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

past.
    “Ak-Baba,” he hissed. His arm tightened around Anna’s shoulders.
    She turned to him, her eyes wide and frightened.
    “Ak-Baba,” he repeated slowly, still staring at the palace. “Great birds that eat dead flesh and live for a thousand years. Seven of them serve the Shadow Lord.”
    “Why are they here?” Anna whispered.
    “I do not know. But I fear —” Jarred broke off abruptly and leaned forward. He had seen something glinting brightly in the first feeble rays of the sun.
    For a moment he stood motionless. Then he turned to Anna, his face grim and pale.
    “Endon’s arrow is in the tree,” he said. “The call has come.”

    In moments Jarred had dressed and run from the house behind the forge. He hurried up the hill to the palace, his mind racing.
    How was he to reach Endon? If he climbed the wall, the guards inside would certainly see him. He would be hit by a dozen arrows before he reached the ground. The cart that collected the food scraps would be of no use to him. Prandine must have guessed that Jarred had used it to escape, because it was no longer permitted to enter the palace. These days it waited between the two sets of gates while guards loaded it with sacks.
    Endon himself is the only one who can help me, Jarred thought as he ran. Perhaps he will be watching for me, waiting for me …
    But as he slowed, panting, in sight of the palace gates, he could see that they were firmly closed and the road outside was deserted.
    Jarred moved closer, his spine prickling. The long grass that ringed the palace walls whispered in the breeze of dawn. He could be walking into a trap.Perhaps at any moment guards would spring from their hiding places in the grass and lay hands on him. Perhaps Endon had at last decided to betray him to Prandine.
    His feet brushed something lying in the dust of the road. He looked down and saw a child’s wooden arrow. A small piece of paper had been rolled around the arrow’s shaft and tied there.
    His heart beating hard, Jarred picked up the arrow and pulled away the paper. But as he flattened it out and looked at it, his excitement died.

    It was just a child’s drawing. Some palace child had been playing a game, practicing shooting arrows over the wall as he and Endon once had done.
    Jarred screwed up the paper in disgust and threw it to the ground. He looked around again at the closed gates, the empty road. Still there was no movement, no sign. There was nothing but the wooden arrow lying in the dust and the little ball of paper rolling slowly away from him, driven by the breeze. He stared at it, and the foolish little rhyme came back to him.
    Strange, he thought idly. That rhyme sounds almost like a set of instructions. Instructions that a small child could chant and remember.
    An idea seized him. He ran after the paper and snatched it up again. He smoothed out the creases and looked at it closely, this time seeing two things that he had overlooked before. The paper was yellowed with age. And the writing, though childish, was strangely familiar.
    This is the way Endon used to print when he was small, he thought in wonder. And Endon drew the picture, too. I am sure of it!
    Suddenly he realized what must have happened. Endon had had little time. Yet he had wanted to send Jarred a message. So he had snatched up one of his old childhood drawings and sent it over the wall. He had used a child’s wooden arrow so that the guards would take no notice if they saw it lying on the road.
    And if Jarred was right, Endon had not chosen just any drawing. This one had a special meaning for him. Why else would he have kept it?
    Wake the bear,
    Do not fear …
    Jarred waited no longer. With the paper clutched in his hand he left the road and moved left, following the wall.
    The road was out of sight by the time he found what he was searching for. Even overgrown with long grass and shadowed by a clump of straggly bushes, the shape of the huge rock was clear. It really did look exactly