Let's finish
The Shifting Sands.
Chapter XIV - Terror
Jasmine wonders what creature could have left those tracks, and Lief replies he doesn't know, but it's something that likes gold and perhaps gems. Perhaps, it's the Guardian. Barda says surely the Sand Beast is, but Jasmine shakes her head. They have seen the Sand Beast lay an egg, and found another empty stomach earlier. There could be hundreds, or thousands.
The low droning drums in Lief's ears, and he finds he can't stand looking at the tracks, even if his eyes keep getting drawn back to them. He looks up at the sky, but even there, there is nothing but a sea of clouds that seem to press down on him, squashing him against the endless dunes. And all the while the flies are stinging him. In the end, he can't bear it anymore, and with a yell he stomps on the marks, kicking and scattering them until they are fully gone, ignoring Barda's protests. He falls to the ground, beating and tearing at the sand, and when the others try to drag him to his feet, he fights them away.
And that is when there is a shift, a low rumbling, and the earth starts to move. Lief hears Barda and Jasmine cry out, and holds their hands as huge columns of sand thrust upwards all around them. They end up rolling on the ground as the quake makes them all fall, huddled together as the ground shakes more and more and the sand stings their bodies. In all this, Lief can feel that something is there, something alive and angry. He can feel that the creature is what's been drawing him out, something hungry for what Lief has. It wants the Belt, and it won't stop until it has taken the talisman.
And then, suddenly, the quake ends, the storm ceases, and the sky clears. Lief looks around, cleaning himself with trembling hands, and sees the whole desert has shifted. Dunes have risen and fallen, turning hills into plains and plains into hills. There is no sign of the ruined dune the Sand Beast was hiding into, or of the Grey Guards' remains. Barda comments this must be why they are called the Shifting Sands, but Jasmine says this wasn't a natural earthquake. It started when Lief kicked the symbols on the ground, and she asks Lief why he did it, but the boy is too busy looking around, staring at the changed scenary, all different save for the low, droning sound.
Jasmine tells Barda Lief won't answer, frightened, but she sounds far away to him. Looking around, Lief realizes that under the sky blanketed by the sea of yellow clouds, he can't tell which ways are east and west. They have no way to know where they came from or where they are going. He realizes this is the beginning of his vision in the Opal. His eyes fall to the ground, and he sees it.
As he realizes the meaning of the symbols in the sand, Barda shakes him, and Lief says he is alright. Barda doubts that, because he is acting like he has lost it, but Lief says it's Jasmine that lost something - her hidden dagger. Jasmine asks Lief if he found it, glad because it belonged to her father and she feared it was lost for good, but Lief says he is afraid it is, pointing at the symbol. As Barda and Jasmine see it, he explains the creature that caused the storm must have accepted the dagger as tribute, withdrawing for now.
Barda realizes the symbols earlier were the medal and the coins, and wonders why the creature would do this. Lief shrugs, saying that it's to show what it loves. What it owns. To leave a message to those who pass by. Jasmine says worried that Lief is talking strangely, like he knows this creature, and Lief says it is beyond knowing. He thinks back to the poem they saw before entering the Sands, and at the word 'mindless will'. A creature of mindless will rules the sand. The other things in it could leave the flesh, but the creature seeks treasure.
For the first time since entering the Sands, Lief touches the Belt, and his hand brushes the Topaz. His mind clears, but he knows it won't last long. Taking out a rope, he asks Barda to tie the three of them together, with him in the center, and begs him to not untie the rope, no matter what he might say. And then they march on.
The night is dark, with the moon and stars unable to pierce the sea of clouds above. Barda and Jasmine ask Lief to stop again and again, but he refuses, urging them on. In the end, however, Jasmine has enough. She tells Lief they can't keep going, and the boy has no retort: he also wants to stop, even if he knows he is exhausted too. Jasmine unties the rope to sit down, and starts lighting a fire using a torch and the maces of the Grey Guards. Lief surrenders, sitting at the fire, and Barda does the same, untying the rope as they have stopped, stretching out.
Barda sighs with satisfaction as the fire catches. And in that moment the ground shakes again, the sand heaves, and the world around them seems to explode.
Chapter XV - The Center
Lief was alone, among rippling dunes that had no ending. He knew that somehow the night had passed. Light was filtering through the thick, yellow cloud. The sand beneath his feet was warm.
The vision has come to pass. He remembers bits and pieces of what happened in the night. The sand raising from under him, sending him fly into the air. Jasmine and Barda calling his name. The fire spraying into the night. But now there is nothing. Just his tracks behind him, the useless tails of rope still dangling from his waist, and the droning sound, growing louder, filling his ears and his mind.
Looking down at his hand, he sees he is clutching the wooden bird Jasmine took from Ferdinand's stall in Rithmere. He must have clutched it in the storm, after it was blown out of her pockets by the Guardian. He puts it in his pocket, and keeps walking. His mouth is parched, and he knows he has been walking for hours, mindlessly, but has no memory of it. He is being drawn to something. To The Center. He wants to stop, but he knows he can't. He knows death will come if he falls asleep.
Staggering, he reaches another dune and starts to climb, but his feet lose purchase, and he falls. He lays on the ground. He falls asleep.
In his dream, his friends in Del are laughing, picking up gold coins from choked, overflowing gutters. He wants to join them, but his parents call for him. As he watches, he realizes the gutters are choked with red bees, and overflowing with Queen Bee Cider, poruing from broken barrels. The bees rise and his friends are stung as the Grey Guards laugh. They call for him, call for his help, but Lief is tired, slow. His eyes keep closing, and he feels heavy.
Behind him his mother says, "Softly, softly, boy!" and he turns to her. But her face has turned into the face of Queen Bee. Bees cover her back and arms and swarm in her hair. She is frowning, screeching harshly at him, shaking her fist. "Smoke, not fire! Smoke, not fire …"
Lief bolts awake, and sees a black figure in the sky, screeching. He thinks it's an Ak-Baba for a moment, and then sees its Kree, the bird making low circles above him. He staggers up, only to see sand covers his lower body, his chest, his neck. If Kree's screech hadn't woken him up, he would have kept sinking, covered by the sands. He wonders if he would have woken up even when he was fully covered.
The dream, however, is still vivid in his mind, and helps him understand the poem. Not 'Be now', but below. And not 'survive', but... Before he can finish, Jasmine and Barda appear from atop the hill. He feels tears in his eyes, realizing he had thought his friends were dead, and starts walking to them, when something emerges from the dune behind him. He sees a Sand Beast, larger than the one they saw before. It must have been following him, and now it's ready to strike.
Lief staggers back, hand going to his sword, only to stumble in the rope, and fall to the ground, on top of it. He scrambles to his knees, knowing it's too late, the monster lunging. And then a blister hits it, and then another. The creature shrieks in pain, spinning in agony, its great legs digging trenches in the sand. With an ankle still tangled in the rope, Lief crawls away, and Barda and Jasmine reach him, Barda still holding the sling he stole from the Grey Guard's remains, and the blisters with it.
Lief starts thanking them, but Barda waves it away, growling angrily that it seems it's his duty to be his nursemaid forever. Lief turns away, hurt, but Barda pulls him back, shouting at him for running away, for not even trying to find them. Lief realizes his friend is angry because he was worried for him, and starts to explain, but Jasmine pushes them away, saying the Beast is not dead, and if it recovers it will attack them. Lief, however, shakes his head. Where they are going, the Beast won't follow.
-
I feel this is a good point to talk about how good and terrifying the atmosphere of those chapters is. The Shifting Sands and its mysterious Guardian feel dangerous in a way none of the other places we have seen did before, largely before the true enemy here are the Sands themselves. That, and Lief's own mind. Of course there is an element of control from the Sands, a force driving him towards a specific direction, but more than that Lief is terrified. The vision he got through the Opal was so real, so terrible, that his mental state is already compromised even before the Sands start doing their thing.
In a way, it makes me think a bit of eldritch abominations, and how some people feel drawn to them in the stories. Like these, the Shifting Sands is ruled by an unknowable, mindless will, and people can't defeat it or kill it, just survive it.
-
As they walk, the trio grows more and more silent, while Lief hears the droning noise grow louder in his ears. From the distance, they start to see a low peak rising high in the middle of the desert, dark and mysterious. A cone that Barda thinks is a volcano, but that Lief has identified for what it really is. The droning sound grows louder, the air vibrating as they start to climb, and when they reach the top they look into the abyss, seeing swirling red sand, like that of a storm, but with no winds moving it. The Belt burns around Lief's waist. Barda asks what it is, and Lief repeats the poem he has now completed.
"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.
This is the Hive. The sand itself is the Guardian. Barda asks how that's possible, when they have walked on it, and have seen the creatures in it, but Lief says that they were just crawling on a much larger host. The Sands are just the surface, made up of the Hive's dead. Below it are the living, the servants of the hive. They are the ones that make the marks in the Sands, the ones that collect the treasures. The ones who cause the storms. The gem was simply dropped by the Ak-Baba somewhere in the Sands, but the Hive found it, and brought it where it takes everything else: the Center.
He looks down, and tells them they need smoke, 'smoke, not fire'. As Jasmine prepares a torch, Lief hands his sword to Barda and takes the rope instead, tying it around his waist. He tells him that he must apologize, but Barda must be his nursemaid again, and asks him to not let go the rope this time.
Chapter XVI - The Cone
Lief crawls into the pit, Barda and Jasmine slowly lowering him into the Cone. With his cloak bound tightly around him and his face covered except for his eyes, he starts descending. The torch, bundled in wet rags, billows smoke. He isn't sure it's helping, but if it doesn't, no other weapon will, and the words of the Queen Bee, burnt into his mind since he awoke from the dream, have to be there for a reason. And as he dives lower and lower, he enters the swarming mass of red dots.
It's strong, a hot, rough wind, a stinging whirlwind, that spins him, whips him, presses him, with a sound like thunder filling the air. The Hive doesn't care for him, it doesn't see him as food, a captive, or a hated enemy. It just sees him as the carrier of the thing it wants, the Belt of Deltora. Panic grips Lief, and he starts to scream, but the voice of the Queen Bee resonates in his mind, repeating what she told him when he saw her bees for the first time. Softly, gently. He stops the scream in his throat and opens his eyes. The whirlwind is weakening, as the smoke is finally starting to mix with it.
The Hive begins to retreat, driven back by the smoke, and he sees what it was hiding. A glistening, towering pyramid of cells made of gold, glass, gems and bleached bones. Lief tries to tell himself he expected it, but the reality goes beyond anything he has imagined.
Anything that would not decay, or would decay so slowly that it would have to be replaced only after centuries, had been gathered and used for the building. Skulls and bones of every shape and size were packed side by side with glass bottles and jars, coins, crystals and gems, gold chains, rings and bracelets, and yet more bones. The individual parts, small and large, had been fitted together with such care that the tower glittered like an enormous jewel.
Lief wonders what's in the cells, but realizes it has to be The Hive's youngs, packed in the thousands, fed of a brew of decayed prey like lizards and flies until they grow into... Whatever the Hive is. He wonders about that. Are they insects, or are they something else, some form of life he cannot even imagine, an ancient thing that has existed when everything around it changes? Shaken, he wishes he could kick the pyramid, destroy it, send that symbol of evil tumbling down below, in the darkness where no doubt the Hive Queen lurks. He can imagine it, bloated and monstrous, laying uncountable eggs. But if he does, he knows that the smoke won't save him.
He starts searching for the gem. He knows that it will be difficult, so he looks for the Belt. Hidden in the smoke, he can barely see the Topaz and Ruby, but the Opal is shining bright. Lief wonders why, trying to remember
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 …
He can't remember the last sentence, but he knows he has to keep going. The torch won't last forever. He starts examining the pyramid. At the very top, he sees Jasmine's dagger. Below it, the gold coins and medal, their prize for the Games, and with them white bones. Lief shudders seeing them, the last remnants of Carn 2 and Carn 8, stripped of every trace of flesh. He sees the pyramid is shining more, and realizes the torch is starting to die, the smoke thinning. He needs to keep searching. He looks down further, seeing bones and gold and pots and gems, and then... He sees it, and remembers the missing words of the book.
The opal has a special relationship with the lapis lazuli, the heavenly stone, a powerful talisman.
Sure enough, carefully wedged, supporting the ceiling of an empty cell, the Lapis Lazuli is there. He reaches for it, but he realizes his mistake. If he pulls the stone out, the cell will collapse, and the ones above will follow. The Hive will attack, he will be killed, the Belt lost forever. He needs something else to replace it, and so he starts looking into his pockets, though he knows he has nothing.
And then he finds the wooden bird, just the right size he needs. The droning starts growing again, the Hive awakening as the smoke thins further. Holding his breath, he reaches for the Lapis Lazuli, his other hand ready with the wooden bird, the torch held under his armpit. He grips it, and the stone slides down easily, more easily than it should, Lief realizing the Opal is calling for it. He moves, pushing in the bird. Not fast enough. The pyramid shakes. The red cloud moves close, Lief feeling its burning, droning edge bulging inward, touching the bare skin of his chest. He holds back a scream, and tugs twice onto the rope as the pyramid keeps trembling lightly. If anything falls...
He sees the dagger detach from the top and lunges, managing to barely grab the tip with one hand as it passes by. And then he can only wait as Barda and Jasmine lift him out of the Hive, the smoke growing thinner, the Hive louder. But before it fully awakes, Lief emerges, crawling into the fresh air above. He shows the duo the Lapis Lazuli, and the moment he does the clouds above break apart, revealing the moon and stars, beaming down on them like a blessing as Lief slips the stone in the Belt.
-
The Hive is such a departure from the previous Guardians, and it really has a completely different feel. Not a giant snake, not a sorceress and her transformed slaves, not an undead knight, but a pure eldritch horror motivated by 'mindless will'. There is a lot here that feeds into that feeling of unknowable evil, from the Hive Queen hidden in the depths to the Hive existing for the Hive's sake and nothing else, eternal as everything changes.
The Hive is also, understandably, one of the main secrets of Deltora: before Lief, only another person knew of its existence. The story goes that near the Shifting Sands lived once Rigane 'the Mad', a woman that spent forty years living in a hut near the Sands, observing the Sand Beasts. She is the main source of all that is known about the Sand Beasts. Five times she ventured deep into the Sands, using a special equipment to keep vibrations low and hide herself from the Sand Beasts. Before her final journey, she carved the stone with rhymes that still sits outside the Shifting Sands, and left behind a note, along with her life work.
"I must return to the Centre. I can no longer resist the call, though I know it will mean my death. My bones will serve the Hive. I am content."
Rigane's hut is now covered by the Shifting Sands, the Sands having expanded much over the centuries, before the people of the region built a massive wall of boulders. Some say it was built to keep the Sands contained, others the Sand Beasts.
As for art, the Hive is usually represented through the jeweled pyramid. Here is McBride's
The anime meanwhile decided to pretty much drop the Hive's unknowable nature. It's never made clear in the anime what the Hive wants money for, since unlike the books there is no great pyramid of cells. The Lapis Lazuli is wedged on the inner wall of the Cone, and the Hive itself, rather than excercising the invisible draw Lief feels through the series, is very much a talking creature, a swarm of bees that takes the appearance of a face to speak. Also, in the end, Jasmine throws a blister at it (in the anime, Blisters are fire bombs rather than poison) and the swarm is mostly killled.
... Yeah I'm not a big fan of the anime's take on the Hive.
-
Lief turns to Jasmine, handing her the dagger in exchange for the wooden bird. The girl slips it in her clothes, holding it tightly. Then, exhausted, Lief sways, Barda catching him. The boy promises they are safe now. The Lapis Lazuli is a talisman, and will protect them.
The trio descends the Cone, and starts walking. Thanks to the Lapis Lazuli, they are granted protection from the dangers of the night, and the sky above, with its stars visible, makes it possible to traverse the Sands. Still, they don't stop until they reach the grey rocks that surround the desert, safe for Jasmine applying a balm on Lief's chest for the burns. When they do, Lief tells them what happened in the Hive, and Barda thanks the heavens for his safety and the Belt's. Jasmine says cheerfully that now they have four stones. Surely it will be easy, compared to this. Lief doesn't answer, already asleep, so Jasmine turns to Barda instead, insisting. Barda looks at Lief, thinking how much older the boy looks, how much he has gone through.
Barda was not wearing the Belt. The opal could not give him glimpses of the future. But a shadow crossed his face and his smile was grim as he answered."We shall see, Jasmine," he said. "We shall see."
-
And so ends
The Shifting Sands. What a book it is, definitely up there as one of my favorites from the whole series. The Guardian is unique, the setting is amazing, and Rithmere is great too, giving us a proper glimpse in Deltora's society under the Shadowlord.
Four stones get, three more to go, and a heir to find. This is also where the first of the four books that collect the Deltora book in larger volumes ends, so double landmark here.
Next... Well, book-wise, it's
Dread Mountain, but first we will take a small side turn and visit the anime for episodes 22 and 23, aka the first Thaegan arc. Just to have something light to put after all the terror. (Might tag them as Extras though, so they don't disrupt the Let's Read).
