Orlind (37 page)

But Ana had been
right about the alarms. Eva still had the button gadget Iwa had
given her before, so it might well have been Ana who had set it off
this time.

Without pausing
to check where she was, Eva threw Rikbeek into the air and started
to run.

A few minutes
later she came to a halt in an empty room, slamming the door behind
her. She’d had to evade three groups of Lokants, which had only
been possible because Rikbeek had forewarned her about them. Only
now could she pause, catch her breath and try to form some kind of
plan.

Tren’s
invisibility enchantment would be so useful. Without it, she would
have to rely on her own skills. She thought at once of the odd
Lokant ability to deceive an onlooker into misinterpreting her
appearance. Under Limbane’s tutelage she had grown adept at this,
until she could fool even him into seeing Andraly or some other
Lokant instead of her.

The downside was
that it required manipulating the mind of the onlooker rather than
her own appearance, and that made it ineffective against groups of
people. She could manage to fool one, possibly two, but no more.
Her priority, then, must be to navigate the Library without bumping
into more than two people at once.

Who would she
pretend to be? It would have to be someone all the Lokants knew
well, as it was their own memories and impressions she would be
accessing. Krays was the obvious choice.

And if she ran
into Krays himself? Well... she would worry about that if it
happened.

Checking the
device, she found that Tren’s position hadn’t changed. She enlarged
the image a few times, until she could see a map of most of the
Library. The dot hovered in an area she didn’t recognise, which
drew another frustrated curse from her. Wasn’t this Library
supposed to be the same as Limbane’s?

Therein lay the
answer, of course. A cursory check confirmed that everything else
was the same. She could find her way to this unfamiliar
space.

Stay alert,
Beekie,
she said to her gwaystrel. She spent a few moments in
communication with him, impressing his resentful little mind with
the importance of the situation. When she was satisfied that she
had his agreement - albeit grudging - she took a deep breath,
opened the door a few inches and nudged Rikbeek through the
gap.

She waited in
silence until Rikbeek’s thoughts connected briefly with hers,
showing her an empty passageway.

Onward,
then,
she told herself, sternly suppressing the flutter of fear
in her belly.

She opened the
door and went out.

The next
half-hour was easily the most terrifying of her life. Twice she
received Rikbeek’s warning of a group of Lokants on the approach,
far too many to work her camouflage trick upon. These threats she
narrowly evaded by dodging around a turn in the passage, relying on
Rikbeek to tell her which direction they were going in.

The third
encounter occurred in a long, straight corridor with nowhere to
hide. Rikbeek’s mental image showed her two... no, three Lokants
approaching around a bend ahead of her. They were close; she had no
time to retrace her steps and get out of sight. Too much empty
space stood behind her.

She ran to the
nearest door and tried to shove it open. It was locked, of course.
Panic engulfed her and for an agonising moment she couldn’t even
move for fear and despair. She would be caught, and Tren would be
lost...

No. She forced
her panicking mind to calmness, thinking. Three Lokants was too
many for her camouflage trick, but she had pulled off a number of
other things that had seemed impossible. It had to be tried. She
walked forward until she was almost at the bend, then waited.
Footsteps sounded, a low murmur of voices...

They rounded the
bend, two men and a woman engaged in conversation. That was a
blessing; they were focusing on each other at present, not on her.
It gave her a couple of extra seconds to work.

One of the men
looked up first. She caught his eye, throwing the full force of her
willpower at him, willing him to believe that he saw his Lokantor
approaching.

It worked. He
bowed his head in respect and mumbled, ‘Lokantor.’

That was the easy
part. Now the other two focused on her at once, and she had to try
to capture two minds simultaneously. Frantic, she made eye contact
with one and then the other, too aware that she had a split second
to get it right.

‘
Lokantor,’ said the woman, but the second man was not yet
hers...

‘
Hey!’
he blurted. ‘Who are-’

She scowled at
him, virtually bludgeoning him over the head with her
will.

‘
Oh,’
the man said, confused. ‘Sorry sir, I didn’t...’

He let that
sentence trail off. She ought to say something here, but convincing
three people at once to interpret her feminine voice as Krays’s
much lower masculine one was a daunting prospect. So she nodded,
trying to be cold and arrogant, and strode on.

Once she was
safely around the turn in the passage, she slowed her pace and took
a moment to gulp in air. Her knees were shaking. That was too
close...

Thank you,
Beek.
Without his warning she would never have had time to pull
that off.

His reply was a
wisp of smugness with a hint of grouch. Smiling ruefully, she
gathered her courage and went on.

She arrived in
the Library’s new section without further incident, but once there
she encountered another problem: an impenetrably locked door. It
loomed ahead of her, guarded on either side by whurthag-mechs. Even
if she could get past those beasts, Eva had no keys with which to
open the door.

She stopped where
she was, hoping that she stood beyond the range of the constructs’
detection. They didn’t move. Relieved, she eased back against the
wall to rethink her strategy.

Thinking didn’t
produce much inspiration. She guessed that prisons of some kind lay
beyond that door, and she couldn’t pass. This was the main reason
she had needed the Lokants. They could handle such an obstacle; she
couldn’t.

Despairing, she
lifted her wrist to recheck her position against the drifting red
dot that revealed Tren’s.

She blinked and
checked it again. Had the red spot moved, or had she just lost
track of it somewhere along the way? According to the display, she
was standing practically on top of it.

If it had moved,
it wasn’t moving any more. She stared at it for a full minute and
nothing happened. A glance at the corridor confirmed that Tren was
not
here.

Oh no,
she
groaned inwardly.
Please, don’t let it be
malfunctioning.

Malfunctioning
perhaps, or maybe the Library had some way of confusing these kinds
of devices when they weren’t made by Krays’s people. Either way,
Tren’s location was by no means certain. She had to think fast; it
wouldn’t be long before someone came this way. Was Tren beyond that
door or not?

Casting around
for Rikbeek, she spotted him on the ceiling not far from the door.
He was monitoring the whurthag-mechs, making sure they didn’t show
any signs of coming her way. She felt touched, just a little. She
hadn’t asked him to do that.

Calling him back
to her, she waited in trepidation as he ghosted back in her
direction. He kept near the ceiling, but still the tiny black form
was clearly visible against the paler walls. Would the mechs spot
him now?

They didn’t.
Rikbeek made it back into her hands without incident.

Beekie,
she began.
Remember Tren? The one with the nice blood.
She
showed him a mental image of Tren, wincing and rubbing at his
recently bitten ear.

Rikbeek
remembered. Was that even a giggle from him?

Forget the
mechs,
she told him.
Find Tren, please.

He took off
instantly, flapped in a quick circle over her head, then flew off
down the corridor and disappeared around the corner. She followed
him at a run. She rounded the corner in time to see him dive for
the ground. He hovered two or three feet above the ground, turning
circles in the air.

Eva frowned. Had
he misinterpreted her instructions?

Then she
realised, with a frisson of horror, that she had seen him do this
before, out in the woods of Orstwych. The same pattern of flight,
the same distance above the ground, the same triumphant chitter.
That time, it had been Tren’s friend Ed who had lain on the ground,
holding his sorcerer’s invisibility enchantment around himself with
the last reserves of his strength.

Show me what
you’re seeing,
Eva said to Rikbeek, her heart
pounding.

The mental image
came back immediately. Tren lay on the floor near the
wall.

Abandoning all
caution, she ran to him and dropped to her knees beside him,
frantically whispering his name. She didn’t dare touch him;
Rikbeek’s image had been unclear regarding his physical
state.

‘
Eva?
That you?’

She could have
cried to hear those few simple words. ‘It’s me. There’s no one else
here. You can vis yourself.’

His hand found
hers, and a moment later he flickered into view.

Almost, she
wished he hadn’t.

His coat and
shirt were gone, and his waistcoat and shoes. All he wore was his
trousers, and those were torn. His face, throat, torso and arms
were striped with livid red wounds and abrasions, many of which
were sluggishly leaking blood.

Eva struggled
with a tide of sick rage, looking at those carefully inflicted
wounds. For she had no doubt they had been inflicted with the
specific intention of causing maximum pain.

Tren turned his
face towards her, struggling to focus on her, and she gasped anew.
One of his eyes was swollen shut, the skin around it purpled with
bruising. The other was too caked with blood to see much; he used
his hands to try to be sure that it was really she.

‘
Oh,
Tren,’ she whispered, appalled. ‘What have they done to
you?’

He gripped her
fingers. ‘Just get me out of here. Please.’

Reminded of the
urgency of escape, she nodded and paused only to catch Rikbeek,
attaching him once more to her coat. Then she took hold of Tren
with both hands, and dragged him away through the Map.

After Tren’s last
injury, Eva had made sure to find out where the infirmaries were in
Limbane’s Library. Now she was thankful she had done so. She took
him straight there. This medical centre was busy, as Limbane had
said; many Lokants had been hurt during their intervention in the
war for Waeverleyne. But the Lokants were professional. Within
minutes Tren was laid out on a narrow infirmary bed and two Lokant
doctors were working on him.

‘
W-wait, please,’ Tren sputtered as one of them bent over him,
ready to send his mind into sleep. ‘I need to - to speak
to-’

He was looking
around for her, Eva realised. She pushed her way back to his
bedside and gripped his hand.

‘
I’m
here. But this can wait, Tren, until you’re better.’

‘
It
can’t wait,’ he gasped, chest heaving with the effort to draw
breath around his obvious pain. ‘Krays is - is different. He -
walks like Griel.’

That
made
her pause. Walks like Griel? Griel moved awkwardly because he had
been used as a test subject for one of Krays’s crazy schemes: some
of his bones had been replaced with draykon bone matter, in an
attempt to amplify his skill at sorcery. It had worked, as far as
the sorcery went, but the procedure had left him with a permanent
limp.

If Krays looked
the same, then that meant...

‘
Thank
you,’ she said to Tren, dropping a kiss on an unmarked section of
his brow. ‘I’ll deal with it. Now be good and heal.’

Tren let out a
sigh and relaxed, allowing himself to be put under the Lokants’
sleep. Eva left the infirmary at a rapid pace, thinking.

Krays wouldn’t
have used the same methods that he’d used on Griel, of that she
felt sure. In Griel’s case, draykon bones had been reworked into a
form suitable for the human frame, but the procedure hadn’t been
perfect; hence Griel’s limp. They had come to the conclusion that
Krays’s urgent search for Llandry, Avane and Ori was to do with
their bones: those three were draykon but also human, and that
meant they had the draykon powers with a more natural human shape
than any Krays had been able to achieve with his projects. If he
wanted to work Griel’s procedure on himself, he’d need to get
access to someone like Ori in his human shape. The boy’s perfectly
human-shaped, draykon-matter bones could be transplanted into
Krays’s body, achieving the desired effect without the awkwardness
that marred Griel’s procedure.

Now Krays had
gone ahead with the operation. If he resembled Griel at present,
that might mean he had given up on Ori and employed the earlier
method. Or it might merely mean that the operation had been a
recent one and he hadn’t yet recovered fully. The latter made
sense, because they had seen Krays not long ago and he had
displayed no signs of awkwardness.