Read an extract from Landovel by Emily Rodda.
From the legendary Emily Rodda, bestselling author of Deltora Quest, comes an epic adventure unlike any you've read before.
Presented in a stunning embellished giftbox containing all three books with colourful sprayed edges, Landovel is a special keepsake. It’s the ultimate fantasy quest – ready for you to binge from start to finish.
Dive into the first chapter of Landovel below!
Chapter One
The boy could hear the grunting, animal sounds of fighting and the clash of metal. The cabin ceiling shook as the heavy feet of the invaders thudded on the deck above.
‘That scrawny bosun went over the side, Cram!’ a man called. ‘He’s cut bad, but he’s swimming for it.’
‘The eels can have him!’ a grating voice shouted back. ‘Get below!’
Boots scrabbled on the ladder that led down to the lower deck. The memory of a hurried voice echoed in the boy’s clouded mind.
He’ll be safe in here. Safe in here . . .
Dragging a blanket with him, the boy squirmed to the head of the narrow bunk till his back was pressed against the cabin wall. He drew up his knees, clutching the book he had been reading to his chest with his good arm, making himself as small as possible. He shut his eyes. I am invisible, he thought.
Numb with fear, he waited.
---
Cram the slave-trader kicked his way through the bodies of the dead. There were just eight of them. Judging by their clothes, five had been passengers. Two were women – not so young, but still fine looking. What a waste!
Cram shoved his bloodstained axe into his belt.
This had been an easy capture, but he wondered if it had been worth making. The ship was a Free Landovel rescue ship – an ugly old flat-bottomed barge with sails, made for silent running through shallow water. It had clearly been drifting for quite a while. Its defenders had looked exhausted and half-starved, however fiercely they had fought.
And the rest of the desperate souls who had once crowded the ship had gone where Cram could not follow. The storm that had snapped the mast, torn the sails to rags and splintered the lifeboats had plainly been savage and very sudden.
Cram knew how it must have been. The living spaces in these rescue ships were cramped and airless. Passengers spent as much time as they could on deck.
Caught unawares by the storm, the ship rolling and pitching beneath their feet, most would have been swept overboard or killed by flying wreckage.
Cram cursed, not thinking of the doomed people’s terror but of the money he would have made by selling them as slaves. Thinking, too, of the gold rings and coins that might have gone to the bottom with their owners, though wretches escaping True Landovel usually had few enough of those.
A heavy silence lay on the deck now that his men were all below. Might as well be a ghost ship, Cram thought uneasily. Maybe we should have left this one alone. He remembered the sight of it gliding slowly from a great shimmering bank of El-mist. He tapped his brow with crossed fingers, to ward off bad luck.
‘What are you lot doing down there?’ he bellowed into the open hatchway, where a ladder stretched down into darkness. ‘Harker – report!’
‘No sign of life!’ a muffled voice called back. ‘Hold’s flooded. This deck’s drained, but it’s been awash. By the Comet, it stinks down here!’
Cram cursed again. ‘Never mind the stink!’ he bawled. ‘Get the bundles searched. I’m coming down.’
He swung himself down the ladder. The smell of damp and rot came up to meet him. Harker was waiting below with a flaming torch. His eyes were sullen, but he said nothing. He was a big man, but he was still dwarfed by Cram, who looked like a hulking bear beside him.
‘Captain’s cabin?’ Cram growled.
‘Left it to you, like always. It’s up a couple of steps – might have stayed dry.’ Harker led the way through the big, foul-smelling space, where hammocks hung like rows of drowned bats. Men were hunched between the rows, searching through sodden bags of possessions.
As usual on these rescue ships, the captain’s cabin was the only private place. This one was on a raised platform jammed into the stern. Cram tramped up to the door. It was locked. Behind it, there was silence.
Cram drew his axe. He nodded at Harker to be ready and gave the door a mighty kick. The flimsy lock gave and the door flew open, crashing against the cabin wall. Cram took in the scene with a single glance.
Weak light struggled through salt-smeared windows. A few leather-bound books had fallen onto the rug that covered the deck boards. The desk beneath the windows was in disarray. Drawers gaped. Sleek, newfangled instruments that Cram would never use lay tumbled together where they had fallen.
So, the captain had left in a hurry, without securing anything, but he had taken the time to lock the door. Valuables in here all right, Cram thought, his mood lifting.
He stuck his axe back into his belt, lumbered to the desk and started poking through the drawers. No gold, of course. Free Landovel sailors were paid in credits. But here were two boxes of bullets – that was something! Plenty of firearms in the treasure room back at the Rock, but guns were useless without—
‘Cram!’ snapped Harker.
Cram turned with a scowl. Harker was standing in the cabin doorway. He jerked his head at the bunk fixed to the wall opposite the desk.
Cram looked, and blinked.
A boy was huddled on the narrow bed, half covered with a blanket. He looked to be eleven or twelve years old. He had dark hair and was wearing a white shirt much too big for him. He sat so still that he could have been a dummy made of wax, but his eyes were huge and black with fear.
It had been a shock, but Cram recovered quickly.
‘So?’ he snarled.
‘I thought you hadn’t seen him,’ said Harker, with just the suggestion of a sneer.
‘Course I saw him,’ Cram blustered. ‘Get him onto Hawk and chain him up! He’s one for the Rock, anyway.’
Harker strode to the bunk and pulled away the blanket. The boy winced in pain, but made no sound. His left arm was scarred and twisted, the hand stiffened into a claw.
‘You won’t get any work out of this one, Cram,’ Harker said. ‘That arm won’t straighten. He’s good for nothing.’
Cram shrugged. ‘Kill him then.’
Harker drew his knife. Cram began to turn back to the desk. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw what the boy was clutching to his chest. It was an open book.
‘Wait!’ he barked.
Harker looked around in surprise. Cram pushed him aside and took his place beside the bunk. The boy looked up at the huge, shaggy figure looming over him, but still made no sound.
‘Can you read that?’ Cram growled, jabbing a blunt finger at the book.
The boy hesitated, then nodded.
‘No one in True Landovel can read,’ jeered Harker.
‘Books are against the law.’
‘His ma and pa might have taught him in secret,’ said Cram. ‘They were on this ship, weren’t they? Law-abiding citizens of True don’t try to escape to the wicked south!’ He laughed and stabbed his finger at the book again. ‘Read to me then, scum!’ he ordered. ‘And if you’ve been lying, I’ll have you skinned.’
The boy tilted the book till he could see the open pages, and began to read.
‘The civil war that was to split the island of Landovel into the two enemy states of True Landovel and Free Landovel began when Oswald the Merry died—’
His voice was cracked and husky. He stopped, glanced fearfully up at Cram’s frowning face, cleared his throat and quickly went on.
‘King Oswald’s anointed heir was Princess Alma, the firstborn of his twin children. Alma was as practical and energetic as her father. Like him, she delighted in the scientific discoveries and inventions that had transformed Landovel during Oswald’s long reign. Alma’s—’
‘The little worm’s trying to put one over on you, Cram,’ Harker broke in with contempt. ‘He couldn’t read all them long words! He’s just parroting a lesson he knows by heart.’
‘No.’ Cram had been staring at the boy with the same fascination he would have shown if a dog had begun to read to him. ‘His eyes are moving along the lines.’
He shoved the boy’s injured arm. ‘Go on!’ he ordered. ‘And this time, don’t stop till I tell you.’
‘Alma’s twin brother, Greville, however,’ the boy read through the tears of pain that blurred his eyes, ‘believed that machines, science and modern medicine were against nature, and therefore evil. He claimed that the first guardians of Landovel, the immortal El of myth and legend, had warned him in dreams that the unnatural use of the land must cease.
‘The legends of the El were favourite fireside tales, but few people believed them to be true. Gradually, however, Greville gained a small following among the ignorant and superstitious. Their ranks were swelled by Greville’s circle of flatterers, and those who insisted he was his father’s rightful heir because he was male.
‘Greville’s challenge for the throne was not taken seriously, because he would not allow his army to fight with any but the most primitive weapons. Alma could have destroyed his few strongholds easily with the far deadlier weapons at her disposal. Then came the great natural disaster later called the Day of the Comet or, by Greville, Star Fall.
‘A fiery meteorite of enormous size crashed into the sea to Landovel’s north-east, causing a tidal wave and a series of massive earthquakes that killed thousands and changed Landovel’s face forever. Where land cracked and fell away, the ocean rushed in. The great northern city of Octavia was lost beneath the waves. More importantly, the sea claimed Landovel’s broken centre, dividing the island into two parts separated by the broad strait now known as the Channel of the Comet.
‘Greville declared that the El had made a star fall as punishment for Landovel’s wickedness. In their misery and terror, many of the surviving people believed him. Queen Alma and her remaining supporters were driven south, escaping across the new channel in boats and rafts. They made the south island their base, calling it Free Landovel to distinguish it from the land across the water, now firmly in enemy hands.
‘In the north, Greville announced that the El had granted him eternal life, and would guide him as he ruled what he called True Landovel. True would be purified of machinery, and the people would live simply, according to the laws of nature. He then unveiled a great stone, a fragment of the Comet, to which was fastened a silver plate engraved with the so-called “El Prophecy”—’
‘Bah, enough!’ barked Cram. ‘This history pretends to tell the whole truth, but it’s on the Free Landovel side – any fool can see that. And what use are history books anyway? The past is the past – bones and dust!’
He grabbed the book from the boy’s hands. ‘Still, you can read, all right. That’s good. I’ve got books aplenty back at the Rock, and no one who can read them to me in the whole cursed place!’
He swung round to Harker, catching him sneering. ‘And you can get that look off your scurvy face, Harker!’ he snarled. ‘What’s one slave more or less to you?’
‘Another mouth to feed,’ Harker muttered. ‘Don’t seem worth it for a few storybooks. The men won’t like it, Cram. They’ll see it as a weakness.’
‘They can see it any way they like,’ Cram grunted, but he seemed to be thinking.
Harker pressed his advantage. His knife was still in his hand. He eyed the boy on the bunk with the disgust he felt for all weak, helpless creatures.
‘There won’t be many more easy pickings for us in these seas, Cram,’ he said. ‘Everything’s changed since that bungled rebellion up in True. This must have been one of the last rescue ships to escape, and we’re going to get little or nothing out of it.’
‘We’ll have to spread our net a bit wider, that’s all,’ growled Cram. ‘And this boy won’t just be my reader. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but Dree pegged out just before we left. One spoonful of that stew meant for me was all it took. So I need a new poison taster,
don’t I? This boy can be it.’
He grinned unpleasantly. ‘Unless you’d like to volunteer for the job, Harker?’
Harker remained expressionless, but his face turned a sickly grey. He shook his head.
‘And here’s another thing for you to chew on, Harker,’ said Cram. ‘If you blab to the crew about my taster being a reader as well, you’ll have worse than poison to worry about. Hear me?’
He turned back to the boy on the bunk. ‘You got a name, scum?’
‘Derry,’ the boy said. Pain was shooting through his damaged arm, and behind his eyes there was whirling darkness. In the darkness, he could see wild water. He could hear the name screamed again and again over a roaring wind. A woman’s voice – high,
anguished, panic-stricken.
‘Derry!’ the voice shrieked. ‘Derry! Derry! Derry . . .’
He crawled into the cave of his mind, away from the screaming, the terror and the pain, away from Cram’s red-veined eyes and Harker’s knife. He stayed there through two days of darkness and hunger in the hold of Cram’s ship. But when rough hands hauled him up into a world of angry red light and stinging spray, he could stay there no longer.
Behind the ship, the sun was setting. Ahead, dark against the sky, a grim fortress jutted like a giant fang from a waste of water. Sheer walls of stone rose high from black rocks where foam surged, but facing the ship was a yawning gap screened by a gate of iron bars. As Derry watched, the gate began to rise as if great jaws were opening to swallow the ship and everyone in it.
This was Cram’s Rock.
Landovel
by Emily Rodda
An epic 'three parts in one' fantasy quest, in a unique, irresistible package.
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