Orlind (14 page)

‘
Besides,’ Tren continued, ‘it’s your fault.’

‘
Mine?
’

‘
Yours,’ he repeated firmly. ‘You should
not,
under any
circumstances, have been wearing trousers.’

She rolled her
eyes, but any response she might have made was cut off by a
pounding at the door. Tren went to answer it.

‘
You
might want your shirt first,’ she said.

He looked down at
his bare - and, she thought, very attractive - torso in surprise.
‘Er, yes! Good point.’

The search took a
while.

Whoever it was
knocked again, more urgently. Eva went to the door
instead.

‘
Llan,’ she smiled. ‘How’s the training going?’

‘
Fine,’ Llandry said, breathless as though she’d been running.
‘Listen, Pensould tried the voice-box again and this time my father
answered. The draykoni are gone.’

Eva blinked.
‘What... all of them?’

‘
Every
single one. They just left, right in the middle of an
attack.’

Tren appeared at
her shoulder. Mercifully, he’d managed to locate his shirt. ‘Where
did they go?’

‘
No
one knows. Maybe somewhere else in the Seven, though no one’s
reported that. We need to get out there right away.’

‘
Oh?
What’s the plan?’

‘
Pa
wants us to go look. If they’re in the Seven, we’ll find them. If
they aren’t there, we’ll try the Off-Worlds.’

‘
And
if they aren’t there either?’

Llandry shrugged.
‘They’d have to be, wouldn’t they? I think Pa’s concern is whether
they’re finished or just planning something worse. And he said
Grandpa wants my help with the animal problem.’

Eva nodded.
‘We’ll go right away, all right? Get everyone to the chart room and
I’ll meet you there in a moment.’

Llandry nodded
and left again at a run.

Eva shut the
door, thinking. Llan was right to be agitated: what ought to be
good news didn’t seem that way somehow. The draykons wouldn’t just
give up, not unless they were being badly beaten, and she doubted
that was the case.

‘
Not
good,’ said Tren. ‘It sort of smacks of Krays, doesn’t
it?’

‘
In
that it’s sneaky, mystifying and inspires a vague, nameless dread?
Yes, it really does.’

‘
Lovely. More mysteries.’

‘
We’ll
deal with it. Got your headgear? Let’s go.’

Chapter Ten

Llandry found
Aysun and his team holed up in a hidden building tucked well under
the forest canopy a little to the west of the city itself. She went
straight to her father and hugged him. She’d never seen him look so
tired and grim and grimy; he was barely recognisable. But he
softened a little when he saw her.

‘
Good
to see you on your feet, my Llan,’ he murmured to her. ‘Wish I
could keep you out of this altogether.’

Blotting her
watering eyes on his shirt, Llan shook her head. ‘I should just
leave the rest of you to risk yourselves, should I, and hope
there’s a home to come back to at the end of it? Can’t do that,
Pa.’

‘
I
know,’ he said, patting her back. ‘And so does your
mother.’

‘
Where
is Ma?’

‘
Being
leadery. Been too much flapping about and panicking going on. Your
Ma marched in and took charge.’

She chuckled.
That was Ma. She’d sort them out.

Not that there
wasn’t reason to panic. Llandry pulled out of her father’s embrace.
‘The truth, Pa. How is it going?’

His face darkened
immediately. ‘Not well. I don’t deny, Llan, if you can help us we
need it. What have you brought me? One or two unfamiliar faces
here, I notice.’

Llandry
introduced Avane and Tren. ‘I’ve brought four draykon allies,’ she
said to her father. ‘That’s me, Pense, Ori and Avane.’

‘
I’d
better send out word,’ Aysun said. ‘Just now, draykon equals enemy.
Don’t want any of you getting shot down.’

Llandry spent a
few minutes with her Pa, describing the appearance of her own
draykon form and the other three. A note was dispatched for
distribution among the defence. That done, Aysun beckoned Llan’s
group over to a corner.

‘
Can’t
offer anything sensible like table and chairs, but seems to me we
ought to compare notes. Here’s the situation here.’ He recounted
everything that had happened in Waeverleyne since the attacks
began, up to the development of his new weapon and the
disappearance of the attackers. The picture he painted was bleak.
The draykoni had decimated the defenders of Waeverleyne. There were
too many of them, and they were far too large, too strong, too...
airborne.

‘
And
you think they’ll be back?’ Llan asked when he’d
finished.

‘
Don’t
doubt it,’ he replied. ‘No reason for them to stop there. They were
winning.’

Eva spoke next,
going over everything they knew about Krays’s operation and her
plans regarding Ana and Griel. Aysun only looked more and more
grim.

‘
You
think there’s a connection between our attackers and this Krays?’
he asked.

Eva spread her
hands, but her expression was sombre. ‘He’s been tangled up in this
draykon issue since the beginning. He’s still bound up with it
somewhere, somehow. We have to face the possibility that there’s a
direct connection between him and the disappearance of your
draykoni.’

Aysun looked
sceptical. ‘You mean he’d forcibly remove them? How? And
why?’

‘
Krays
can dominate the will,’ Tren put in, ‘but that’s a trick that fails
when it comes to draykoni. He managed it on Llandry once, but only
because she was newly turned at the time and lacked strength. So I
doubt he could
force
them to do anything. But if he found
something to offer them?’

‘
He
could bargain,’ Llandry said, getting it. ‘But what does he have
that they’d want?’

‘
What
they want is obvious,’ Eva said. ‘They want Arvale back, and
Everum. Maybe they want all of the Seven. Krays could offer to help
them achieve that.’

Nobody answered
that horrible thought. With the collective unease growing to
palpable levels, Llan felt glad that she was here with her father
on one side and Pensould on the other. She inched a little closer
to Pense.

‘
I
think that is correct,’ Pensould said at last. ‘If I may presume to
speak for my kind, I do believe that is a deal they would
take.’

‘
But
they were winning,’ Aysun objected.

‘
For
now. Mostly because you were unprepared. But soon you will not be.
Humans won the last war, remember? And that is because you are an
ingenious race. Already you have found ways to build better, more
effective weapons. And if the other Realms support you? These
draykoni are not that numerous. If they hope to take, and also
keep
at least two of your Seven Realms, they’ll need
help.’

Aysun gave a curt
nod. ‘All right. So they would listen to this “Krays”. What new
horrors are we to expect?’

Llandry exchanged
a look with Eva. What possible answer could they give to
that?

‘
Not
sure, Pa,’ she ventured.

‘
That’s no help, Llan.’

‘
She’s
right, though,’ Eva said. She gave a brief account of everything
they knew about Krays’s weird machinery, which was not very much.
‘He will have more workshops that we don’t know about, building
devices of a type we’ve never seen and probably can’t imagine. If
Krays is throwing himself behind this war, we won’t know what else
we’re facing until it happens.’

Aysun sighed,
looking ten years older. ‘Very well.’

‘
But...’ Avane actually spoke, to Llan’s surprise. Typically,
the older woman was even quieter than she was. ‘Why would Krays
help the draykoni? Why would he care about their war?’

‘
Good
question,’ Eva said slowly. ‘I wonder if he does care? He’s been
weirdly fixated on this cluster of worlds for some time. Maybe he
has a reason to want the Realms under draykon control
again.’

‘
Maybe,’ Tren said. ‘Or maybe it’s simpler than that. He’s
always wanted draykon bone. He wouldn’t pass up the chance to have
twenty-odd live draykoni within reach. All those bones, hide,
teeth.’

‘
That
point has merit,’ Pensould said, ‘but they would never
give
those things away, no matter what was offered to them in
return.’

‘
No,
but Krays doesn’t play fair,’ Tren countered. ‘He’d find a way to
trick them. Or not all of them, but maybe one.’

‘
Good
theory,’ Eva said. ‘But they’d still have to agree to something he
was demanding, in exchange for his help.’

No one had any
answer to make to that, so at last Aysun pronounced the meeting at
an end. ‘I’ll pass your information to my wife,’ he said, with a
nod to Eva.

‘
And I
will keep you informed of our progress,’ Eva said in return. ‘If I
may request the voice-box from Pensould?’

‘
Oh,
yes,’ said Pense, fishing the little device out of his pocket. ‘You
will need it more than we will.’

‘
Thank
you,’ said Eva with a smile. ‘And off we go. We have an appointment
in Draetre.’

It suddenly
occurred to Llandry that she had no idea when she would see Eva or
Tren again. Or even
if
she would see them again. They were
going after Krays, and he was dangerous. On impulse, she ran to Eva
and hugged her.

‘
We’ll
be careful,’ Eva whispered, returning the embrace. ‘But you must
be, too. Keep our friends safe.’

‘
I’ll
try,’ Llandry said, stepping back. She eyed Tren, thought about it,
but... no. She really wasn’t on hugging terms with him.

The two of them
joined hands, and Eva shut her eyes. They faded out, and
vanished.

Llan turned back
to her father and her friends. ‘All right, Pa. What’s our first
assignment?’

He turned a grim
look on her. ‘Find the enemy.’

Poor, broken
Waeverleyne. Flying over it broke Llandry’s heart. What had been a
flourishing, vibrant, colourful forest-city only a few days ago was
now perilously close to qualifying as a ruin.

The tall, proud
glissenwol trees were decimated. Many of them had lost all or part
of their caps; some had lost most of their trunks, too. The remains
stabbed the air like accusing fingers, creaking in the
wind.

The buildings of
Waeverleyne had not survived the destruction of their host trees.
Debris littered the forest floor, chunks of wood and stone and
glass lying where the draykoni had dropped them. In her draykon
form, Llandry could too well imagine the ease with which the
attackers had caused all this damage. She would only have to swoop
a little, rip her claws through the wooden walls of the buildings
still standing, and her strength and momentum would pull them to
pieces. It would be horrifyingly easy.

The destruction
wasn’t even confined to the city. The forest around it had burned
in large patches, the trees and vegetation twisted and blackened.
Aysun had said this wasn’t even directly the fault of the draykoni;
it had come about as a result of the exploding missiles they’d
hurled at the enemy on the first day. Most had missed and ignited
the forest instead. They’d stopped using them now, but the damage
was already considerable.

A roar of fury
tore from her throat, which she instantly regretted. Those who had
survived the conflict had heard more than enough of
that
lately. But she couldn’t help it. She wanted the enemy
here
,
right now, where she could get at them. They deserved to be torn to
shreds for what they’d done.

Minchu,
came Pensould’s silent voice.
Save that for
later.

She might have
objected, but he was right; and besides, she could feel the anger
in him. When the time came, he’d be right behind her.

She only hoped
Ori would be all right. This was his home, too, and the fury was
rolling off him in waves.

Onward,
she told them all. There’d been talk of the four of them splitting
up; their search for the draykoni would be completed much faster
that way. But what if they were wrong about what had become of the
enemy? Their suspicions about Krays might only be their paranoia
talking, and if any one of the four ran into the whole pack of
twenty or more aggressive draykoni alone, they were done
for.

So they were
sticking together. It would be a long and tiring journey, but by
the end of it they’d know for sure whether or not the enemy were
gone from this cluster of worlds.

***

‘
No,’
said Limbane, with depressing conviction. ‘I will not have any more
Lokants, partial Lokants or humans brought into my Library. What if
they talk to Krays? Do you know how much damage could be
done?’