cold cheek. Britta bursting through the mist, her eyes flashing. Britta falling ...
The King tasted blood on his lips. He closed his eyes, but the last two images still glowed inside his eyelids as if they had been burned there.
The wraiths would cease their wailing in time. The Staff would soon consume their attention once more. A few weeks, months, years ... and all this would be forgotten—all but the most important thing.
The King’s mouth twitched wryly. Even he would forget, no doubt, as his memories of this day sank in the endless, silent oceans of time. But for now ...
He forced the stiff fingers that held the Staff of Tier to tighten, forced the images of Britta back, forced his thoughts away from the body on the floor. He had to focus on the forest path, to make sure that the feeding frenzy he had set in motion would continue with all possible speed.
Keeping his eyes shut he concentrated, taking care to shield his mind. A picture of the writhing forest came to him, more dimly than usual but clear enough to startle him. One of the intruders—the woman of Broome—was fighting the attack! She had some sort of weapon, though the Staff had clearly shown him that she had carried nothing onto the island.
