~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter I

Lief rummaged through his drawers in the forge for the millionth time; he had been organizing it, but he never seemed to be satisfied. Just the day before yesterday they had arrived from their grand journey under Deltora and brought back the Deltoran slaves of this country. Though it was only morning of the third day, it seemed like it had been years since returning from the Shadowlands and the Pirrans' home underground. Marilen, his cousin, had left Del too, with Ranesh with her. A small ghost of a smile flickered across his face, recalling the bright look of affection for each other in the couple's eyes. He too felt a similar feeling for Jasmine, but his boldness to speak up yesterday unnerved him and Lief was quiet throughout the time between those words and now.

As he replaced some contents back inside after retrieving them from the floor where he tossed the carelessly, Lief felt a small vibrating from the Belt. It had started since it was given to him from Marilen. Sometimes it did not just vibrate but there would be magical shocks every so often. No one knew; Lief did not want to have them worry over it yet.

He found an old drawing from a friend of his. It had been given to him on his seventh birthday and he had kept it since. At the word birthday the memory that it was Lief's own seventeenth birthday hit him hard. He studied the drawing for a long time; he found it hard to believe two things: it had not been burned up and it had been an entire year since realizing he must find seven gems of the Belt of Deltora to defeat the Shadowlord.

Lief felt a stronger, more insistent vibrating this time from the Belt, and it let off a small shock as well. A thought suddenly drifted into his mind, urging him to look out the window. He ignored it and started rearranging his surviving belongings again.

"Lief?" The unexpected voice made him slam his drawer shut. It was Jasmine and she looked at him with concern. "Are you all right?" she asked sincerely. "You do not look very well." He brushed aside her comment and sat down on his bed.

"I am fine," he replied quietly, trying to fight off a powerful urge to follow the mysterious instructions and look out the small window. He pushed the nagging thoughts aside and glanced back up at Jasmine. Her arms were crossed and Kree was perched on her shoulder. The black bird, already fidgety enough, worriedly said something only understood by Jasmine and she shot him a haughty look.

"Now Lief," she began carefully. "I know you well enough to see something is bothering you. What is wrong? I am your… friend." But Lief shook his head defiantly.

"Do not try to help," he said, sounding harsher than he wanted to. "I do not need it." That only ignited Jasmine's fury and her patience ran low as if it was the fuel to her anger.

"Fine!" she shouted. "So be ignorant! I am only concerned for you. You will not catch me helping you again."

Lief opened his mouth to reply angrily when the Belt emitted a loud strong zap. He yelped. The persistent voice was impatient now and he decided to take heed of it. He looked out the window, but saw nothing. Baffled, he spared a quick glance at his Belt, not noticing Jasmine's curious face. Touch the topaz, another voice ordered, making Lief jump with surprise. It was as if the Belt had spoken right to him.

Unconsciously, his hand crept over to the topaz of Del. There was a great leap of energy into his fingers when they just skimmed the smooth surface but Lief forced his hand right over the gem. His hand tingled with magic and it was hard to fight the wish to pull his hand away. Slowly, Lief's head turned to the window.

He cried out with shock. Words in blood were written on the glass. He tried to turn away, but he could not. The message read: The Shadow Chain has been lost—the balance gone. "Lief! Lief!" Jasmine shouted. He was suddenly aware that she was shaking him and his hand had dropped from the gem. He blinked; the words were gone, but they were imprinted in his mind.

"Jasmine, look there," he gasped and pointed at the window as he grabbed her hand. Lief pressed the small hand on the gem and Jasmine gasped and yanked her hand out of his.

"Kree and Filli saw it," she muttered, violent tremors shaking her body. "The message—what does it mean?" Jasmine was still trembling when Lief caught her arm.

"The others must know," he said quietly. "Whatever this is it is serious." Jasmine nodded and the two rushed out of the small room.


§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§


While these two arrived into the tiny room occupied by their friends and family, halfway across Deltora, there was a young girl, sitting beside a tree. Grey-green eyes stared out before her sightlessly as she groped for her staff beside her. Her companion, a flame-haired girl also her age, quickly plucked it from the ground and handed it to her. The first girl grabbed the wooden stick and using it, she searched for her partner in traveling. She stood carefully, asking for her friend in a slightly off tone voice for her.

"Shei,” she called. Her voice was thick and hoarse from disuse but it gathered strength and it began to fill with clarity and mellowness. "Shei, where are you?"

"I am here," the girl quickly said, hopping down from the branch she sat on. "Is there something wrong?"

"No," the girl called, her staff clattering back onto the ground and her thin pale hand gripped the grass under her hand tightly until it tore off into her palm. She balled her hand up into a fist and released her grip, letting the grass fall back to the ground. "We should continue to Del."

"You cannot!" Shei protested. "Aravyn, you are tired from all this traveling. Not only that, as a dutiful friend of yours—"

"I am not your friend!" Aravyn suddenly shouted, her hand balled up into such a tight fist her knuckles turned white. "You are here to aid me to Del, nothing more! And if I say I wish to leave soon, you obey. Now hasten over and tell me the closest town and where we are." Shei lowered her head, feeling dejected but obeyed.

"We are on the east side of Tora," she muttered, chewing on a strand of wavy red hair. "Shortest way to Del is to pass through it. But surely you will not think—"

"I do not," Aravyn replied easily, too easily. "I do not dare such thing." Her friend's shoulders dropped with relief.

"Lady, perhaps we should rest for now, even if you wish to travel," she tried. "Night is falling but if we sleep near Tora, we will not be harmed." She watched the girl think, Shei's hopes rising. Then Aravyn nodded.

"We shall stay," she murmured. "But I would certainly like to meet the King soon, and maybe I shall see who this Marilen is too."

Aravyn unsteadily got to her feet, using the staff as a brace. Her appearance was quite ordinary for a Deltoran child, but it was her terrible state that made her stick out. Clothes ripped, bloodstains on the tunic, and dirt that smothered her face would make one stare at her. However scrawny she looked, Aravyn was wiry and could wield a sword, staff, or bow well, which was also a surprise like her appearance. One thing that marked her prominently was one white scar on her left cheek and the birthmark above her right elbow, though it was covered with a bloody cloth bandage now. It was Shadowlord's branding sign.

Aravyn rubbed that birthmark and dropped her hand. It reminded her of so much pain to the heart… which drove her determination harder, but the impassive mask on her face did not betray such feelings.

“Tomorrow we leave,” she said brusquely. “Do not dare to leave me.”

“I would never,” Shei promised.

She never thought Aravyn would.


§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§


Lief was riffling through the last volume of the Deltora Annals before he slammed it shut. Nothing, absolutely nothing helped him there. Jasmine let out a loud exasperated sigh.

"Lief, do not take out your frustration on the poor old books," she said sharply. "I am also trying to help and the noise does not help." He paid no attention to her and his head fell into his hands, rubbing his weary eyes. He opened the last volume of the Deltora Annals to the inside of the back cover. Tiredly Lief studied it to rest his eyes, a finger tracing the patterns on it. It was a strange one, full of incomprehensible connecting lines and symbols. Most of them were coloured a worn red, but some were gold. It was quite beautiful.

Lief sighed loudly. His mind was so heavy with fatigue it seemed to no longer function, clogged with fog—

He sat up straight, remembering something. As much as he disliked it now, he needed to search. Lief touched the topaz.

A bolt of magic surged up his hand, clearing his mind up more than he needed it to be. He started to turn the page, when something caught his eye: Entry 6-Day after exile...

Lief's heart leapt. The gold wrote out a diary entry!

"Jasmine, look!" he cried, his finger now running over the gold as he found line by line of writing. The girl hurried over, Kree squawking triumphantly and Filli chattering. Lief began reading along, Jasmine staring over his shoulder.


Entry 6-Day after exile

My friend can be so stubborn! Of course Adin had created the extraordinary Belt of Deltora and saved our wonderful land, but his belief in me is nothing. He says I am 'disturbed' and when I mentioned this, I was exiled. Because I believe in the balance of extreme magics and the ancient beast that controls the Balance in powers, I had said he must make a belt that equalizes the power of his Belt in extreme negative magic. I have just completed a chain of my own; I will save Deltora from my friend's foolishness. I will proudly wear the new Shadow Chain.

There are six stones, a piece of obsidian, bloodstone, jade, another strange one that is black with beautiful red streaks marking the surface, named naith by me, one gold with a streak of brown and black which I have named eagle-eye, and another which is translucent blue with white scratches inside it, which I've called an aerigh. Perhaps these are not gems, yet each is powerful enough to balance the Belt of Deltora's force. The power is drawn from five different sources. Three from…



Lief stared at the journal entry, especially the ending, where it had faded off where the gold was rubbed off.

"No," he croaked, touching the cover. "It had ended! And we have no idea who has the Chain or its uses!"

"Yet we do know one thing," Jasmine said softly, touching his shoulder. "The creator had been exiled. It will do us no good to search for the Shadow Chain, but it is possible to find the heir." Lief, his lips pressed into a thin line, nodded. Both stood and left the library.



The day passed and night found Lief sitting by the library table with Jasmine near him, both reading through books that may lead to the heir's finding.

Finally, near midnight, Jasmine stood and slammed her book shut. She replaced it on the shelf, but did not pick out another one. Jasmine glanced over her shoulder, expecting Lief to sigh and look up. Instead, he followed suit, shutting the book and putting the book back on the shelf.

"We will not find the heir in the books," Lief said. "The creator of the Shadow Chain had been exiled many years ago! No doubt he, or she, had never returned."

"Then perhaps we should visit Tora and ask Marilen about this," Jasmine said seriously. She yawned, and then continued to talk. "After all, she may know something about this."

§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§¤§

At the same time, Marilen, Lief's Toran cousin, tossed in her sleep. Her dream had already been strange, like nothing she had ever dreamed of: she had saw herself wandering in a foggy forest of stripped dead trees, the sky invisible behind grey tightly knit clouds. Her footsteps crunched in the dead fallen leaves as she walked on.

Then, a dark slender figure appeared before her. Marilen started running towards it, and when she stopped right before it, a bare and thin hand covered her mouth. Marilen woke just then.

She was startled to feel a real hand over her mouth, stopping her from screaming. She groped at the hand, trying to wrench it off, but the person was surprisingly strong.

"Stop struggling," an off-tone voice hissed. "I only want answers to my questions." Marilen ceased her fight, yet as the person drew back, she was still wary.

"You are the cousin of King Lief, are you?" the person asked sharply. Marilen nodded numbly, realizing her guest as a girl. Her face was hidden in the shadows, but in the faint moonlight, she could see the girl could only be about seventeen, about her age, and wore her dark cloak's hood up to conceal the face if the shadows disappeared.

"Well?" the girl asked impatiently. "Speak—do not nod." Marilen was first puzzled by the odd request, and then realization hit her. She is blind, she thought, and a bit deaf too, if she cannot talk properly. "Yes."

"Therefore, if he dies childless, you are Queen?"

"Yes," Marilen was nervous from her questions now. "Why are you asking me all this?"

The figure shrugged. "It is for my needs. Do not question me and only answer to me—I used a great amount of energy to come in here."

The girl reached for something by the window—her staff—and pulled it to her. In the moonlight, her sleeve slid down, and revealed a scarred birthmark. Marilen was horrified to see it was the mark of the Shadowlord.

"You—you—" she stammered, backing away. "You tricked me! You will not hurt my cousin!"

"I will not be," she said easily. "But of course, what my goal is, the consequences may hurt your precious King." She leaned over, pulling out a piece of paper and a knife. She opened the note and showed it to her. Now Marilen could see her face as the hood fell back. It revealed a skinny and grimy girl with blank green grey eyes and thick and straight dark brown hair that hung in jagged strands around her face and ended at her shoulders. She leaned over to her ear

"I have a note for the King of Deltora," she whispered. "This knife is magicked that if you do not give it to him and destroy it in any way, it will turn to you and kill you, and it will only wear off when the message is in the King's hand. Oh, Toran magic cannot protect you, mind." She moved to stare straight into her eyes with her own sightless ones. "Promise me."

Marilen stared at the girl for a long time. Something about her made her feel like she could almost trust her, even if she had such a threat behind her favour. She nodded, and took the knife and note.

"I will," she promised. The corner of the girl's lips turned upward, but then it dropped, the ghost of a smile vanishing so quickly Marilen was unsure she had seen it.

"Thank you." Then, without another word, the stranger left her room silently, moving like a cat. Marilen watched her leave, and then looked at the items in her hand. She opened a drawer and dropped them inside. She would give it to her cousin, as she promised. Sighing, Marilen returned to sleep.



As soon as Aravyn escaped Tora, she doubled over and fell to her knees, coughing hard, until blood spattered the sparse grass. Tora's magic was strong against her, and its effect was hard, though she hid it from the girl Marilen. A swelling of pride and happiness rose in her heart, that she had lived her experience in Tora. Happiness was new to her, and she enjoyed the feeling.

I will be able to feel it forever when my goal is completed, she told herself, as she touched a stone on her belt. Aravyn felt the slow drain of power from her as she stood, brushing her knees off. Then she left for Where Waters Meet.
 

Chapter 2

Lief tied the small bundle of meager possessions to the back of the saddle before checking to make sure the knot was tight. He glanced over to check if Jasmine and Barda were ready. Jasmine had efficiently strapped her pack down and was already mounted, like Barda.

He looked at Doom, who stood, holding the reins of his tall bay stallion, and took them from him.

"If anything goes, wrong, get the information to me quickly," he told Doom, who nodded and left to talk with his own daughter. With a slight grin towards his mother, he joked to her, "Mother, keep away from any mischief."

"You know very well I do not do mischief," she retorted good-naturedly with an indignant toss of her head. "Just be sure your cousin Marilen is well." When he leaned over to lightly kiss Sharn on the cheek, she whispered, "Go south."

Puzzled by her words, Lief thought it over quickly, and decided to store it close enough for it to be sought out when needed.


The three rode quickly. The journey was much shorter than walking, about a couple of days at a quick pace, but the need of rest took up another one and half day. By the time Lief and his friends arrived, bursting out of the forest path they had taken, it was noon and the sun high, burning the backs of their necks. The two men only wore their short sleeved tunics and pants, but their cloaks were hastily and messily tied to their bundle of belongings. Jasmine was perfectly fine--she never wore a long sleeve shirt unless the weather called for it.

They dismounted. Kree fluttered onto her shoulder after circling over Tora. The unusual silence boomed in the silence; the horses' panting sounded like a down feather falling softly to the ground. Filli did not even chatter.

Jasmine gently placed a hand on a tree trunk and closed her eyes as she listened for answers. Then she sighed and let her hand drop to her side.

"I do not hear anything," she informed them. "They seem as silent as those of the Dreaming Spring. But I do not understand!"

"Perhaps the Torans will," said Barda. "They come now."

Lief looked up from his job in trying to untangle his cloak from his bundle. There they were, seeming to emerge out of nowhere, a mass of people approaching them. Marilen led them.

"Marilen!"

The three did not rush forward, but they did walk the horses quickly out into the clearing before the gates to meet them. As Lief came closer and the Torans stopped their approach, many dropped to their knees in a sho of respect. A little frustrated, his hand moved to motion them up, but Jasmine caught it and kept it down.

"Welcome, cousin," greeted Marilen. Her tone was light, but her eyes reflected the stress she felt. His worry about the Shadow Chain was already stretching rapidly; to see Marilen this serious, he could see it was something a little more personal which had caused her the stress. "We have been expecting you."

"Is there something wrong? Are you all right?" asked Lief, concerned. "You look tired."

"Just a surprise visit during the night," she said. She drew out a grubby piece of paper. "This is for you." Marilen handed it to him. With stiff fingers he opened it and read: You will not find what you are looking for in Tora. Try south east.

The message was written in italic script with charcoal, the letters thin and messy. It looked hastily written, the hand jerky. Some letters were squished together while others were spaced far apart. Lief felt a small chill up his back. His mother was right, he should go south, though this mysterious person made more accurate directions. But who was this, and how would he, or she, knew what he was looking for?

"Who gave you this?" Jasmine's voice cut through the silence abruptly. Lief looked up, and saw Marilen looking away from them, instead staring at a rusty wooden handled knife in her hand. Her eyes had been close, but as soon as Lief glanced at her, they opened and she lifted her head.

"A young girl, around your age," she said. "Quite incredible one. As you know that Tora is filled with magic that lets no bad thing in, she came in and was not affected at all. Her blindness should have been cured as soon as she stepped in as well, but it wasn't. And this knife here," she showed it to them, "was spelled to kill me if I do not hand the note to you, Lief."