Survivors: Book 4 Circles of Light series (51 page)

Brin drew his massive
hind legs beneath him. ‘I will search now,’ he said.

Storm leapt into the
air behind the crimson Dragon and Gan watched them fly for a
moment. The line of dark cloud seemed nearer. But he hoped it was
just his imagination. The two Dragons came back much sooner than
Gan had dared hope. Brin gave him a mental picture of what Gan
guessed had been a storage barn. The ground around it was broken
and uneven: clearly it had been hit by the earthquakes. Several
buildings nearby were virtually unrecognisable as such, piles of
stone and what had been a sort of mud brick.

After consulting Jakri,
it was arranged that Farn would carry Tika and Jakri; Gan would
hold Sket secure between himself and Maressa on Brin while Storm
carried Navan and Ren. Akomi had yowled in surprised horror when
Willow scooped him into his arms and took off in pursuit of Storm.
Piper followed his example with Khosa. Khosa was able to maintain a
calmer manner but she missed the security of her carry sack when
being conveyed through the sky.

Gan saw that they were
less than half a league from the sea as Brin landed as smoothly as
he could for fear of jarring the still unconscious Sket. Navan and
Ren reached to lift Sket from Gan’s arms and Gan had a quick look
at where they found themselves. He was pleased to see that the
earthquake had tilted the barn into a piece of rising ground behind
it. He tested the stability of the remaining uprights and was
relieved that the space within was large enough for all of them,
Dragons included. He found Navan behind him, Sket limp against his
chest, and nodded, indicating they should move deeper into the
partially collapsed structure.

The gijan followed
them, chattering in their strange liquid tongue, and set Khosa and
Akomi on the floor. Akomi fled into the darkest corner, terrified
he might be subjected to another flight in such a rough and ready
fashion. Khosa paused long enough to wash her face, proof that she
was perfectly calm, before strolling after Akomi. To Gan’s
astonishment, the gijan then set to work clearing fallen timbers
from the back corner where the building had come to rest against
solid earth.

Since Tika had freed
their wings, the gijan had led a carefree existence, never helping
find or prepare food or firewood, merely eating whatever was
provided and keeping their own company far more than associating
with the companions, even Tika. After doing what they could for
Tika’s burns, they had gone to sleep on Brin’s back. If they
grieved for Seela, none of the companions had seen any sign of it.
Yet they had flown tirelessly from Harbour City and for the two
days of searching the crater. What sort of creatures were they, Gan
wondered. In the City of the Domes they had been cowed,
subservient, frightened of their own shadows, but since their wings
had emerged, they were apart, almost arrogant. But now at least
they were working efficiently to clear a good sized space where
Tika and Sket could lie sheltered and safe.

Brin insisted that Farn
fly with him and Storm to find meat both for themselves and to
bring back to the barn for the companions. They could be grounded
for days, he told Farn, if the dust continued to fill the air. Once
he’d seen Sket settled, Navan hurried off to gather broken timbers
for firewood and to Gan’s continuing surprise, Piper and Willow
went to help him. Jakri used his mage powers to locate water: a
well had vanished under what he guessed had been the main farmhouse
but he tracked the underground water until he found it near enough
the surface to dig down to. Gan had followed with two of the pails
he’d found days before.

When they’d carried the
water back to their shelter, they saw that the gijan had uncovered
a stone trough knocked on its side near the ruined house. Their
strength was demonstrated again by the ease with which they moved
the trough inside the barn. Maressa scrubbed the inner surface
before the gijan tipped the trough upright, then they made several
trips back and forth for water with which to fill it. The sky was
darkening rapidly and the leading edge of rusty cloud swept high
overhead. The Dragons returned with only five hoppers between them,
(animals Jakri called rabbits.) Brin reported, with some
embarrassment, that they had found a small group of cattle running
in confusion, obviously escaped from farms that no longer existed.
Gan rubbed Brin’s thick neck.

‘You must feed where
you can old friend. Did you see any people?’

‘None at
all.’

Tika had woken and was
surveying her left hand, wrapped completely in its bandages. ‘What
happened?’ she asked generally.

Ren sat next to her. ‘I
think you must have been holding the pendant,’ he said.

Maressa had removed the
chain and its pendant from Tika’s neck during last night, putting
them in the leather pouch she’d used at Green Shade, and which now
lay within reach of Tika’s right hand. Maressa had also slipped a
shirt over Tika’s upper body, covering the wad of dressings on her
burnt chest. Tika stared down at her front and sighed.

‘It does seem to happen
a bit too often now,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it had better stay in the
pouch for now at least.’

Ren returned her smile
then they both looked towards the opening of the barn, beyond the
Dragons. At first it seemed like rain but the rustling sound was
not that of rain. It was soil, gathered up by the wind and carried
the twenty six leagues from Harbour City, increased by what it
collected nearer at hand, and now falling on these farmlands.
Although barely mid afternoon, it darkened and cooled in the barn,
enough for the companions to need to light a small fire already.
Ren was able to make glow stones from a few suitable pebbles he’d
picked up outside which helped raise their spirits.

Jakri thought that Sket
was surfacing from his concussion. He asked if Maressa or Ren had
any willow bark in their supplies: Sket would have an appalling
headache. Maressa searched her pack, knowing Ammi had given them a
goodly supply of willow bark along with so many other
herbs.

‘It isn’t here.’ She
frowned. ‘Maybe Sket took it.’

She reached for his
back pack, the standard issue pack used by all Emla’s personal
Guards with its distinctive blue badge depicting a stylised flower.
She tipped the pack up and out fell rolled shirts, a pair of
trousers, many paper and cloth packets of various herbs, two pots
of salves and other oddments. Navan was the first to notice
Maressa’s stillness. The others turned to see what she was staring
at. Gently she lifted the purple scales. They glittered in the
light of the fire and Ren’s stones. Five perfect scales, each the
size of Maressa’s hand. She knelt, not knowing what to say, while
her tears made the scales sparkle even brighter.

In the Grand Harbour
Master’s apartments Chevra paced restlessly. He had only to look
from one of the many windows in this room to see the extent of the
devastation of his City. Administrator Fenelon had occupied the
upper chamber in the College tower and from there she organised
mages into units to struggle with as many of the City’s problems as
they could. Chevra’s armsmen were still digging through rubble, in
the vain hope of finding trapped survivors. Mage healers had set up
emergency infirmaries at key points throughout the City.

Administrator Zerran
divided his time between the tower and the temple of the Elder
Races nearest the northern gate of the City. A dozen mages remained
there, helping Taza and the other priests as they tried to cope
with citizens dazed by their experience of earthquake on such a
massive scale. Seven third and second rank mages had died in the
temple and six in the tower, caught in the terrible backlash of
power as they tried to restrict Valesh’s energy to a specific area.
In the tower, Fenelon assigned three of the strongest far speakers
- mages of the third and second ranks, to maintain constant contact
with the Wendlan ship Mages now anchored off the north eastern
coast. The forty Wendlan Mages, whom Emperor Kasheen had offered
Chevra, had changed their plan. They had intended to put ashore
near Harbour City to assist the Maleshan mages against Valesh. That
battle had been decided before the Wendlan ships reached the
Maleshan coast. Most of Kasheen’s Mages therefore continued north
with the ships, only ten of their number, escorted by two Imperial
Blossoms, going to the Xantip palace to offer their assistance to
Chevra’s mages.

Zerran was closeted now
with Sheoma, Tavri and Fenelon, receiving the latest communication
from the north west – where Vorna’s estates had once
been.

‘Are they absolutely
positive Tika has emerged mentally untouched?’ Zerran asked yet
again.

He remembered the child
woman fixing him with those strangely altered eyes and insisting
that she must be destroyed should there be any hint of suspicion
that Valesh might have infected her mind. Fenelon knew of that
conversation. She had been amazed by the way Zerran’s usual
impassive composure had been shaken by Tika’s words when he
repeated them to Fenelon.

Now Sheoma went over
Maressa’s last message.

‘Maressa said that the
– erm, cat – told them the gijan would have killed Tika if there
was any doubt.’ Sheoma still found it difficult to accept that
other creatures – even cats – had mental powers apparently matching
humans. ‘The cat said the gijan would have died with her. Maressa
also said that no one has yet spoken of the purple Dragon who
died.’

Zerran bowed his head.
‘She didn’t merely die Sheoma. She sacrificed herself.’

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

In the desert City of
the Domes, the Ship, Star Singer, hummed the counter point harmony
of a Repsian folk song. Kertiss and Orla had not spoken to him in
all the days since the party of travellers had left the great
valley. They had not even walked through his chamber: Kertiss had
sealed the door leading to his and Orla’s quarters and Singer had
no idea if they were still shut within or were using other access
tunnels which he knew had been installed. He wept when the visitors
left, fearing for their safety in the light of Kertiss’s anger at
their precipitate departure.

When the very tall man
had held Tika’s hand against his outer skin, Singer received a
strange pulse of jumbled information. It was several days later
before he’d bothered to try untangling that information. Even
Singer’s sophisticatedly enhanced mental networks found the task
intriguingly difficult. He continued to allow his music to fill the
chamber around him, just in case Kertiss should appear, but it was
music from his memory cubes, not him singing in real
time.

He realised, with
growing excitement, that this tiny pulse of information contained a
very great deal. Singer calculated and transposed, ran diagnostics
on certain of his systems and then did it all again. There was a
thread of song interwoven among various formulae which niggled at
him. Eventually he found it distracting him to the extent that he
applied all his concentration upon it.

It was a simple melody
which seemed to invite harmonies and descants being embroidered
around it. He finally began to sing the tune in the pure strong
voice for which he had been famed, using different systems to add
various harmonies. As the music filled both himself and his
chamber, he found he liked it: it was joyous, a wordless song of
triumphant affection, the like of which he had never heard in his
long existence.

When it reached its
natural end, Singer was silent for a while, then he sang it all
over again. It cheered him enormously and as he worked on during
the next days at defining the information Tika’s mind had passed to
his, he sang it regularly to himself and his mood remained more
cheerful than for a millennia. Singer became excited as well as
cheerful when he finally understood what the information, untangled
and redefined, actually contained. He worked constantly then,
running test after test through all his systems, reactivating those
he had shut down as soon as he’d landed and sworn to Kertiss were
irretrievably closed.

A day came, or night –
Singer had no idea of the passage of planetary time confined below
ground and below the great Dome as he was, when the soft hiss of
the entry ramp opening made him fall totally silent. It was the
ramp which could be activated from either down here or from within
the Dome. Singer waited, external heat sensors checking the whole
space of his chamber, but nothing registered. Time had little
meaning to Singer so he just waited. At last he decided there had
perhaps been a malfunction in the operating system, or someone
above had brushed the activating slab by accident. Singer set an
automatic alarm around the perimeter of his chamber and returned to
work on his internal systems.

He thought of Mazan,
his beloved first Captain, whenever he felt his excitement growing
too overwhelming. Finally, he closed all the reopened and renewed
synapses and sent a questing pulse up to the shielding above him.
The shielding was the first thing Kertiss and Orla had rigged when
they arrived here. He could have shrieked with glee but he managed
to remain silent. He had found gaps in that shielding! Kertiss had
never bothered to check it once he’d set it up – why bother when
Star Singer was mortally damaged and verging on madness?

Trying to stay calm,
Singer sang a nonsense song Mazan had taught him, about a tiny
stumblebug who believed he’d grow up to be a joolar. He reached the
end and was about to repeat it when someone spoke his
name.