abstract
| - During the time of Drumm, the king's chief advisor, the Shadow Lord had put in place the Sisters of the north, south, east and west. Each Sister was accompanied by a tombstone-like warning stone with a rhyming verse. Once in place the Sisters would sing a poisonous song that would slowly bring death to the land of Deltora. Doran marked the places of the Sisters on one of his maps before he was forced to be the guardian of the Sister of the West. His map was torn into fragments and marked with a twisted rhyme that revealed what would happen to the land upon the destruction of the Four Sisters. Doran had convinced the remaining dragons to sleep until a king wearing the Belt of Deltora awakened them, because he saw how they were being systematically exterminated one by one by the Shadow Lord's Ak Baba. Not knowing that he was unintentionally helping the Shadow Lord's plans by making the dragons sleep there was nothing that could destroy the Sisters. None of the people of Deltora knew that there was anything wrong for they became familiar the with song that was quietly poisoning the land. It wasn't until Lief, Barda, Jasmine and Doom tried to break the Crystal on the third floor of the palace, did they learn of the Shadow Lord's plan. It was in the table the crystal was embedded into that they found the first map fragment. Lief, Barda and Jasmine destroyed each of the Sisters with the help of the remaining dragons. However, they soon realised it was a trap created by the Shadow Lord. If the Four Sisters were killed, an ooze known as the grey tide would emerge from the centre of Deltora and flood the land, destroying every living thing until nothing was left. If one did not kill the Sisters, the land would die slowly and the people would suffer heavily. Each Sister was placed at one of the extreme points of Deltora, locations from which, if lines were traced on a map, crossed over Hira, the City of the Rats, where their songs sealed the grey tide. Each location was marked by a warning stone to travellers, though the stone in Del was personally intended for whichever royal family member found it.
|