Dragonsight (32 page)

The slave nearly swooned such was his fear.

‘The smell?’ Zimak asked patiently. ‘The Kindred are secreting their plumes and taking flight. They will not stay among the trees during an attack. To your battle stations!’ the slave screamed.

Zimak pushed the slave from him. In the scant moments it took Zimak to interrogate the slave, the platform had emptied, save an Undying who had silently crept up on them and stood guard.

‘I never did like heights,’ Jelindel said. ‘Daretor?’

The swordsman threw his sword to her. She caught it, and in the same motion, sliced upwards. The Undying guard brought his own sword around and met her attack with a resounding clash. The moment that Jelindel staggered back, Zimak swept up Retok’s fallen sword and swung with all his might.

The Undying’s head hung in the air for a split second as though in shock, then fell. Its body followed seconds later. Within seconds the spiderlings abandoned their host and, with no ready host available, milled around in confusion.

The trio made for the edge of the platform and peered over. The ground, though clad in murky shifting shadows, was only a hundred feet below. They quickly located three draglines hanging from the platform. Tying them together gave them a reach short of the forest floor.

Jelindel pulled the knots taut, testing their strength. ‘It will have to do.’

Already they could hear the battle sounds approaching. Daretor tied off the makeshift rope and dropped the end over the side. One by one they climbed down, hand over hand, and looping the hardened silk between their ankles and feet. It was tiring and dangerous work; their sweaty palms made their grip slippery. Had it not been for the stickiness of the draglines they would have lost their hold and plummeted to their deaths. Once, Jelindel started to fall but Daretor snagged her wrist and held on till she regained her grip on the rope.

Shortly they were on the ground, breathing heavily, and listening to the battle noise. The air was alive with the sound of frenzied chittering. Without a word, they moved in the opposite direction, ploughing through deep leaf mould that slowed their passage on the one hand, and dampened the noise of their passing on the other.

Before long they entered a section of the forest where the trees were knitted together by impenetrable spiny gorse. They stood more than twenty feet high and seemed to form walls through which rough paths ran.

The three made use of the paths and picked up the pace, but it wasn’t long before the reality dawned on them.

‘It’s a maze,’ said Jelindel, plucking a brownish swatch from one of the thorns. The kid leather clearly came from her own tunic.

‘We’re going in circles,’ Daretor confirmed. ‘Retok warned us of ground defences.’

Zimak glanced apprehensively at the dark thorn maze. ‘What do we do now?’ A sudden noise made them stop and listen. It was the sound of a creature breathing, along with something else … like a large body being dragged through the mulch.

‘If we’re going to be lost,’ Zimak answered himself, ‘I think I’d rather be in another part of the maze.’

‘For once we agree on something,’ said Daretor, keeping his voice down.

‘You don’t suppose the Kindred have some ground-dwelling cousins, do you?’ asked Jelindel.

Zimak scowled. ‘You can keep your imagination to yourself.’

‘Let’s move, then,’ she said. ‘Whatever happens, Osric will be looking for us. S’cressling might also sense the dragonsight if she’s close.’

‘Let’s hope she senses it in time,’ said Daretor.

‘Can’t you
use
that thing? Maybe it could show us the way out,’ Zimak said.

‘Zimak is right,’ said Daretor.

‘I can try,’ Jelindel said, ‘but right now I think we should stay on the move, and try to keep a straight line. We need to find a hill or a clearing.’

With Daretor leading, they pushed on cautiously. Zimak picked up the rear, while Jelindel carefully examined the dragonsight, running her fingers across its multifaceted surface and murmuring soft spells that sounded like prayers.

The trio had been moving for almost an hour when they heard the noise again, startlingly close. They were moving through rank brambles and weeds when the noise burst on them. Something charged from the other side of a thorn wall. It nearly broke through, and they glimpsed a vicious set of mandibles and the front part of a spider that was the size of a cow. It tore frenziedly at the wall, trying to gore them.

Daretor struck down with his sword, cleaving the creature’s skull. They didn’t wait to see if there were any more. Heedless of the thorns snatching them, they hurried on, putting as much distance behind them as possible.

Breathless, they eventually stumbled to a halt, hands on knees, trying to get their breath.

Jelindel gasped a few words. ‘I
felt
it!’ she said. When she had her breathing under control, she explained that moments before the attack she had felt a kind of
tug
inside the dragonsight, as if it were indicating the direction from which the attack was about to come. And before that, she had noticed that every time they reached a crossing or a fork in the way she had felt a similar, but fainter, tug that she had dismissed as some quirk of the gemstone.

‘What are you saying?’ asked Daretor.

‘I think it’s trying to tell us how to get out of here.’

‘Why would it do that?’ asked Zimak. ‘It’s done nothing for us so far.’

Jelindel had thought about that. ‘Maybe it wants to go home as much as we do. I say we try it. We have nothing to lose.’

From that point on whenever they came to an intersection of gorse corridors or a fork, Jelindel gestured either left or right, or straight ahead. Daretor forged down the path indicated.

Shortly they had left the maze and re-entered the forest proper. The dark walls loomed behind. Exiting the maze, however, must have triggered an alarm.

Suddenly the ground quivered on all sides, then bulged upward; arms appeared, then bodies. With a rasping sound half a dozen figures rose out of the ground like salmon bursting from water.

The creatures seemed to be made of the earth itself except that they were accoutred with scimitars and sharp curving daggers. The Q’zarans dropped into fighting stances, back to back, as the golems closed in with unsheathed swords.

Jelindel muttered a binding spell and sent it arcing toward the vanguard. Nothing happened.

‘They’re using the spider magic. I can’t stop them,’ she said helplessly.

The two sides clashed, broadsword upon scimitar. The sound echoed hollowly beneath the boughs of the forest. Daretor quickly sliced one of the creatures in half. Just as quickly it reformed, the dirt from which it was made flowing back in to fill the cut and rejoin the severed halves.

Battling for their lives, Jelindel and Zimak were discovering the same thing. The three Q’zarans were far better fighters than their adversaries. Only humans bleed when cut, and eventually tire. There could be only one outcome to a fight such as this. It would just take time.

As they hacked and hewed and slashed and parried, Jelindel tried every kind of spell she could call to mind, but nothing came to their rescue. Zimak chopped the legs out from under one of the golems. Though it grunted as if in pain, and toppled to the ground, it was back on its feet within seconds, sword swinging viciously.

‘We can’t keep this up,’ wheezed Daretor.

‘The dragonsight, Jelindel,’ Zimak cried. ‘It’s built on dragon magic. Try
something!
’

Jelindel pulled out the talisman. At the very sight of it, the earthen creatures fell back, recognising its innate power. At the same time they seemed to know, intuitively perhaps, that it could not be used against them … at least not by the mortals. They renewed their attack.

‘It won’t work,’ Jelindel said. ‘I don’t know how to use it.’ She stumbled, rolling to one side as a sword pierced the ground beside her head.

‘Then in White Quell’s name, let’s get out of here,’ said Zimak. Like the others, he had just heard distant sounds high in the trees; that of large bodies moving at speed through the upper canopy.

An idea occurred to Jelindel. ‘Zimak is right. Follow me.’

They broke out of the encirclement and fought a rear-guard action beneath the trees, always maintaining as steady a pace as the relentless onslaught from behind allowed. In this fashion they progressed several hundred yards.

Suddenly Zimak tripped and went down. Instantly, his two attackers leapt towards him. He scrambled away furiously, tossing up so much mulch in his fright that it nearly obscured all sight. Then he hit a fallen log and came to a groaning stop.

His two pursuers raised their swords high for the kill, barrelling towards him. Jelindel cried out and even Daretor winced at the imminent and unpreventable kill. Just as the two earth creatures reached Zimak they started to come apart, ploughing back into the earth. Seconds later, they were all gone.

Daretor and Zimak stared in amazement.

‘What just happened?’ asked Daretor. He noted that Jelindel did not seem surprised. ‘You expected this?’

She nodded, trying to get back her breath.

‘Zimak gave me the idea,’ she said. ‘When the dragonsight failed, I realised that this kind of protective magic operates within boundaries. Once you cross the boundary line it no longer works. I just didn’t know how far we’d have to go.’

Daretor picked up a stick and drew a line in the ground a few inches from his feet. Hacking a piece of vine from a tree he collected another stick and made a cross.

Zimak frowned. ‘What are you doing?’

Daretor rammed the inverted cross into the ground. ‘Leaving a signpost. This is one line unsuspecting wayfarers shouldn’t cross and one that escaping slaves
should.
’

At that point the circlets around their necks lost their shimmer and unthreaded.

Daretor ripped the circlet from around his neck and threw it across the clearing. ‘That’s one piece of jewellery that I’ll never miss.’

Two days later they found a hill that rose out of the endless trees and broke free of the forest canopy. There they sat and waited, hungry and cold. Each had vomited bile mixed with blood. Jelindel observed that their eyesight had deteriorated and their blood had thinned, no doubt due to the nature of the poison. The slightest cut sluiced blood, further weakening them. Their various wounds were easily fixed with the laying of the hands, but even this drained Jelindel. Daretor insisted she leave the minor scratches to heal of their own accord.

On the third day Zimak, whose sight had deteriorated the least, spotted a dark speck in the horizon.

They hid, fearing it might be a patrolling spider. As the flying creature neared, fire gushed from its jaws and S’cressling settled on the hilltop. The Q’zarans left their cover and embraced Osric, filling him in on their adventures. He had had trouble locating them, and the Kindred had driven them off several times.

Jelindel really didn’t care. ‘As long as I can sleep,’ she said, speaking for all of them.

Chapter 13

TO STORM A CITADEL

J

elindel stirred some hours later. Daretor and Zimak lay snoring to either side of her. Osric alone stood guard at the mane. She reached over the side of the platform and spat a wad of bloodied phlegm. They appeared to be climbing still, for they were barely clearing the lower jagged buttresses of the Algon Mountains. S’cressling was battling icy air currents, striving to maintain an even keel. The wind bit at Jelindel’s face, numbing it. She hunched her shoulders and rubbed her skin brusquely, working life into it.

To the right the mountain range rose, a solid wall. Jelindel saw herds of skittish goats scampering across the rocks, some leaping down impossibly steep slopes that funnelled into a caldera. Noticing she was awake, Osric pointed below.

Their shadow was see-sawing across the rugged terrain like a paraplane anomaly. Any living creature it touched or passed fled in a frenzy. S’cressling hung her head and screeched hungrily, adding impetus to the scurrying creatures.

Jelindel squeezed in beside Osric at the mane.

‘At least S’cressling seems to be enjoying herself,’ she called, raising her voice to be heard above the shrill wind.

Osric nodded. ‘Hunting is in her blood, although she was never a predator.’ He pulled a shawl from beneath the mane and handed it to her.

‘And you?’ Jelindel asked, tucking the shawl around her neck. ‘You were raised in slavery, but now you’re an adventurer.’

‘I’m having a good time,’ he replied honestly. He waved at the sun as though it in itself was all he desired. ‘The hours are somewhat erratic, but my employers are not slave drivers. And I would swap all that I had as a slave for the freedom I now enjoy.’

For a moment his humour reminded her of Zimak. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘I haven’t yet figured out why you’re coming back to the Tower Inviolate of your own free will.’

Osric’s youthful features became serious. ‘There is a simple matter of the poison,’ he said. ‘By Zimak’s reckoning your time is running short. He was sick before. Just blood came up.’ When Jelindel said nothing, he added, ‘You seem little concerned about death.’

Jelindel stared into the distance. ‘Far from it. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, yet my life is about to end. I gather Zimak has been discussing it with you – he doesn’t share much with us.’ She turned her gaze to Osric. ‘It eats at Daretor’s very core. He’s fixated on honour, and dying from poison has no honour in it at all. Yet he doesn’t speak of it. Nor do I, really. There’s nothing to be gained by complaining. We must consider success our only future.’

‘You Q’zarans are strange,’ Osric said. ‘It seems I am more concerned about your dilemma than you are.’

‘Our lives mean that much to you?’

Osric looked at Daretor and Zimak. ‘Your companions are heroes back on my world. They rescued me from the Tower Inviolate. If not for them my people would still be living in fear and subjugation, and I would still be a slave.’

Jelindel followed his gaze. Daretor and Zimak
were
heroes, even here on Q’zar. Yet they were mere mortals, too, prone to human failings. ‘You know that Rakeem will never keep his promise. His type never does. You could have just abandoned us and fled.’

‘There are few places on Q’zar where S’cressling and I would be welcome. And I strongly suspect that my future has many paths. Pray that I choose wisely.’

‘What do you see as
your
future, Osric?’

‘One path is that my people will follow us here and topple King Amida and his people. Another sees the dragonsight in the hands of the Sacred One, and again the fall of King Amida. Yet a third sees the Tower Inviolate travelling back to our own world where my people will be waiting to avenge themselves. In any event, you three are intertwined in my future. That much is certain. You
have
to survive the poison.’

‘And if Rakeem manages to keep the dragonsight?’

Osric stroked S’cressling’s flowing mane, as though soothing her. ‘That is not a path that I see,’ he said simply.

Jelindel slapped Osric on the back. ‘I feel better already.’

The journey back was faster than they had hoped. S’cressling seemed galvanised and managed to pick up an airstream that swept them across the Algon Mountains, to the Tower Inviolate.

It was night when they arrived. On the mountain side they found a hiding place, overlooking the massif. There was a cave here; inside they found the remnants of a hermit’s camp. Discarded food, clothing, a pair of broken sandals, and ashes of a long-dead fire. Whoever had been here had fled in a hurry.

Osric built a fire. Over a light meal they discussed their plans.

‘There’s no point trying to storm the place,’ Zimak said.

‘Not with one dragon,’ Osric agreed.

‘We know that Rakeem will not honour the agreement,’ Jelindel mused. ‘That one knows little except treachery.’

‘But you have the dragonsight,’ said Osric. ‘Can you not use it to bargain with him?’

‘Perhaps. Whatever ploy we can think of, I’m sure Rakeem has thought of the counterstroke.’

‘Well, all I can say is, we’d better get this right the first time,’ said Zimak. ‘I don’t fancy dying an agonising death.’

‘Perhaps Rakeem will take pity on you and cut your throat,’ said Daretor.

‘It’s still your body,’ Zimak reminded him.

‘Not as I knew it!’ Daretor said.

‘Hie, Daretor, it bleeds pretty easily …’

Jelindel tried to block out their tedious bickering. To Osric she said, ‘You lived in the Tower Inviolate for many years. You must know it like the back of your hand.’

Osric nodded.

‘And you have friends there?’

Again he nodded.

‘By my count, we have two days at most before the poison takes over completely,’ Jelindel said, gazing sombrely around. ‘Two days …’

‘What are you thinking?’ Daretor asked.

‘I’ve had a thought,’ she replied.

The plan was incredibly dangerous. Then again they had been living with danger for so long that it ceased to be anything but normal.

‘I once swore that I would never again trust a woman. For you I shall make an exception,’ said Osric.

Zimak retched. ‘Gah,’ he groaned, ‘see what having to trust you does to me, Jelindel?’

They set off at dawn. Not long after, S’cressling caught sight of something beyond human vision. Osric saw nothing at first, then he called to the others and pointed.

‘All that I can see is a dot,’ said Daretor.

‘Can S’cressling see something that we cannot?’ asked Jelindel.

‘Yes,’ replied Osric. ‘Her eyes are like the objective lens of a farsight. They gather more light than our small eyes. That dot is sure to be more than an eagle, trust me.’

‘Then what?’ asked Daretor. ‘A dragon?’

‘Something the size of a dragon, but not a dragon.’

‘But nothing else of that size can fly,’ said Daretor.

‘I know, and S’cressling cannot believe her eyes,’ said Osric.

Jelindel thought for a moment, then frowned. ‘By any chance would S’cressling have caught sight of a giant, headless chicken growing out of a cottage?’

‘Well, now that you mention it, yes,’ said Osric, looking relieved. ‘I mean, there are strict regulations about flying a dragon while under the influence of alcohol –’

‘It’s diving,’ exclaimed Daretor. ‘Diving almost straight down.’

‘The chickenrider has seen us, but does not want to be seen,’ said Jelindel.

‘Chickenrider,’ said Daretor, staring at the distant dot as it vanished into a cloud bank. ‘The term lacks a certain epic quality.’

‘How much do you know about that thing?’ asked Osric.

‘I’ve flown one,’ said Jelindel.

‘You’ve flown a giant chicken?’ Osric said flatly.

‘Well, sort of stoked one, and steered it.’

‘Stoked? Steered?’ responded Osric.

‘It burned fruit peelings, rotten vegetables, all that sort of thing,’ said Daretor. ‘You shovel some in every half hour or so.’

‘Burned?’ asked Osric. ‘Don’t giant chickens eat?’

‘There was a funnel, and a shovel was provided,’ said Daretor. ‘If you stopped shovelling, the thing stopped flying and you were in big trouble.’

‘Fa’red,’ said Jelindel. ‘All sorts of pieces from a very difficult puzzle suddenly fall into place.’

‘Fa’red grows giant chicken dragons in flying cottages?’ asked Osric.

‘Those things are not dragons,’ explained Jelindel. ‘They are like the cabin of a fishing boat mounted on a chicken without a head, a chicken grown to the size of a dragon. Unlike dragons, they are totally controllable. They have no brain, eyes, or anything. They do precisely what the chickenrider wants. They are fearless, and need a steersman and shoveller to fly. They can also carry perhaps a dozen archers, or magicians, or a load of clay pots full of lamp oil that can set half a city on fire.’

‘Still vastly inferior to a dragon,’ said Osric with a trace of a sneer.

‘Not if there are no dragons to compete with,’ said Jelindel. ‘Fa’red only had to keep the dragonsight from King Amida’s hands until the thousand years expired. Then the dragons would be free of their enslavement – that is, according to myth.’

‘It is no myth,’ Osric asserted. ‘The Sacred One had his power stolen a thousand years ago by a potent wizard. He bound the dragonsight for a thousand years so that dragons would learn humility before humankind. If, once that time has elapsed, the dragonsight is still in the hands of a human, the dragons will still be enslaved. And another thousand years of slavery will follow. It’s imperative the Sacred One lays claim to that which is rightfully his.’

Jelindel thought back to what Fa’red had told her earlier. ‘If Fa’red fails to unlock the power of the dragonsight, he might simply return it to the Sacred One, making peace with the dragons. Once he’s achieved that, he might help them return to their paraworld.’

‘That’s presuming the dragons want to abandon their birthplace for another paraworld,’ put in Osric.

Daretor cut in. ‘With no dragons, the giant chickens – Fa’red calls them airliners, by the way – will have only the flying spiders to compete with for mastery of the skies, and the spiders have limitations, as we discovered. If Fa’red returns the entire mountain to the other paraworld, in all likelihood the spiders will go with it.’

‘I wonder how many of the airliners Fa’red has grown?’ asked Osric.

‘Probably a dozen or so,’ said Jelindel. ‘That number in skilled hands could sink a war fleet, either on the high seas or in port. You see, they just need to stay higher than bowshot or catapult range; they only have to drop pots of burning oil.’

‘It will be a very one-sided fight,’ said Daretor. ‘Totally without honour.’

‘But militarily very effective,’ said Jelindel. ‘Osric, can you ask S’cressling to fly through the cloud down there, so that we can look around for the airline base.’

‘I really thought I had seen the last of this sort of undignified fighting,’ protested Daretor.

S’cressling changed course and began a long, shallow dive for the place where the distant dot had vanished into the clouds. The sky was a brilliant blue above, while the cloud base was a flat, grey carpet that stretched from horizon to horizon.

‘How does she know where to go?’ asked Zimak, looking past Osric. ‘All that cloud looks the same.’

‘How do you know what to do with a sword in a fight?’ replied Osric. ‘If you have been doing something all your life you tend to do it without thinking, and be good at it. The position of the sun, the patterns in the clouds that we cannot see, the feel of the wind, the pressure of the air, it all adds up.’

‘How do you know all that?’ Zimak wondered.

‘I don’t. S’cressling does.’

They entered the layer of cloud. Immediately they were blinded and chilled by mist so thick that they could not even see S’cressling’s head. They seemed to be flying blind for a very long time.

‘What if this fog is close to the ground, rather than fog really high up?’ Zimak asked.

‘S’cressling can feel the pressure of the air around her,’ said Osric. ‘The pressure tells her that we are ten thousand feet above the ground. Two miles high.’

‘Ah, that’s comforting – gah!’ Zimak exclaimed. ‘Mountains can be higher than ten thousand feet. What about if these clouds are hiding mountains?’