Deltora Quest #1: The Forests of Silence Read Online Free Page A

lessons.
    “They are all the same,” Crian said, watching him reading one after the other. “The only difference between them is the name at the bottom. For centuries messages have been sent to the palace, begging for help. And these accursed parchments are all the people have ever received in return. Nothing has ever been done. Nothing!”
    Jarred’s throat tightened with pain and anger.“King Alton, at least, never received your messages, Crian,” he said, as calmly as he could. “I think they were kept from him by his chief advisor. A man called Prandine.”
    “The king signed these replies and fixed to them his royal seal,” Crian pointed out coldly, flicking his finger at the box. “As did his mother and grandfather before him.”
    “It is the Rule — the custom — that the chief advisor prepares all replies for the king to sign,” exclaimed Jarred. “The old king signed and sealed whatever Prandine put in front of him.”
    “Then he was a fool and a weakling!” Crian snapped back. “As no doubt his son is also! Endon will be as useless to us as his father.” He shook his head. “I fear for Deltora,” he muttered. “We are now so weak that should invasion come from the Shadowlands we could do nothing to protect ourselves.”
    “The Shadow Lord will not invade, Grandfather,” Anna soothed. “Not while the Belt of Deltora protects us. And our king guards the Belt. That, at least, he does for us.”
    Jarred felt a chill of fear. But he could not bring himself to tell Anna that she was wrong. If she found out that the king did not wear the Belt but let it be shut away, under the care of others, she would lose the last of her hope.
    Oh, Endon, he thought, as he went to bed that night. I cannot reach you unless you wish it. You are toowell guarded. But you can reach me. Go to the hollow tree. Read my note. Send the signal.
    From that time on, before he started work each morning, Jarred looked up at the tree rising against the misty cloud on the hill. He would look carefully, searching for the glint of the king’s golden arrow at the top. The signal that Endon needed him.
    But it was a long, long time before the signal came. And by then it was too late.

Y ears passed and life went on. Jarred and Anna married. Then old Crian died and Jarred took his place as blacksmith.
    Sometimes Jarred almost forgot that he had ever had another life. It was as if his time at the palace had been a dream. But still, every dawn, he looked up to the tree on the hill. And still he often read the small book he had found in the palace library. Then he feared for what the future might hold. He feared for his beloved Anna and the child they were expecting. He feared for himself, for Endon, and for the whole of Deltora.
    One night, exactly seven years after the night Endon was crowned, Jarred tossed restlessly in his bed.
    “It is nearly daybreak and you have not slept, Jarred,” Anna said gently, at last. “What is troubling you?”
    “I do not know, dear heart,” Jarred murmured. “But I cannot rest.”
    “Perhaps the room is too warm,” she said, climbing out of bed. “I will open the window a little more.”
    She had pulled the curtains aside and was reaching for the window fastening when suddenly she screamed and jumped back.
    Jarred leapt up and ran to her.
    “There!” Anna exclaimed, pointing, as he put his arm around her. “Oh, Jarred, what are they?”
    Jarred stared through the window and caught his breath. In the sky above the palace on the hill, monstrous shapes were wheeling and circling.
    It was still too dark to see them clearly. But there was no doubt that they were huge birds. There were seven. Their necks were long. Their great, hooked beaks were cruel. Their mighty wings flapped clumsily but strongly, beating at the air. As Jarred watched, they swooped, rose again, and then separated, flying off swiftly in different directions.
    A name came to him. A name from the school room of his