The Shadowlands (10 page)

Then the figures were out of sight once more as Lief scuttled on after his friends, past the last few pods and across the back wall to the open door.

Keeping low, Jasmine peered cautiously through the doorway. She turned and nodded to the others, then crawled through the opening. Barda and Emlis went after her. But as Lief followed, noting that the room beyond the door was some sort of workroom, he heard the Ol speak again, very timidly.

‘The master’s plan—’

‘The master has many plans!’ interrupted the woman sharply. ‘And none of them are your concern.’

Jasmine was beckoning urgently from the other side of the room, but Lief could restrain his curiosity no longer. As soon as he could, he stood up and peered cautiously around the half-open door, back into the pod room.

The two figures had begun their inspection of the next row of Guards. The shorter one, the female, was consulting the chart. The tall one was walking behind her, glowering.

His thin, sour face was the face of Fallow.

Lief gripped the edge of the door till his knuckles turned white. That is not Fallow, he reminded himself desperately. Fallow is dead. That creature, 3-19, simply wears the same face. But still his breath came fast and his stomach heaved with loathing.

Then the female figure looked up from the chart and half turned towards her companion. Bright white light illuminated her delicate face, her pale blue eyes.

Lief stared for a split second, then shrank back behind the door, numb with shock.

B
arda, Jasmine and Emlis were clustered in front of a narrow door on one side of the workroom. Skirting a long white table cluttered with jars, measuring jugs and a pot of bubbling green liquid set over a low flame, Lief ran noiselessly to join them.

‘There is nowhere to hide in here,’ Jasmine whispered. ‘We will have to go further.’ She paused as she noticed the expression on Lief’s face. ‘What is it?’ she muttered. ‘You look as if you have seen a ghost.’

‘I have,’ Lief whispered back. ‘That woman—the woman in the pod room—is Tira of Noradz.’

Barda and Jasmine gaped at him, horrified.

‘Who is Tira?’ Emlis asked, looking from one to the other.

‘A friend who once risked her life for us,’ said Jasmine, swallowing hard. ‘We knew her people had been brought to the Shadowlands. We hoped to find her, to save her. But—’

‘But it seems she does not want to be saved.’ Barda clenched his fists. ‘She has become the Shadow Lord’s creature. What have they done to her?’

‘The answer is in there, I think,’ Jasmine said slowly. She moved aside and pointed to a notice on the door.

There was no sound from behind the door. Lief tried the knob. It turned smoothly. He pushed the door open a crack and peered into the room beyond.

At first, all he could see was a haze of soft pinkish-red light. He blinked, and the room slowly came into focus. It was another, much larger, workroom—huge, silent and empty. The strange red light glowed from the walls, ceiling and floor. On the wall facing Lief there were two vast doors, firmly closed.

A wave of dread swept over him. Jasmine was pushing him from behind, urging him on, but for a long moment he resisted her. Everything within him was crying to him to stay where he was. He clutched at the Pirran Pipe beneath his shirt and at last gained enough strength to stumble into the room.

Many work tables jutted from the side walls, each one stretching about a third of the way across the room, each one fitted with a set of broad leather straps. Lief’s mouth went dry as his imagination suddenly peopled
the room. The helpless victims strapped to the benches. The cold, white-clad figures working over them, carrying out their master’s orders.

Doing… what?

The broad strip of floor in the middle of the room was bare, but scars on its hard surface showed that it had not always been so. Something heavy, large and square had once stood in the exact centre. Shallow ruts, like the tracks of cartwheels, showed that the object had been pulled out of the room by way of the double doors.

There seemed nothing to fear, yet Lief’s whole body quivered as he moved towards the marks on the floor. He knew without question that evil itself had been in this red-lit room.

The others felt it too. Emlis seemed to have shrunk within his cloak, his small face pinched, and his teeth slightly bared. Barda was breathing hard, as though he had been running. Jasmine’s face had paled. Filli had disappeared beneath her collar, and Kree was like a black statue on her shoulder.

Instinctively they all avoided stepping on the marks on the floor. They edged past them, pressing against the ends of the work tables, their eyes turned away.

They reached the double doors and, after listening carefully and hearing no sound, ventured through.

A surge of evil power hit them full in their faces, stopping them in their tracks.

They were in a dim, red-lit space with double doors on every wall. The space was completely bare except for
a huge, square metal box which stood in the centre, where the dented tracks in the floor ended. The box was as tall as Jasmine, and had wheels on its base and a trapdoor at one end. Its hinged lid was open, hanging flat against one of its sides. Clearly, it was the object which had been moved from the workroom.

Evil radiated from it like heat. But the feeling was cold, a deathly cold that seemed to chill their blood, freeze their very bones to ice. Emlis began to whimper.

Lief forced his hand upward and grasped the Pirran Pipe. A little warmth stole through his fingers. He took a step forward.

‘Stop!’ hissed Jasmine, clutching his arm. ‘Lief, no! Do not go near it!’

But Lief had to know. He had to see what was inside the box. Clutching the Pipe more tightly he moved forward, Jasmine stumbling behind him, trying to hold him back.

He reached the box, and, gritting his teeth, looked over its edge.

At first all he could see was a squirming, pinkish mass. Then his throat closed as he realised what he was looking at—thousands upon thousands of long, pale worms with scarlet heads, thrashing and writhing in a bath of red slime.

And the worms sensed him. They began rearing, trying to reach him, their wicked scarlet heads straining upward, their tails lashing.

With a choking cry Lief jerked backwards, crashing
into Barda and Jasmine, who were directly behind him.

He did not need to ask them if they had seen. Their appalled faces told him that they had.

‘We have to get out of this place,’ Barda hissed. He pointed at the double doors to their right. ‘That way! By my reckoning, the rubbish mounds are on that side. There may be another door…’

‘No!’ Jasmine was shaking her head, pointing to the doors ahead. Barda glared at her, and her pale face flushed scarlet. ‘We must go on!’ she cried desperately. ‘There must be prisoners here.’

Lief looked from one to the other—and at Emlis, cringing behind them.

Jasmine wanted to come here, all along…

The thought drifted into his mind, stuck there. He knew it was true.

‘Jasmine, who—?’ he began bluntly. He had just enough time to register Jasmine’s startled, guilty expression when a noise from the workroom made him break off.

It was the sound of voices and ringing footsteps. Tira and her companion had finished their inspection far sooner than he had expected.

‘… it cannot be helped!’ Tira was exclaiming. ‘You heard the message. We are needed at once! The Conversion Project is about to be put into action.’

The companions glanced around frantically. There was nowhere to hide. Barda grabbed Lief’s arm and made for the right-hand doors, with Emlis shuffling after him.
After just a moment’s hesitation, Jasmine followed.

They swung into chill darkness. The doors had no sooner closed behind them than they heard someone entering the room they had just left.

‘Ah, my beauties!’ Tira’s voice cooed. ‘Your time has come! I have just had word of it.’

There was a creaking sound, then a slam and four clicks, as the lid of the box was swung closed, and locked into place.

‘What is happening?’ Jasmine whispered in panic. ‘What are they going to do with those…
things
?’

‘Ssss!’

The hiss was startling in the dark silence. Lief, Barda, Jasmine and Emlis jumped violently and spun around.

Behind them, its roof covered by a tangle of heavy cloth, was an iron cage on wheels. Inside the cage, something moved.

‘Help me!’ croaked a voice. ‘Free me, for pity’s sake!’

The companions darted silently to the cage. Its door was fastened with a heavy padlock. Peering out through the bars was a gaunt, wild-eyed Dread Gnome, his face just visible in the darkness. ‘I am Pi-Ban,’ the gnome gabbled. ‘Pi-Ban, once of Dread Mountain. Are you the cause of the panic? Did Claw send you? Where are Brianne and Gers?’

Barda grasped two of the cage bars and heaved with all his might. But even his great strength was not enough to bend the thick, rigid iron.

Wordlessly, Jasmine held out her dagger. Lief
snatched it and began trying to use its point to open the heavy lock. ‘Claw did not send us, exactly, Pi-Ban,’ he whispered. ‘But we know your name. We know you are one of the people who were taken from the Resistance cave to the east of this place.’

‘Where are your friends?’ Jasmine asked urgently, as Barda began to work on the bars again. ‘Where are the prisoners kept?’

The gnome groaned, his eyes fixed on Lief’s hands. ‘The dungeons are below ground level,’ he said, his lips barely moving. ‘But they are empty now. Moss, Pieter, Tipp, Alexi, Hellena… one by one they were taken away. It began the day we were captured, with Moss. It ended yesterday, with Hellena. Only I remain.’

‘But… but surely there are other slaves here?’ Jasmine’s voice was tense.

‘There
were
others, at first,’ said Pi-Ban. ‘Many, many others, young and old. Some in the dungeons with us. Some—the quieter, more obedient ones—used to clean and carry. But they too are gone now.’

‘These—these quieter ones,’ Jasmine said quickly. ‘Were there any young girls among them?’

‘A girl called Tira, for example?’ Barda panted, pausing for a moment in his struggle with the cage.

The gnome raised his haggard face. ‘Is Tira the one you came for?’ he asked tiredly. ‘Yes, I knew her. A gentle creature, with eyes like the sky. She was one of the Noradz—strange, timid folk dressed in black who cleaned the hallways and brought food and water to the
dungeons. At first we thought they served the Shadow Lord willingly, but it was not so. They were prisoners, as we were.’

Barda nodded grimly and attacked the bars again, as though his enormous hands were tearing at the Shadow Lord himself. Lief was frowning over the lock, lost in concentration.

As if unable to bear watching them any longer, Pi-Ban turned and paced to the back of the cage. He grasped the bars and sank to his knees, staring out into the darkness.

Jasmine edged towards him and kneeled down so that she could talk to him face to face.

‘I heard of another girl who might be here, Pi-Ban,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Younger than Tira—a child—with black hair and green eyes, called Faith.’

She held her breath as Pi-Ban frowned thoughtfully.

‘Faith. How strange that you should mention that name,’ the gnome murmured at last. ‘I heard it for the first time only a short time ago, when Guards brought me up here. They were Baks, and in worse tempers than usual. Three of their pod had just been slaughtered by a vraal, which was pursuing a fourth into the desert. They had been ordered to abandon him in order to escort me. I told them I was pleased to hear it. That earned me a bruise or two.’

A savage white grin shone briefly through the tangles of his matted beard, then he sobered once more. ‘They told me I was to be taken to the Shadow Arena,
and that Faith had gone before me,’ he muttered. ‘They seemed to think this would torment me, because I knew this girl. But I do not.’

He looked at Jasmine shrewdly. ‘She is of great importance to
you,
however, that is plain. Who is she, this little girl with black hair and green eyes like your own? And why do you take care to ask of her while your friends cannot hear? ‘

Her mind whirling, Jasmine turned quickly away from him.

‘I cannot do it, Barda!’ Lief muttered from the front of the cage. ‘The lock is too strong. We will have to find another way.’

At that moment there was a loud sound from the room they had just left. Doors were being thrown open. There was the pounding of marching feet.

‘Guards!’ growled Barda.

‘Go! Make haste!’ Pi-Ban hissed. ‘There is another pair of doors behind the cage. I think they are a way out.’

‘No!’ Jasmine whispered desperately, standing fast. ‘We cannot go now!’

‘You must!’ The gnome raised his tousled head proudly. ‘If I am to die, I wish to die as a Dread Gnome, not as a coward who drags others down with him. Get out! Save yourselves!’

But already it was too late. The double doors heaved. Dull red light shone through the gap. The Guards were coming through.