Читать онлайн «The Maze of the Beast»

Автор Эмили Родда

Contents

Title Page

1 Rescue

2 Fate Takes a Hand

3 A Hard Journey

4 The Stronghold

5 Friend or Foe?

6 A Change of Plans

7 Where Waters Meet

8 Steven

9 Onward

10 The River Queen

11 In the Night

12 Shadows

13 Disaster

14 Meetings

15 The Glus

16 Discoveries

17 Fight for Freedom

The Deltora Book of Monsters

Preview: The Golden Door

About the Author

Venture into Deltora

The story so far …

Sixteen-year-old Lief, fulfilling a pledge made by his father before he was born, is on a great quest to find the seven gems of the magic Belt of Deltora. The gems were stolen from the Belt to open the way for the evil Shadow Lord to invade Deltora. Hidden in fearsome places throughout the land, they must be restored to the Belt before the heir to the throne can be found and the Shadow Lord’s tyranny ended.

Lief’s companions are the man Barda, who was once a Palace guard, and Jasmine, a girl of Lief’s own age who they met in the fearful Forests of Silence. On their travels the three have discovered a secret resistance movement led by Doom, a mysterious scar-faced man who rescued them when they were captured by the brutal Grey Guards.

Five gems have been found. The topaz, symbol of faith, has the power to contact the spirit world, and to clear the mind. The ruby, symbol of happiness, pales when danger threatens, repels evil spirits, and is an antidote to venom. The opal, gem of hope, gives glimpses of the future. The lapis lazuli, the heavenly stone, is a powerful talisman. The powers of the emerald, for honor, are still to be discovered.

Following the map Lief’s father drew for him, the companions are now on their way to the coast and their next goal — The Maze of the Beast. Haste and secrecy are all-important, for the Shadow Lord has become aware of them, and Lief has learned that his parents have been imprisoned.

Now read on …

Lief, Barda, and Jasmine moved from Dread Mountain to the River Tor in silence and in haste, glad of the trees sheltering them from the open sky.

For many days they had been travelling like this, all too aware that at any moment an enemy might strike. For many nights they had slept in turns, fully dressed, with their weapons in their hands.

Soon they would reach the river. They knew they had only to follow it to reach Deltora’s west coast. There, somewhere, was the next goal marked on their map — the horribly named Maze of the Beast. There, if Lief’s father was right, lay the sixth stone of the Belt of Deltora.

But the Shadow Lord’s servants were watching for them — waiting for them to show themselves. The Shadow Lord knew that the topaz had been taken from the Forests of Silence, that the ruby was gone from the Lake of Tears, and the opal from the City of the Rats. Perhaps by now he even suspected that the lapis lazuli had in its turn been wrested from its terrible guardian in the Shifting Sands.

If the Dread Gnomes were successful in deceiving him, it would be some time before he realized that the emerald had already gone the way of the other four gems. But his servants would be in this area by now, lurking in the mountain’s foothills or searching from its skies. And the Maze of the Beast, and every road to it, would be guarded well by enemies searching for the group that fitted the description they had been given: a man, a boy, and a wild girl with a black bird.