Lokant (8 page)

‘How long has he been
gone?’ She felt a stab of fear as she spoke, imagining the dangers
that could have befallen him.

‘You returned Dev to
us,’ Ynara replied. ‘He left six days after that.’

Llandry nodded briskly.
‘I must find him,’ she said, coming to her feet. ‘I’ll bring him
home to you, Ma.’

‘How are you going to
find him, Llan?’ Ynara looked so weary and confused that Llandry’s
heart sank. She pulled her mother to her feet and caught her in an
embrace.

‘Same way I found
Devary,’ she answered. ‘Is he... did he recover?’

Ynara hesitated before
she replied. ‘He did not die.’

Llandry frowned. That
answer was cagey and incomplete, but there was no time to pursue
it, not while her father wandered Iskyr on a fruitless hunt for
her. ‘Send him my love,’ she said. Pensould frowned at that, but
she ignored him. ‘I must find Papa at once. We’ll return soon.’

‘I - Llan, wait-’

Llandry was already
running back out to the balcony with Pensould behind her. She
jumped and soared, climbing above the glissenwol canopy. Once she
was above the level of the trees, she changed. In an instant she
was draykon once more, arrowing through the air; in the blink of an
eye she flashed through the barrier between the worlds into the
Upper Realm of Iskyr.

***

Aysun had gone no more
than three steps before his father’s next words froze him where he
stood.

‘I’ve seen
Llandry.’

Aysun turned.
‘What.’

‘She was here,’ his
father repeated. ‘Not long ago. Come inside and I’ll tell you about
it.’

‘I’m not coming
inside,’ Aysun grated. He was almost too angry to speak, but he
forced himself to remain calm - at least outwardly. ‘Come out and
we’ll talk about it.’

The old man grumbled at
this, but eventually consented to shuffle onto the path before his
house. His shoulders were hunched and he leaned heavily on his
stick as he walked. He stopped a few feet away from Aysun and
regarded his son expressionlessly.

‘Where’s Llandry?’
prompted Aysun.

‘She left,’ was the
cool reply.

‘Couldn’t you have...
you should have...’ Fierce anger swallowed Aysun’s words and he
could only stare at his supposedly long-dead father in pure
disbelief.

‘I brought her through,
and you should thank me for that because she was in danger of her
life,’ said his father - Rheas - with chilling calm. ‘I tried to
protect her, but she refused to stay. No doubt she inherited that
wilfulness from her parents.’

‘You could have sent
word.’ Aysun forced the words through gritted teeth.

Rheas actually
chuckled. ‘Where to? It is not as though I have your address.’

‘The fault for that is
your own.’

‘Is it? You stand ready
to go to your daughter’s aid, but you never came looking for me,
did you? Nobody did.’

Aysun could find
nothing to say to that. ‘Tell me where Llandry went.’

Rheas shrugged. ‘She
has been caught up in matters far greater than you or I. She could
be anywhere.’

‘What? What matters?’
Aysun took a step forward, his fists clenched. He was shocked to
find that, for an instant, he truly wished to hit the old man.

Rheas lifted his chin.
‘Llandry will show you herself. We will wait for her here.’

Two days passed and
Rheas made no attempt to explain himself. Two days of withering
coldness on the old man’s part and a stubborn show of indifference
on Aysun’s. Rheas would not speak of his secret life in the Uppers,
and Aysun refused to ask. His father spent most of his time tucked
into a rocking chair in the central room of the house; Aysun
therefore found it more convenient to wander out of doors, or to
sit brooding in the bedchamber allocated to him. Not even Mags, the
cheery and good-natured woman who inexplicably consented to live
with his father, could draw him out.

He was sitting in this
very chamber, sitting and brooding and trying to smother his anger,
when a dark shape flew across the sun and cast a shadow over the
house. Then came his father’s shout, a cry somewhere between
triumph, dismay and fury.

‘
Come down, son,
’ his father cried.

Aysun went instead to
the window. Two enormous beasts sailed through the air before him,
rapidly drawing closer to the house. One was smaller than the
other, its hide ghost-grey and pale. The larger beast wore scales
of green-touched blue. They were impossibly big, impossibly winged
and clawed. Aysun stared, briefly mesmerised by their grace and
vivid colour.

‘
Aysun!’

He jumped, shook
himself. There was emotion of some kind in his father’s shouts,
which was more than he had shown since Aysun had arrived. He
descended to the ground floor, taking his time. Rheas and Mags were
both standing at the door, blocking Aysun’s view of the
outdoors.

‘Is this some trick of
yours, old man?’

Without turning, Rheas
barked a laugh. ‘Your suspicion blinds you. If you want your
daughter, I suggest you put that aside.’

‘Llan? What’s this got
to do with her?’

Rheas didn’t reply. He
hobbled slowly out of the door, leaning on Mags’ arm. One hand
gestured impatiently to Aysun.
Follow me,
it said.

Mystified and annoyed,
Aysun followed.

The two beasts had
reached the house. As Aysun watched, they spiralled to the ground,
one playfully nipping at the other’s flanks as they descended.
Behind him, Aysun heard Nyra’s quick female step approaching, but
he couldn’t turn his attention to her. The sight of this strange,
magnificent, outlandish pair of beasts utterly absorbed him.

‘Aysun,’ muttered Nyra,
coming to a stop next to him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘No idea.’

On the ground, the
creatures were ungainly but nonetheless marvellous. Their hides
were minutely scaled as though they were covered in a million beads
of glass. They were four-legged, with pearly-silver talons and
tails of immense length. Their wings reminded Aysun of his wife’s
in their construction, though these bore considerable differences
in size and shape.

He wanted to go closer,
despite their size, and examine the flashing trails of silver that
outlined each tiny scale. But just as he formulated this wish, the
air rippled - in the same way it did when a gate was opened between
the realms - and the two beasts vanished.

In their place stood
two human figures. They were not yet close, but in one of those
figures Aysun could detect a familiar short stature and lithe form,
black hair and lofty grey wings...

‘Now do you
understand?’ came Rheas’s soft whisper from behind him.

‘No,’ said Aysun. ‘Not
at all.’

The two figures didn’t
seem to notice that they had an audience. They were arguing; as
they approached Aysun was able to discern their words.

‘... why say you are
not Minchu? To your mother, you say that!’

‘I’m glad you’ve
consented to use that word at last. I said it because it is not
true!’

‘But I say that it is
true. But why must we speak with our lips and our tongues, Minchu,
when we are alone? It is so clumsy.’

‘Because you must
practice your Glinnish before you meet my father.’

‘Father?’

‘Sire. We will come
upon him any- oh.’ Llandry looked up at last and saw Aysun standing
before her, flanked by Nyra, Rheas and Mags.

Llandry’s face filled
immediately with relief. ‘Pa! I was afraid you might have been hurt
or worse but when I sensed you I felt you were well, only now I’m
so glad to be able to see for myself that you are...’ She threw her
arms around him and continued to babble into his chest, but her
words were too muffled to be discerned.

Aysun instinctively
tightened his arms around his daughter, though his attention was
distracted by her companion. He was a study in contrasts, stark
white and deep black, vivid blue. Aysun was alarmed to realise that
he viewed both Llandry and her friend with more than just his eyes;
he sensed something different about them, a quality that they both
shared. He had never noticed such a thing in his daughter
before.

‘Were those... was that
you?’ He spoke to Llandry, his voice emerging as a dry croak.

She drew back from him.
‘Can you not know? Oh, Papa, this is a terrible surprise for you.
I’ll tell you everything, I promise. I see that you found
Grandpapa?’ She released him, and with a sunny smile she danced
into the house. Her friend and Mags followed, leaving Aysun and
Nyra staring dumbly after them.

‘She seems well,’ said
Nyra.

‘Quite,’ Aysun agreed
feebly. How far changed his daughter now was, Aysun could not
imagine; but he was very certain he had never seen her so bright,
so happy, and so entirely without the fears and the awkwardness
that had plagued her since she was a child.

‘Well,’ said Rheas.
‘Shall we go in?’ He hobbled inside without waiting for an answer.
Aysun and Nyra had no choice but to follow.

Tren was staring
vacantly at the pages of an open book when the woman appeared.

It wasn’t that he’d
given up, precisely. He had been hard at work since soon after
moonrise and it was now long after moonset, but as he had nothing
better to do and no company at all, he had every intention of
continuing with his reading until he couldn’t stay awake
anymore.

But some awkward part
of his mind had had other ideas, ever since he’d learned that Lady
Glostrum was spending the evening with Lord Angstrun instead of
studying side-by-side with him as she usually did.

Particularly since he
had realised that she wasn’t coming home until the next day. What
that
meant did not take a great deal of intellect to
decipher. When he had heard light footsteps crossing the floor of
the study, his grey misery had lifted with the brief hope that Eva
had come back after all.

But when he looked up,
he saw a complete stranger.

She wasn’t as tall as
Eva, but she was larger in every other sense. Her hair was chestnut
brown and her complexion was a shade of brown he’d never seen
before. She smiled at him and paused before the desk.

‘Forgive my intrusion,’
she murmured. She had a lilting accent that was pleasing to the
ear, though he couldn’t place it. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone to be
here so late.’

Tren stood up and bowed
politely. ‘I probably shouldn’t be.’

‘Then that makes two of
us, for I shouldn’t be here either.’

Tren smiled
uncertainly. ‘Are you a friend of Lady Glostrum’s?’

‘I have never met her
ladyship. I am looking for some lost property.’ The woman shifted
her attention to the desk, still scattered with books, and she
actually began searching through them. Feeling a flicker of alarm,
Tren closed the book he was reading and stacked it up with a few
others.

‘If you’ll grant me
your name, I’ll tell Lady Glostrum you called. Perhaps she could
help you another time?’

‘Oh, no, no,’ she
replied mildly. ‘I don’t need to be helped. Ah, there it is.’ Her
hand darted out; she grabbed a book from the middle of Tren’s pile
and pulled it out. The rest collapsed and slithered to the
floor.

‘Um – wait, those
belong to Lady Glostrum, you can’t just –’ He quickly began picking
up fallen books, stacking them out of her reach.

‘This one is mine,’ the
woman said, leafing through the large book that she held. Then her
brow furrowed. ‘Hm. Did you remove these?’

Tren realised she was
holding Andraly Winnier’s memoirs. The torn stubs of the missing
pages stuck forlornly out of the centre of the book.

‘Certainly not!’

‘I see,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’ She turned away and made for the door, but before she
reached it her form became suddenly less solid. He could make out
the outline of the door before her.

Then she vanished.

For an instant Tren sat
frozen with confusion. Then, remembering that the study overlooked
the street outside, he jumped out of his chair and hurried to the
window. The streets were dark - the Night cloak reigned overhead,
blotting out all sunlight - but the lamplighters had done their
work diligently, and the streets were well illuminated with
silvery-white light globes bobbing gently in the air. He could
discern no sign of the chestnut-haired woman.

Tren drifted back to
his chair and sat down, suddenly realising how tired he was. He had
probably hallucinated the figure out of pure sleep deprivation. But
the book was certainly gone...

The prospect of making
his lonely way back to his house repelled him; it was a walk of
more than twenty minutes and he couldn’t face it in his current
state. He shuffled to the sofa instead and lay down.

When he woke, he opened
his eyes to a vision of smooth white skin and soft, even whiter
hair. Lady Glostrum’s face, close to his. Her deep blue eyes were
fixed on him, bearing a thoughtful expression.

‘Oh,’ she murmured as
he blinked. ‘I’m sorry. You seemed deeply asleep.’

‘One would think in
that case that it would be
more
questionable to stare at me
in this way.’ He couldn’t move without bumping into her, so he
stayed where he was.

‘I told you not to wait
up for me.’

He cocked an eyebrow at
her. ‘Somebody has to keep an eye on wayward young ladies.’

He expected her to
laugh at that, but she frowned and sat back on her heels. He sat
up, suddenly feeling awkward. A small black shape fell from his
chest and flew off.

‘Rikbeek likes you,’
Eva said, noticing the direction of his gaze. She didn’t move
away.

‘Lucky me. Does that
mean he’ll be drinking more of my blood, or less?’