By the flickering light of a single candle, a green-eyed girl wrote deep into the night. Her brow was furrowed as she formed the letters, and she lifted her hand to stroke the small creature on her shoulder. Writing was hard, but as the world slept, Jasmine tried to understand…
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Now at last all is well. At last we can rest. Deltora is safe. Outside the people rejoice. They praise Lief as though they never doubted him.
Which they did, of course. It would take a fool to believe they did not.
They had reason to doubt, though. At any time we could have been killed, and our quest lost.
Now the people sing our praises and the queues in the hall are full of the very people who demanded armies sent to the Shadowlands to free the slaves. Now they come to thank us for the loved ones we returned. They would never have believed that a man, a girl and a young king could steal something back from the Shadow Lord.
In the library Josef and Ranesh sit, bent over their books, talking excitedly as their quills dart across the page. They are writing our story in the new Deltora Annals. Three parts, to tell of the parts of our quest. The story of the Quest for the Belt of Deltora is already complete.
We must make sure that the history of Deltora is not forgotten again. It happened once and nearly resulted in disaster. The people must know of the dangers we faced. We could have died.
We could have ended up trapped- trapped in the Shadowlands, in the Arena. The Shadow Lord could have killed Lief, or worse, submitted him to the Conversion Project and sent him back, seemingly normal, back to his throne in Del.
The thought is almost unbearable.
The opinion of death as the better option might once have been regarded as cruel but I know of three things which lead me to believe that this may not be so.
First, simply that Lief, who shoulders both the responsibility of being king and the stubbornness and determination of who he is, would rather die then surrender to the Shadow Lord, and condemn his people to slavery and death.
Second, if the Shadow Lord were to "convert" Lief, to place one of the vile shadow worms in his brain, and, effectively on his throne, when one of his friends found the truth, they would have no choice but to kill him. We all know it is what he would want, and out of loyalty to both him and the people we would do it, but we would be haunted by it until the day we die.
And thirdly, simplest and clearest of all:
The Shadow Lord knows nothing of love.
He cannot understand why a person would die for another. To him we are all just pawns, used and wasted; it does not matter. He cares nothing for the lives of others.
His lust for Deltora rules all.
So he does not understand that I would die for Lief, and he for me. He may be my king, but he is also my friend-
And something more…
For there is something more. I have been blind not to see it… but its there, and probably always has been. I only prey it will remain.
Because it is beautiful, opening like a tiny flower inside me, in my heart, and it can only get bigger. And even I can see it burns inside of him like a flame, I who have never fully understood people as well as I do animals. An unquenchable fire burns behind his eyes.
I wonder what will happen when flower and flame collide.
I laugh at myself to read this. It is not a year since I did not know how to write, and even then I would never have spoken this way. There is no time for emotion in the game of survival that was life in the Forests of Silence. Caring was a weakness; emotion was a weakness; love was a weakness…
Yet there were times where I did care- like the time, so long ago it seems, when I met the two strangers caught by the Wenn. Paralysed and helpless, I remember how they cried out for help, begging me not to leave them. I could so easily have left them there, and robbed them as they lay helpless, as I so often had with the Grey Guards. The cloak and the swords would have been useful, and no doubt they carried other possessions I could have made use of. I did not need to waste the medicine: there was precious little left.
Strange though, to think of what would have happened if I had left them there to die. Deltora would never have been free, for a start. The belt would have been lost, and with it the heir. And Lief is the only one who realised that there must be others descended from Adin.
It is strange, the way that fate works. Everything, even the tiniest detail has a consequence of some kind. Everything is connected in ways we cannot foresee. If I had never found Kree, the sorceress Theagan would never have been defeated, and the people of D'or would still be enslaved. Who would think that the blackbird I befriended as a lonely seven-year-old could have such an effect on our quest?
I wonder if saving Barda had some hidden result. Certainly he played his part in our first quest for Deltora, but what of the second? Would we have succeeded in finding the three parts of the Pirran Pipe, and uniting the people of Pirra once more? Would the slaves be free and our people happy? Would we even be alive?
I think not.
I do not think I have words enough to describe the impact Barda has had on me.
And then there is the issue of Marilen- poor, sweet, clever Marilen. All the rumours of her coming to Del to be Lief's bride! And all the time she was simply his heir. We should have realised that all of Adin's children could inherit the throne, and that the Belt would recognise their descendants if the direct line failed! Blood is blood, no matter how thinly it is spread over the ages, a wise Pirran once told us. I cannot believe that none of us saw it here.
Originally I was wary of this girl, this painted doll from Tora. She was another of Lief's secrets, and I did care much for them. I was angry at Lief anyway, and then I found out about her, and Faith-
Too many secrets. And Faith most of all.
I thought that Lief had hidden the crystal to deceive me. I thought he knew about my "sister" and was trying to take her away. In my anger and loneliness I did not stop to think of my safety, and rushed away to find a path into the Shadowlands, to find the sister I had never known.
I did not consider that it was a trap. That of course, the Shadow Lord is not above using the emotions of a lonely teenage girl and the heart of her suffering if it means he can destroy Lief, whom he detests above all people, the only one standing between him and Deltora, the prize he so well desires.
I almost sacrificed myself, and the lives of my companions, for a child that did not exist.
Faith never existed. She was a phantom, a tool of the Enemy. He used me to get to Lief. He knew that I would do everything in my power to find a surviving member of my family. He knew Lief would give his life for me. Even though he does not understand it, he can see when it is something he can use. And of course Barda would go with Lief.
I suffered greatly at the loss of Faith, even though she was not real. I still remember the grief, the pain and despair. The anger I felt at being so completely fooled, at being used. Even victory is bittersweet when grief lingers in your heart.
But all this has proved that he can be beaten even on his own land. He is not defeated, and it will be long before we find out how to destroy him. But we will not give in. We will continue to fight and one day, maybe in my lifetime, maybe not, we will defeat him. We will destroy him, and all his vile creations, and restore the Shadowlands to what they were when they were Pirra.
One day, we will win…
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Disclaimer: only the wording here is mine. I did this as an aural presentation for school, based on the Deltora Quest 2 series, so all I really did was recount the story through Jasmine's eyes. The rest belongs to Emily Rodda.