Survivors: Book 4 Circles of Light series (59 page)

‘Paper and ink?’
Maressa looked hopefully at Harrip. ‘What shall I say?’

‘A basic warning,’ Gan
said decisively. ‘A description of Orla and the Elders. We can send
more details later. I really would be relieved to know Gaharn and
Vagrantia are alerted to the situation they might face as soon as
possible.’

‘Have you scroll
tubes?’ Tika enquired while Maressa sat at Chevra’s great table,
now ignominiously wedged half in, and half out of the Debating
Chamber.

The company crowded at
Maressa’s shoulder, watching her write her message twice on
separate sheets of parchment. She rolled one and slid it into a
tube Harrip offered her. While Ren rolled the second message,
Maressa walked into the circle, placing the tube on the square blue
slab at its centre. She retreated to stand just outside the circle
and began to murmur softly. There was a soft implosion of air, a
faint gulping sound, and the tube was gone.

She took the second
tube from Ren and sent that one on its way through the circles. A
babble of excited chatter broke out between Maleshan and Wendlans
while Chevra stared at his floor, his mouth open and his complexion
pasty.

‘Now we wait,’ Tika
told him.

For some reason she
felt unaccountably light hearted: there were active circles here!
It made Gaharn, Sapphrea, the Stronghold, Vagrantia, seem
comfortingly closer. A cold wind began to gust in from the sea as
the sky darkened and Chevra himself went round shuttering the
windows. Maressa found herself in the middle of a mayhem of mages,
all battering her with questions she was quite unable to answer.
They fell silent as the air in the chamber suddenly
tingled.

There was a tiny
popping noise and two figures stood in the centre of the floor.
Tika gave a helpless shriek and flew into Emla’s arms. There was a
bustle near the partly jammed door and Farn’s long neck craned over
the table, his eyes whirring pearl and sapphire. Finally Emla
finished mopping Tika’s tears and her own and faced the room, her
arm holding Tika close to her side. Gan gathered his wits and
stepped forward, saluting the woman who stood as tall as he. He
turned smartly.

‘The Golden Lady, Emla
of Gaharn City,’ he announced. He glanced at Emla’s companion. ‘And
her personal Guard, Shan.’

Tears threatened again
when Emla caught sight of Sket’s grinning face, but first she went
to Farn. With no heed to her dignity she scrambled over the table
to hug him fiercely and greet Brin and be introduced to a bashful
Storm. She looked over her shoulder to Tika.

‘Is Seela outside?’ she
asked.

Lady Emla was appalled
at the wave of grief which poured into her from all directions.
Shan helped her back into the chamber where she found a man named
Ren, with eyes silvered as Elyssa’s had been, was the only one able
to give her a coherent account of what had taken place.

The evening sped by as
Emla listened to the companions relate their experiences. Harrip
spoke for Chevra, his report crisp and concise befitting a man as
highly intelligent as he. She listened to the Wendlan Mages, and
the Maleshans, filing away every word in her phenomenal memory. She
had shot one warning glance at Shan before sending her Guard off to
renew her friendship with the Dragons squeezed in the passageway
beyond the chamber. Emla had absolutely no intention of telling
Tika that Kija and Kadi had flown to Drogoya a full season past and
not a word had been heard from them.

She explained that time
was necessarily short: she had told her people she would return
within a set span. Lamps were lit and placed around the chamber as
night wore on. It seemed only moments had passed when Emla got to
her feet, calling Shan to her.

‘Maressa will instruct
you on using the circles,’ she told Chevra and Harrip. ‘Please keep
us informed. I will arrange for grain to be sent to you as soon as
I get back. You must tell us what else you have urgent need for and
we will do what we can to ease the suffering of your
people.’

‘There was a circle in
one of the Domes,’ Navan suddenly remembered. ‘If we travel north,
we can send messages from there.’

Emla frowned. ‘One of
these Bound Ones you speak of was nearby I think? Maressa, be very
careful of that circle.’

She gave Gan a
quizzical look. ‘Do you return to Gaharn, my Captain?’

Gan knelt before her.
‘Lady, you should choose another Captain. I must stay with my
friends, with my family.’

Emla’s green eyes
sparkled with tears again but she nodded, turning to hug Maressa in
farewell. She and Shan walked to the edge of the circle and began
to follow the pattern inwards, chanting softly. The air popped and
they were gone. Tika climbed over the table to the Dragons and they
made their way back out to Chevra’s garden. Maressa made to follow
but Sket stopped her.

‘I’ll go Lady Maressa.
Leave them be a while. We all forget she’s scarcely more than a
child.’

Dawn was smearing the
sky with grubby fingers when Zerran quietly left the Debating
Chamber. Kilting his robes round his elderly knees, he sincerely
hoped Chevra would have this table moved as quickly as possible. He
walked along the passage, marvelling that a Dragon the size of Brin
had managed to squeeze through it. Zerran paused at the door to the
garden: the three Dragons seemed asleep; their heads back between
their wings. Khosa and Akomi were curled together on a blanket next
to Sket who sat patiently working on a sword belt. He glanced up at
Zerran and nodded his head towards the further end of the
garden.

Zerran walked along one
of the narrow paths close to the wall, the scent of dew laden roses
almost overpowering in its richness. Tika sat on a stone bench, her
back to the wall and her knees drawn up to her chin. He sat beside
her in silence for a while before he sighed and leaned back more
comfortably.

‘You were glad to see
the Lady Emla,’ he said. ‘She is wonderfully tall.’

Tika giggled. ‘Of all
the things you might say, you choose “she is wonderfully
tall”!’

Zerran smiled. ‘Well,
she is. Has it made it harder, seeing her and knowing you could go
to her through the amazing circles?’

Tika turned her head,
resting her cheek on the top of her knees to regard the
Administrator.

‘Easier I think,’ she
said, surprising him. ‘Knowing she is still there, knowing life
goes on in her House as it has for so long.’

Zerran nodded. ‘And
you,’ he said softly. ‘You are much changed little one. Valesh did
not infect you with her madness but you are changed deeper than I
had thought you might be.’

‘What do you know of
the places Between?’

Zerran’s shock was
palpable. Tika continued before he could answer.

‘Valesh somehow got me
to such a place. Seela called it the place Between life and
death.’

‘Seela was
there?’

‘Yes but only briefly.
She said she was not permitted to stay long.’

Zerran stretched his
hand to rest it on Tika’s tangled dark hair. ‘She was dead; she
should have been beyond the place Between.’

Tika told him of the
tunnels, the windows which showed scenes she neither recognised nor
understood. Zerran listened, asking no questions, until Tika
stopped speaking.

‘We have long known of
the places Between. They are extremely perilous places.They are
Between time, Between worlds, Between life and death as the one you
were cast into. I do not understand the reason you say you smelt
mint, but I understand your concern that it may be connected with
the smell reported by the Vintavoy woman in the desert
city.’

He thought for a while,
his fingers absently working to free a knot in Tika’s curls. ‘The
smell of mint is benign, I am positive. You say Ren and Sket have
also smelt it?’

Tika’s head nodded
under his hand. ‘Nirian said their Mages sense Qwah’s presence
moving north. If Orla left the Domes, I would guess she goes at
Qwah’s bidding, whether she is aware of that or not. But it worries
me that there is no information about Kertiss. Orla was the one who
would consider every possibility before she acted – Kertiss was not
as clever as her I suspect. I would much prefer to know exactly
where he is.’

Tika moved, her legs
dangling from the bench as she stretched her arms over her head. ‘I
think we must go soon. Orla is too far ahead of us.’

Zerran got to his feet,
hands in the small of his back. ‘I’m too old to stay up all night
and then sit on a damp stone seat,’ he groaned. ‘I’ll ask Tashi and
Sheoma to far speak the Mages nearest the desert.’ He looked down
at Tika. ‘You told us the journey through the desert from the City
to Malesh was bad: can you manage that again?’

Tika stood up. ‘We had
to travel at the pace of their animals. The Dragons will fly much
more quickly.’

They began to walk back
down the path. ‘Why have you no horses here?’

‘I don’t know. We only
know of them because the desert tribesmen ride them when they raid
the northern villages. The local people believed them to be
monsters, years ago.’

To Zerran’s relief, a
team of burly armsmen were wrestling the enormous council table out
of the doorway and down a corridor, no doubt to wedge itself
somewhere further in the palace. Sheoma and Tashi were already in
the chamber.

‘Tavri says that the
Wendlan Mages have split up. Ten of them and two Maleshans, with a
group of two hundred and fifty warriors, are already in the desert.
The other Wendlan Mages are either shielding them from the heat or
doing something to the weather – he isn’t entirely
sure.’

Sheoma bowed to Tashi.
‘The Wendlans manipulate power very differently than we
do.’

Tashi returned the bow:
Wendlans seemed far more formal than Maleshans. ‘We have much we
can learn from each other Mistress Sheoma when these naughty times
are past.’

Tika
blinked.

‘You mean bad times,’
Sheoma corrected kindly.

Chevra was mortified
that he could offer no supplies for the companions’ journey. His
City had been famed for its wealth and prosperity, and now it was
no better than the poorest village. Tika quietly asked Jakri if
he’d prefer to stay with his countrymen but he declined at
once.

‘If it is acceptable
Mistress Tika, I would journey on with you and your
friends.’

‘We go into yet more
danger Jakri,’ she warned.

‘I know. But I have
come to feel much respect for your abilities and affection also.’
His faintly golden skin flushed slightly at his admission but Tika
smiled.

‘If you come, you must
accept being counted friend, equal among us all.’

It was late afternoon
when they saw the dark line of the great forest ahead of them and
Brin spiralled lower, looking for somewhere to rest overnight. The
small towns they’d flown over had suffered some damage in the
earthquakes but nothing to compare with the devastation in Harbour
City. Brin found a large patch of pasture close to the first trees,
and the party landed. They had seen a cluster of farm buildings
about a league back, hidden now behind a low hill. Navan suggested
he walk back and ask for food. Maressa produced some coins which
Sheoma had insisted she take for just this sort of situation. She
suggested she and Gan accompany Navan while the other four found
firewood and began brewing the inevitable tea.

It was dark enough for
early stars when they returned, although no stars penetrated the
dust hanging in the upper air. They brought fresh bread, a large
round of cheese and a string of pungent onions, which occasioned
moans of delight. Navan told them the farm people said they’d felt
the earthquakes only mildly: the domestic animals had panicked but
there had been no damage to land or buildings.

When Tika curled
against Farn’s chest he rumbled softly.

‘I’m glad you aren’t
going to walk through these trees without me my Tika.’

Tika remembered the
horror of being parted from Farn for three days when they’d come
south, and pressed closer to her soul bond. Farn had not yet
mentioned their being apart when she’d gone off with Seela. Tika
wondered if he actually remembered or whether Brin and Jakri had
kept him unknowing all that time.

‘Will we see Zeminth’s
village?’ he asked.

‘I hope so. I hope they
didn’t get caught in the fighting but they may well have
done.’

It took a full day of
strenuous flight to cross the wedge of forest which spread right
across Malesh. Navan estimated it was perhaps three hundred leagues
west to east, from studying his maps. (Tika’d heard Sket ask why
the drawings were maps on land but charts on ships, but Navan
hadn’t known the reason.) The second day from the forest they saw
the first burnt out farms. Wooden roofs, their timbers charred
stumps, and stone walls blackened and cracked. Maressa was by now
within far speaking distance of the Wendlan mages and she told Brin
to fly further to the east.

‘That takes us close to
Zeminth’s village,’ he replied. ‘Shall we stop there?’