The Fiuri Realms (Shioni of Sheba Book 5) (10 page)

A
N EARTHQUAKE-orchestra
accompanied the travellers into the mists of the central Cracks. They flew for a day through a world of wildly-tumbling rocks and islands, which crashed into and ground against each other as though the clinging mist were a soup being stirred ever so slowly by an unseen ladle the size of a tunnel. Deep groans resounded in the dim murk, together with the occasional deafening ‘
CRAAACK!’
of rock splitting under some unimaginable strain. A faraway roaring came to their ears, as if a thousand waterfalls had chosen to thunder at once.

The unseen disturbance agitated the mists, rousting many animals and insects out of their hiding places. Viri had to backtrack numerous times. They fled from deadly swarms of Sword-Bats and dodged the lunge of an eel-like monster from a ravine, a creature so enormous it could have swallowed half of Sherfiuri Ball in one gulp.

Shioni heard Tellira mutter that he had never seen the Cracks so stirred up. But when he advised Ashkuriel to turn back, the Yellow Fiuri only grew enraged. He hissed, “Lord Tazaka awaits the pleasure of Shionelle’s company.”

Listening to the faraway thundering, Shioni responded, “It sounds like Cave-Crawlers fighting on the surface.”

Ashkuriel almost tore her antennae off for that comment.

As the Yellow Fiuri turned himself an impressive shade of puce yelling at her, Shioni realised, with an unexpected pang, that he was scared. Spilling his nectar gourd, quaking in his pointy-toed soldier boots, scared. Ugh–now she was feeling sympathy for Ashkuriel? Somebody slap her with a Glue-Slap plant!

Viri and Tellira conferred in low tones. The younger Hunter said, “I don’t like this, Tellira. The trail is too old.”

Tellira pulled his antennae worriedly. “Ashkuriel won’t wait. It’s our only option, but it takes us into the Sunward sponge tunnels.”

Thunder boomed, shaking the air around them. Shioni distinctly felt the concussion punch her body, and the Vermilion Dragonflies screeched unhappily.

“Won’t the tunnels collapse with all this shaking?” Viri muttered.

The senior Hunter nodded. “We can only try.”

He looked harried. Shioni glanced at Viridelle. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead.

They did not stop for sleep time, for the two Hunters judged it too dangerous. For a time the Vermilion Dragonflies flew on through an endless void, before they ducked into a deep, jagged ravine filled with barrel-sized plants on either wall which flung their sticky purple fronds against Char’s shield as they flew by. Shioni realised that they were close to ‘that place’–the surface–when she observed a number of the Yellow soldiers and drivers making hand-signs meant to ward off evil.

The mists swirled about them, dense and rank-smelling. Viri led them by smell–a Hunter secret, which Char quietly explained involved laying a scent-trail only members of the Hunters Guild knew how to follow. Shioni nodded pensively, wiping her damp nose. Everything was moist. Her hair stuck to her cheeks and wings, and her clothes clung clammily to her body. For the first time since waking with no memory of her past, she felt chilled.

“
Chiribui?
” offered Viri, tossing a gourd to the White Fiuri. “It’ll crisp the petals of your heart.”

Shioni sipped cautiously from the gourd, not wanting to repeat her mistake the first time she had tried a Hunter drink. The piquant nectar was different to what she remembered. It was deliciously warming and so sweet, it made her breath stick in her throat. She gulped several eager mouthfuls. Suddenly, Shioni’s stomach gave an ominous rumble. It gurgled and turned over as though she had an animal stuck inside.

“Oh, my …” she squeaked, clutching her abdomen as a pain rapidly blossomed behind her breastbone. A caverns-sized belch ripped out of her. The Vermilion Dragonfly swerved, almost crashing into a wall of vegetation as they flew by. “Viri!” Shioni shouted. “No, no …”

“I’m going to die laughing,” chortled Viridelle. “It seems to have quite a strong effect on you.”

“My stomach! Ooh, I feel sick …”

“What was that, sister?” Iri demanded.

“Concentrated chingo root,” said her twin. “Very gassy.”

Shioni hurled the gourd at the Green Hunter, aiming for her nose, but Viri caught the missile deftly, snickering. Her stomach snarled again, a noise that reminded her unaccountably of a large, tawny predator. Covering her mouth was no use. Had she not been tied to the saddle, the resulting eruption would have hurled her off the Dragonfly’s back.

Viridelle. The little slug! Staring at her stomach in horror, Shioni realised that she could actually see her abdomen swelling up like a balloon. Quickly, she expelled more fruity air. Disgusting!

“Just wait until she starts on the other end,” said Viridelle. “Shionelle will outfly any Dragonfly. Smelly gas propulsion.”

“At least my job doesn’t involve shoving my nose into caverns-stink all day long,” Shioni retorted, but immediately felt bad for being so sulky. Her cheeks puffed up as another eruption readied itself in her bowels. That Green Hunter desperately needed another lesson in wrestling!

Pits and pockets began to appear in the ravine walls. They housed a ghastly array of Banded Eels–great, slithering monsters with toothy grins and bulging orange eyes. The putrid stench of mould and decay hung in the air.

“What stinks like that?” asked Iri, holding her nose.

“The Eels,” called Chardal. “We’ll turn soon.”

“But the smell won’t improve,” said Viridelle, from the lead Dragonfly. “Right, into the tunnels!”

Abruptly, Shioni’s Dragonfly swung into a tunnel hidden beneath a huge mossy boulder in the ravine-wall. The sponge-tunnels where a soft, squidgy maze that did not improve the longer they spent inside them. Khaki mosses mounded on the walls, interspersed with spreading plates of black fungi that crumbled into tacky bits at the slightest touch. The tunnels deadened any noise, while the slightest touch or puff of air caused dense khaki-green clouds of sticky crud–Shioni could think of no better word to describe it–to billow up, coating the travellers as though they had spent hours slapping mud on each other. She could barely see the Vermilion Dragonfly ahead of them.

Her allergies would love this!

The tunnels occasionally widened into dimly-lit caverns infested with the malodorous yet not very aggressive Banded Eels, but for the most part the party buzzed along in silence, following Viridelle’s commands. All the while, the Green Hunter’s chingo root kept Shioni’s digestion working overtime. From the odd whiff that reached her nostrils, Shioni decided she should be grateful that their surroundings stank even more than she did!

Again and again as the hours passed by in the sponge tunnels, faraway thuds shook the sponge tunnels. Tellira kept glancing at the roof and urging Viri to greater speed. They launched over the edge of a narrow ravine. She could breathe again! Shioni heaved a sigh. This gloop was disgusting, coating her antennae and wings …

“Rockfall!” howled Tellira.

Somehow, the slowness of a caverns collapse mesmerised any watching Fiuri. A tumbling mountain of debris came rushing toward them from directly ahead, devastating everything in its path with awesome, indifferent force. Rocks and plants and two immensely long, spindly-legged centipedes avalanched across their path.

“Down this way!” Viridelle howled, changing direction. The dazzle of Dragonflies plunged into the ravine. Down they raced, chased by a bulging collapse of the walls, the rotten rock cracking and crumbling all around them. “Faster!”

Shioni gasped. They were coming to the bottom of the ravine. Clouds mushroomed around the Dragonflies’ tails. Viridelle angled them into another screaming turn, forcing her Dragonfly to smash open a way for the others as they bulled blindly through one final layer of sponge. The White Fiuri dashed her eyes clean just in time to see a huge boulder looming out of the dirt. Their Vermilion Dragonfly used its legs to glance itself away, down toward Fiuriel’s core. After a few more minutes of frantic, edge-of-the-wings flying, they burst free into a vast open space. The drivers shouted in concert, encouraging their beasts to their utmost speed.

KAAAAABOOOM!!
The very air shook.

The Cracks would change again, Shioni realised, looking back to see untold tons of debris slowly cascading away behind them, a flowing khaki river as wide and deep as one of Fiuriel’s tunnels. She realised that there were only four Dragonflies left–one carrying her and Char, one for the Hunters, one carrying three Yellow Fiuri soldiers, and Ashkuriel’s mount.

One had vanished. Where was Iri?

Shioni called, “Viri, we have to turn around! Iri’s missing.”

“Swing back, Hunter,” Ashkuriel ordered.

Shioni caught an incredulous glance from Viridelle as the Green Hunter issued her orders. This was the brutal Yellow Fiuri leader? Yet, Ashkuriel seemed adamant. Shortly, the Vermilion Dragonflies hovered a bowshot away from the slow-moving river of debris, gently drifting Coreward–to use Char’s word. Every eye scanned the rubble. Shioni identified bits of centipede-like carapaces and the bodies of many Banded Eels, crushed. Her heart quivered like a pair of Fiuri wings in full flight. What chance could Iridelle possibly have of surviving? She had been engulfed …

Suddenly, Tellira cried out, “There!” He and Viri launched themselves off their Dragonfly, arrowing toward what Shioni had taken for a boulder, at first. No, it was Iridelle, squirming free from the rubble with an unconscious Yellow Fiuri soldier draped over each shoulder. Her throat closed. Great leaping hyenas! That was courage in action.

Iri began to wave her hands frantically, shouting something Shioni could not make out.

The debris blasted toward them. A great, glistening head, as wide as ten Vermilion Dragonflies flying side by side, thundered out of the muck to engulf the front half of Ashkuriel’s mount. The Yellow Fiuri screamed in pain. Shioni, who had just stood up to see if she could help Viri with her sister, whirled to see the great, predatory mouth chomping down a second time. Tinkling, crystalline music filled her mind. Strange colours swept across her vision. Ashkuriel! He was trapped!

Before she knew it, Shioni darted into the fray, her four wings vibrating so rapidly, all she could see from the corners of her eyes was a blur. Ashkuriel pawed weakly at his saddle straps, struggling to free himself. The creature’s outward-sloping fangs dug into the Dragonfly right in front of the Yellow Fiuri–had he lost a leg? Shioni slapped into the Dragonfly’s flank. Its wings fluttered feebly.

Clutching Ashkuriel’s saddle, Shioni said, “Here, let me help you.”

The yellow eyes widened. “Get away, child, before it eats you too …”

“No!” She slapped his belt buckle. “Come on!”

The thing’s breath smelled like nectar, the heat of it enough to curl her antennae, Shioni thought. Its awesome presence made her dizzy, not merely with fear, but with the awareness of searing magic–and intelligence? Ashkuriel’s buckle was stuck. Drawing her dagger, Shioni sawed at the leather straps. Having finished its downward grinding motion, the mouth began to yawn open again. Howling hyenas, how could she have been so pollen-brained? This was Ashkuriel, her enemy! Yet the White Fiuri refused to give up. He must not die, not while she had a chance.

The tough leather finally yielded to her efforts with a robust ‘
Twang!’

“Come,” she manoeuvred him out of the saddle. Ashkuriel groaned, his left leg dangling at a ghastly angle. “Put your arm over my shoulders. Fly!”

Fluttering gamely, Shioni tried to haul the much larger adult Fiuri away from the monster. The mouth gaped above them like a living cavern, a vile, luminous green within, with yellow patterns on the ridges of its gullet. Fangs ten Fiuri long lined its mouth, a dozen or more gleaming ranks of needle-sharp teeth. The Dragonfly twitched once and fell limp. The driver had vanished, perhaps down the creature’s maw. The other two soldiers, occupying the rear saddles on the Vermilion Dragonfly, had abandoned Ashkuriel at once.

For a second, as they winged away, Shioni thought they were safe. Then a wind rose. The creature was drawing breath! The suction force was incredible. Shioni thought her wings would fall off, they were fluttering so fast, but the creature’s breath dragged at them until she found herself flying backward in the air.

Ashkuriel gasped, “No, Shionelle–leave me. You escape.”

Suddenly, a Vermilion Dragonfly flashed right across the creature’s open mouth! “Incoooooooming!”
screamed Chardal. “Catch this!” A rope slapped Shioni’s legs. Suddenly, there came a sharp tug on her ankle as a loop tightened there. Her arm muscles burned as, clasping Ashkuriel for dear life, Shioni found herself dragged away at high speed, snared by the rope tied to Chardal’s mount.

The creature receded rapidly; Shioni shuddered as she looked back over her shoulder, past her wings. What was it? Some freak of a caterpillar or worm-like creature, apparently blind, searching for its prey with huge sniffs of its nostrils. An odd thought struck her. The thing resembled Lifi’s children! The colours were different, a fiery yellow of its carapace, curling and shifting as though the creature itself were aflame, mesmerising her … but the shape, the impression of a vast mind … she shook her head. Truly, she was mad. This was worse than amnesia.