Hellaine: New Companion

Part 1: Lapis Lazuli

Disclaimer: I do not, under any circumstances, own Deltora Quest or any characters from the series.

Rated: T

A/N: I do own Hellaine and her past.

Summary: Lief, Barda and Jasmine meet the mysterious Jordan of the Sands, a fighter that hails from the stony wall around the Shifting Sands. Who is she? What does she want with the Games?

I Have Feared

"Lief!" Jasmine cried. "Lief!"

"Lief!" Barda called. "Where are you?"
"This useless," Hellaine seethed. "The storm could have wisked him miles away."

"We have to find him!" Jasmine cried. "We have too!"

"We must find the center," Hellaine growled. "He is being drawn there. Send out Kree to watch for him."

Jasmine stared in surprise as if she'd forgotten the bird. As Jasmine whispered to KRee gently, Hellaine dug her notes out of Lief's pack.

"What are you looking at?"

"The warning," Hellaine said. "We are missing something, something important, something dangerous."

"Kree is going to look from the air, which way is the center?" Jasmine asked.

"We want to go towards the wind, towards the center of power, where everything is being sent from." Hellaine said.

"Why would we go towards the danger?" Jasmine snapped.

"That will lead us to the center," Hellaine growled back. They had been walking for hours, no sign of Lief or the center of the desert. "It is only logical."

"Fine. Go right to the heart of the danger, walk us to our deaths." Jasmine snapped.

"Jasmine, you know Hellaine is right." Barda spoke gently. Jasmine huffed, refusing to look at her friend. She knew the older girl was right, but she hated to admit it.

The trio walked for what felt like hours until they heard Kree's distinct screeching.

Lief's eyes flew open. The screeching went on. Something was circling above him, a blurry black shape against a dull yellow sky.

Ak-Baba! Run! Hide!

Then he blinked, and saw the circling shape was Kree – Kree, soaring lower, calling to him. He tried to sit up and found that he had settled too deeply in the sand. Sand covered the whole lower half of his body, his hands, his arms, his neck. . .

He scrambled, panting and trembling, to his feet. How long had he been asleep? What would have happened if Kree had not woke him up?

The dream was still vivid in his mind. And suddenly he understood what it meant.

"Lief!" BArda, Jasmine and Hellaine had appeared at the top of the next dune. Shouting, they began to slide down to him. Lief felt tears spring to his eyes at the sight of them, and realized that he had thought they were dead. He began staggering forward to meet them.

Hellaine held her arms out and let him collapse when he reached them. She thrust something at his lips and made him swallow the liquid inside. The first taste of the sweet water was amazing and left him wanting more. He downed half the bottle before he was even close to being done, but Hellaine pulled the bottle away and helped steady him.

"Better?" She asked gently. Lief nodded his thanks and breathed deeply.

Jasmine screamed, piercingly. She was pointing behind them.

Lief turned and saw what had emerged from the dune at his back. It was another sand beast, even bigger than the first. Sand still poured from the joints of its legs. It had been stalking him, but as he met its mirrored eyes, it froze. In moments, he knew, it would spring.

Backing away, holding its gaze, he felt for his sword, then, with horror, felt himself falling clumsily, entangled in the trailing ropes that had tripped him. The next moment he was struggling in the sand, his sword trapped beneath him. Wildly he scrambled to his knees, hearing Jasmine and Barda shouting, knowing it was too late, feeling as though he was caught in a nightmare. The monster lunged.

Then it jerked, with a grating cry, as an arrow lodged in its chest at the same moment a blister exploded. It staggered, lunged again, then toppled sideways as another blister loaded arrow found its mark. Its spiny legs kicked, and it began to spin, digging great trenches in the sand.

One ankle still caught in the rope, Lief crawled away, sobbing and gasping with relief. Jasmine came panting up to him, hauling him to his feet, freeing him from the rope. Barda was right behind her, careful to stay out of the path of Hellaine's arrows.

Lief began to choke out his thanks, but Hellaine waved him away. "This is not the first time I have saved your ass," she said. "Nor will it be the last. It is my fate to protect you, kid, be your nursemaid."

Shocked and deeply hurt, Lief took refuge in sullenness, and turned away.

Barda took him by the shoulders and spun him around. "Do not turn away from her!" he shouted. "What are you playing at? Why did you run away alone? Why did you not try to find after the quake?"

Barda was shaking with anger and slowly, Lief realized it was anger born of shock, fear, and worry. It was the anger he had sometimes seen in his parents' faces, when he came home long after curfew. When he took risks."

"He feels the pull," Hellaine told the man.

"There is no time for this now," snapped Jasmine, her eyes on the monsterous creature thrashing in the dune. "Argue another time. We must get away from here, and quickly. The beast is not dead. It may yet recover and come after us again."

Hellaine nodded and put her bow away quickly.

"Do not worry," said Lief quietly. "Where we are going, it will not follow."

They walked for many hours, but spoke little. It was as if Lief was listening to something the others couldn't hear, and they themselves grew more and more silent the closer they came to the center.

They saw it long before they reached it – a lone peak rising high from a flattened circle and ringed by rounded dunes. It shimmered against the yellow sky, alien and mysterious in the fading light. A mighty cone with darkness at its tip.

"I have feared this, and I was right to stay close to the border," Hellaine shivered.

"A volcano," Barda hissed.

Lief shook his head. "You will see," he said.

Filli crept, whimpering, under the shelter of Jasmine's collar. She whispered comfortingly to him, but her green eyes were dark with dread. The droning noise grew louder as they approached their goal. By the time they had reached its base and slowly beun their labor upwars, the air was vibrating with sounds.

Finally they reached the top, and were looking down into the peak's hollow core. A whirlpool of red sand roared far below, flying in the darkness as though driven by a mighty wind.

But there was no wind. And the sound was like the humming of bees in their countless millions.

The belt burned around Lief's waist.

"What is this?" Barda was breathing hard, staring down, his big, blunt hands gripping his sword.

Hellaine paled in fear as she recited the warning once more.

"Death swarms within its rocky wall

Where all are one, one will rules all.

Below the dead, the living strive

With mindless will…"

"To serve the hive," Lief finished.

"The sand is the Guardian," Hellaine shook.

Barda shook his head. "But – it cannot be," he breathed. "The sand is not alive! We have walked upon it, seen creatures –"

"Creatures that never stop; never rest, their home is the sands. They know how to burrow, how to survive." Hellaine shook.

"The creatures we have seen are crawling on a much larger host," Lief said his voice very low. "The dunes we have been treading are only a covering made up of the long dead. The living work below, serving the Hive. It is they who collect the treasures that fall, leaving distinct impressions in the sand, they who cause the storms."

"The gem – "

"The gem, dropped anywhere on the sands, would at last be drawn to the center." Hellaine said. "It happens to anything of value."

Lief tore his eyes away from the whirlpool within the core and turned to Jasmine. "We need smoke," he said. "Smoke, not fire."

Without a word she knelt and began pulling things from her pack. Her hands, Lief saw, were tembling.

His own hands were not very steady as he gave his sword to Hellaine and took the rope from Barda. But as he knotted the rope around his chest with Hellaine's help, he was half-smiling, and his voice shook only a little.

"I fear you must be my nursemaid again, Hellaine, Barda," he said. "Again, I need your help, Hellaine, and your strength, Barda – and your rope as well. But this time, I beg you, don't let me go."

Lief crawled over the lip of the pit and stepped into empty space. He dangled, swinging gently to and fro, looking up at hellaine and Barda's worried faces and their hands, the knuckles white gripping the rope.

"Slowly," he mouthed. He saw them nod and their hands move slowly. Them gently, he began to sink through the core of the cne.

Lief's cloak was bound tightly around him and its hood drawn close around his head and face, covering all but his eyes. Smoke from the dampened torch, well padded with wet rags, billowed around him. He was not certain it would help, but certainly no other weapon would be useful here. Besides, ever since his dream, Queen Bee's words had kept coming back to him, and surly that was for a reason.

He could remember the words so clearly. Strangely, here, at the droning, swirling hub of the Sands, his mind had cleared and sharpened. Perhaps the Hive was no longer calling him, because it had no need. He was where it had wanted him to be all along.

He looked up. His friends' faces were tiny now. He was hardly able to see them against the glare of the sky. Below, the seething mass that was the Hive was whirling, rising to meet him.

He braced himself, closed his eyes. The he felt it, rough wind, a stinging whirlwind, sucking him in. It spun savagely about him, whipping him, pressing in on him, with a sound like thunder.

It was too strong. Too strong!

He could not see. He could not breath. Spun in a raging torrent of sound, he did not know which way was up, which was down.

Hellaine's words came back to mind.

I warn you. The Sands are dangerous, it kills and destroys. It knows only prize, food, enemy. It is this which makes it most dangerous, for it does not live, so it does not feel.

The Hive cared nothing for him. To the Hive he was not food, or a captive prize, or even a hated enemy to be defeated. To the Hive he was nothing but the carrier of the thing it desired. The Hive would suffocate him. It would rub the clothes from his flesh and the flesh from his bones. Then it would have what it wanted. What it had wanted from the beginning.

The Belt of Deltora.

Panic gripped Lief by the throat. He began to struggle, to scream –

Softly, boy, softly. Gently, gently!

The crabbed old voice was as clear in his mind as if it had spoken right beside his ear. It was like cold water splashed on his face.

The screams died in his throat. He opened his eyes. He forced himself to be still, to stop gasping for air, to breathe even.

He opened his eyes a fraction. Through the narrow slits he saw that the smoke pouring from the torch had at last begun mingling with the whirling red and the whirling was quieted. The Hive was slowing, and thinning, retreating to the darkness at the sides of the cone. The thing that its fury had previously hidden was at last revealed – a glistening pyramid rising through the cone's center.

Slowly, carefully, Lief reached up and tugged the rope once. His downward progress stopped with a slight jolt as, far above, Hellaine and Barda received his signal.

For a moment he simply swung in space, staring, fascinated, through the drifting smoke, at the astounding thing the living Sand had built, tended and guarded for years without number.

The belt throbbed and burned at his waist, dragging him downward, into the pit of the cone.

His pulled his cloak and shirt aside to reveal the Belt, and looked down at it, peering through wreaths of smoke. He could hardly see the topaz and the ruby, but the opal shone, dancing with sparkling lights so that it seemed alive.

What did that mean? HE struggled to see in his mind the words about the powers of the opal in The Belt of Deltora.

The opal, symbol of hope, shines with all the colors of the rainbow. It has
the power to give glimpses of the future, and to aid those with weak sight.
The opal . . .

What came next? Lief screwed his eyes tightly closed to help him think, but after a moment he opened them again, shaking his head desperately. He could not remember the end.

He looked up to the top of the pyramid. He knew that the gem was most likely to be there. It had been dropped into the Shifting Sands just before King endon was overthrown. That was little over sixteen years ago, and the pyramid had been growling for many ages.

The first thing he saw was Hellaine's dagger, fitted point downwards into the very tip of the tower. It had been the last thing taken, so was at the top. One day the metal would rust away. But the diamond would survive, and other finds would take the place of the metal parts.

Below the dagger, neatly arranged, were many gold coins, and the Champion's medal from the Rithmere Games. They were locked into place with a mass of shining white bones.

Lief shuddered. Not a scrap of flesh still clung to the bones, but he knew that they were all that remained of Carn 2 and carn 8, the Grey Guards. The Hive worked quickly.

He realized that the pyramid seemed clearer than it had before. For a moment he wondered why that was. Then he saw that the torch was smoking less. It was starting to die.

His stomach lurched. For how much longer would the Hive stay droning at the sides of the cone? As the smoke thinned . . .

He looked below the bones and saw some small glass pots, some bracelets, two rocks, and what looked like the jawbone of a horse. And below that –

His heart seemed to miss a beat. There, pinpoints of light piercing it smooth, dark blue surface, was a stone like a starry night sky.

The forgotten words from The Belt of Deltora flashed at last into his mind.

…The opal has a special relationship with the Lapis Lazuli, the heavenly
Stone, a powerful talisman.

The Lapis Lazuli! There it lay, carefully wedged into place, the fourth gem of the Belt of Deltora.

He reached for it, then abruptly drew back his hand. If he pulled the stone from its place, the things resting upon it would surely topple and fall. Then the Hive would attack. He would be dead before he could carry his prize to the surface, and the lapis lazuli, the belt itself, would be lost.

His only hope was to replace the great gem with something else. Something of about the same size. Frantically, he felt in his pockets, though he knew he had nothing – nothing . . .

The his fingers touched something in the top pocket of his shirt. Something small, hard, and oddly shaped. He pulled it out and found that it was Jasmine's little wooden bird, the exact size of the Lapis Lazuli.

The Hive droned with growing suspicion. It was waking, becoming active, as the smoke began to disappear. Holding his breath, Lief reached again for the lapis lazuli, but this time he grasped in his other hand, the little wooden bird.

H eased the lapis lazuli from its place. It warmed in his fingers, and moved easily, more easily than he expected, as though, it wanted to be free.

The opal is calling it, he thought feeling the answering warmth at his waist. He felt the lapis lazuli slip into his hand, and quickly pushed the little wooden bird into the free space.

Not quickly enough. The top of the tower trembled. The droning from the walls of the cone became louder, more alert. The red cloud swayed inward. Its outside edge just touched the bare skin of Lief's chest, searing, burning. He smothered a screm of anguish.

Quietly, quietly . . .

Sweat dripping into his eyes, trying to screen out the pain , Lief lifted a hand and tugged at the rope. Once, twice . . . Beside him, the pyramid swayed. If it should fall. If anything should fall . . .

The dagger toppled from its place, turning in the air. Lief snatched at it one-handed, just managing to catch it by its tip as he rose beside it, the dying torch tucked under one arm.

With agonizing slowness, he was drawn to the surface. Below him, the droning sound was rumbling, rising, as the Hive did not yet know it had been robbed. It was still sleepy and distracted because smoke still drifted in the air. The smoke was faint now, so faint . . .

But it was still working its magic as Lief crawled into the fresh air avbove.

As he stood up on the rim of the cone, he turned joyously to Barda, Hellaine and Jasmine as he opened his hand to show them the heavenly stone, the clouds that had covered the sky flew apart like torn rags. The stars and the moon beamed down again upon the dark earth like a blessing, and the lapis lazuli sparkled back at them like a tiny mirror.

"What a sight," Hellaine smiled. "You never know how much you can miss the stars until you live without them for a year."

The lapis lazuli slipped into the Belt and glowed there, alive under the moon.

Lief turned to Jasmine. "I had to leave your little bird behind." He said softly.

"It got us the lapis lazuli, it is a far greater trade for us," she replied.

Lief nodded and turned next to Hellaine. "Without your help, we may have died out here. I hope you will continue your journey with us in exchange for this," he said softly and gave her the dagger. Hellaine took the blade gently into her hands and ran her thumb over the intricate vine and flower pattern on the sheath.

"Thank you, Lief," she sighed. "Moonflowers, native to my home. Father made me this sheath for his dagger when he gave it to me. He had it embroidered with moonflowers." She smiled. "It would be an honor to travel with you. My knowledge is at your disposal."

She slipped the dagger onto her belt where she could keep a secure hand on the hilt.

Lief swayed and Barda gripped his arm. "The lapis lazuli is the talisman, Barda," he whispered. "We will be safe now. But let us leave this place."

"We will return to the cabin," Hellaine said. "There we can eat, rest and speak for a few days before we continue on. There we can stock up for the journey ahead and leave anything left behind for the creatures of the desert."

Barda, jasmine and Lief nodded their agreement, starting into the dark sand. It was time to gather strength for the next great gem awaited them at Dread Mountain.