The Shadowlands Read Online Free PDF Page B

are told for once, Lief!’ said Barda grimly, drawing his sword. ‘We are as safe behind this rock as anywhere, at present. And whatever Jasmine can hear, I can still see nothing.’
    The little lizard was scrabbling frantically at the invisible wall now, running along it for a short distance, then turning and running the other way. Every now and then it would raise itself and push with its front legs at the empty air, its tail thrashing frantically.
    ‘But—but why does the Shadow Lord not protect his border?’ asked Emlis in a high, trembling voice. ‘He has many of your people! Does he not fear that an army—or a small group such as yours—might cross the mountains and invade his territory?’
    ‘That is what he
hopes
for, I would say,’ muttered Barda. ‘He has left the way open, after all.’
    ‘But why?’ asked Emlis, his voice rising to a squeak.
    The lizard fell back, exhausted. Instantly, an orange, spiny beetle-like creature sprang from a crack in the clayjust behind it. In the blink of an eye the orange creature had seized the lizard, bitten off its head, and dragged the still twitching carcase back under the earth.
    ‘Does that answer your question?’ asked Barda dryly.
    Emlis stared at him, open-mouthed.
    Lief turned his face to the rock, his stomach churning. Then he saw it. A mark had been scratched laboriously into the rock’s hard surface. He stared, hardly able to believe his eyes.

    ‘The sign of the Resistance!’ he breathed, tracing the mark with his fingers. His heart was pounding.
    Another Deltoran had sheltered here. A Deltoran who had somehow escaped from captivity and made for the mountains, only to find the way to freedom barred. A Deltoran who had used, perhaps, his or her last strength not to weep and curse fate, but to scratch a message of defiance on the rock.
    The despairing confusion that had clouded Lief’s mind ever since arriving in this dread place seemed suddenly to lift. Suddenly he was able to think again.
    Barda was touching the sign now. ‘It is not fresh, but it is not very old, either,’ he said slowly. ‘A year or two at most, I think.’
    Lief was remembering another Resistance sign hehad seen marked on rock. It had ended a message written in blood on a cave wall in Dread Mountain.
    Doom had written that message: Doom, the only Deltoran captive ever known to have escaped from the Shadowlands. And he had escaped from…
    Kree gave a low, warning squawk. ‘The light is changing,’ Jasmine whispered, reaching for her dagger.
    Lief and Barda looked up quickly. The low, tumbling clouds were stained with faint, sullen scarlet, and the whiteness of the plain was dimming.
    ‘Surely something as small as a lizard would not have sounded a border alert,’ Barda muttered. ‘Such things must happen often.’
    ‘It is the setting sun,’ said Lief, looking to the west, where the clouds glowed more deeply. ‘Night is falling.’
    They were silent for a moment. They had been in the caverns so long that they had almost forgotten that the days in the world above were ruled by the movement of the sun.
    ‘Doran said sunsets were glorious to see,’ said Emlis, gazing with disappointment at the clouds. ‘Doran said they were like red and orange fire blazing in the sky.’
    ‘Not here, it seems,’ Barda growled.
    Jasmine was peering not at the sky, but at the plain. ‘Look,’ she breathed, pointing.
    The plain was coming to life. Legs scrabbling, long feelers waving, spiny orange beetles were emerging in their thousands from the cracks in the clay.

6 – The Wild Ones
    L ief looked down. The cracks in the earth near his feet were full of movement, though so far nothing had ventured to the surface.
    ‘I do not like this,’ Barda said. ‘We had better move on. Those insects are small, but there are many of them, and they are meat-eaters. If they are hungry enough—’
    He did not complete his sentence, but he had said enough to make everyone stand hastily.
    ‘Which