The Sylph Hunter (15 page)

“I really need to talk to you,” he told Eapha earnestly and this time saw a flicker deep in her eyes, something of doubt at her own words. “There are a lot of things I need you to know.”

“She knows everything she needs to know,” one of the women lounging on the pillows called, waving languidly with a hand holding a fan of cards. “Come on, Eapha, it’s your turn.”

Eapha opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, the battler roared in anger. Airi shrieked and grabbed her master, yanking Devon straight off the ground and into the air, away from the battle sylph that was turning to smoke and lightning and wrapping himself around Eapha despite her startled screech. He still roared his warnings. The other women were also screaming now, scrambling up from the pillows while Xehm grabbed his daughter, pulling her in terror toward the exit. Gel stood frozen, shaking as Shasha braced herself at his side, not willing to run if he wasn’t.

Clouds of battle sylphs appeared at the massive windows that overlooked the city, the depth of them blocking the sun and turning the interior to sudden night.

Twenty feet above the floor in his sylph’s embrace, Devon felt his chest grow tight as he forgot to breathe. The battle sylphs were pouring into the room itself now, coming in through one of the windows. Some of them converged on the women lounging amongst the pillows, the rest shifting to human as they circled the queen. Exhausted, Airi finally dropped Devon down beside Xehm, Zalia, and Gel, but retreat was impossible. Battle sylphs were between them and the doors now, looking at them more with curiosity than malice. Devon was a little bit relieved by that realization, but horrified as well to see one standing far too close to Zalia, smiling at her. She stared back at him, her face bright red. Her father appeared scandalized to see him, but also too afraid to say anything.

Devon was pretty sure there weren’t as many battle sylphs in the entire Valley as there were crowding into this room right now.

One battler held Eapha’s hands, looking down at her. He was tall and dark, his eyes a glistening red color. Eapha smiled up at him, love in her eyes.

“My king,” she said, her tone laughing.

The stern face he’d been looking down with lightened and he smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “My queen,” he answered her. The smile didn’t last long, fading in the next instant. “We have a problem,” he told her. “There’s a Hunter in the city.”

Airi groaned against Devon’s neck, reminding him what she’d said about not wanting the battlers to fight the Hunter. It still felt like an alien concept to him. Fighting was what battlers were born for.

Eapha looked baffled. “What’s a Hunter?”

The battler nodded shortly, his face hard. He was as aware as Airi of how dangerous these things were, Devon realized. The rest of them were grinning, their excitement palpable, even as Shasha shook her head sadly and Airi moaned again against his neck. Whatever it was the elementals thought about the Hunter, the battlers were obviously in disagreement.

“Hunters are predators from the hive world,” the battler said. Most of the women had wormed their way through the crowd to see what was going on and each of them stood with a battler close by, usually with his arm around them or holding their hand. They watched curiously, a few picking up on the glee of their battlers and smiling. At least Eapha wasn’t smiling, not while she looked up into her own battler’s face.

“How did it get here?” she asked.

“It came through the gate. It killed everyone there. I don’t know how long ago, since no one was able to send a warning.”

She looked alarmed; Devon shared her feelings. “How can it do that?”

“They’re unbelievably fast,” one of the battlers laughed with a cocky grin.

“Then no one survived?” Eapha asked.

“We did,” a gravelly voice answered before the lead battler could.

Eapha turned toward them, as did the rest of the battle sylphs and their women. Nervous all over again, Devon looked over his shoulder at Shasha. The earth sylph gazed at her queen without expression, both hands holding one of Gel’s while he stood beside her. He was white with fear, but at least he looked to be interacting with the world again.

“What happened?” Eapha asked her.

The earth sylph looked down. “Everyone was celebrating. The gate had opened onto a hive where there were many willing to come through. We were pulling humans off the street to become masters. There were hundreds.” She looked away from them, obviously unhappy with the memories but not willing to be silent. The battlers and women stared at her, as did Gel. He reached out with his free hand and laid it on Shasha’s stone head. She smiled at him. “I lived because I was far from the gate. It came through and everyone…died. I’d seen a Hunter attack before and I knew…I dove for my master and buried us both. I still barely made it.”

“Why didn’t you call for help?” one battler furiously demanded.

She looked at him. “You know why.”

He glared. “You know nothing,” he snapped.

Devon took a deep breath. He didn’t like the thought of speaking near so many battle sylphs who were already angry at having their abilities questioned, but that was what he’d been sent here for. “Your Majesty?” he called, noting that it took a moment for Eapha to realize he was speaking to her and turn his way. She looked uncertain and pale, as she should be.

“I saw the gate,” he told her. “The place was devastated.” He shivered. “And the cages that were used to hold the feeders were destroyed, as if something huge had pushed its way to the surface.”

Eapha’s jaw dropped, alarm flickering across her eyes. Devon didn’t like to see anyone frightened, but this woman needed to be worried. “How big are these things, Tooie?” she demanded, turning back to the lead battler.

Tooie hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. He actually looked a bit sheepish.

“The same thing happened at the harbor,” Devon continued, partly to cover Tooie’s lack of an answer, but mostly because he had to. He didn’t know for sure if the battlers reached the same conclusion he had about what happened there. He knew they were aware something went on, thanks to his own panicked flight, but not if they’d equated it with the Hunter. Eapha gaped at him. “Two nights ago. Everyone was gone, including some friends of mine. All I found was their blood.”

Eapha stared at him, looking horrified, and spun toward Tooie again. “Why haven’t you killed it?” she demanded.

He shrugged again. “It’s invisible.”

“What?”

“It’s invisible. We can’t see it. We know it’s out there, but we can’t find it yet.” The rest of the battlers grumbled agreement, none of them looking happy.

“You sylphs are in charge. What can you do?” Eapha asked, still looking up at Tooie.

“Kill it!” the other battlers shouted, more taking up the roar until the room resounded and the humans had to put their hands over their ears. In the midst of all that sound, Shasha stepped forward.

“Raise the hive,” she told the queen, who blinked and lifted a hand so she could hear. Instantly, every battler was silent. “Surround the hive with walls ten feet thick, and let no one out,” Shasha concluded. “That will protect us.”

“Ten feet?” Eapha gagged.

“Anything thinner and the Hunter will be able to pull them apart.”

Devon felt ill at the very thought. So, apparently, did Eapha. She paled and looked back at the women she’d been sitting with, all of whom were shouting suggestions, most of which seemed to involve the battlers throwing explosions around until they caught the Hunter in one. Eapha even looked at Devon for a moment, but before he could think of what to say, she returned her gaze to Tooie.

“She’ll make that hive, but you can find it and kill it,” she told him. “Right?”

“Right,” he agreed.

Wrong, Devon started to say, but Tooie looked out over the heads of the others and they roared again, most of them immediately shifting to cloud form and rising into the air, darkening the room as they flew out the window, Tooie with them. Devon ducked, his arms up protectively around his head as they went past him, close enough that he was brushed by the warm edges of their mantles. “Wait,” he tried to shout at them, but none of them seemed to hear, and in all the noise, he wasn’t even sure he’d spoken aloud.

They’ll die,
Airi mourned.
They’ll all die.

A moment later, the majority of the battle sylphs were gone out the window again and the women were looking at each other, some a little uncertainly, the rest with the beginnings of amusement. Eapha hugged herself, rubbing her arms, and her friends surrounded her, reassuring her that the battle sylphs could fix any problem, that they would be safe and she didn’t have to worry about them.

That just wasn’t true. Devon took another deep breath and stepped forward. “Your Majesty?”

One of the other women turned toward him, her expression angry. “Can’t you see she’s upset?” she snapped. “She’ll talk to you some other time.” She made a languid gesture with one hand.

“Your Majesty, I have to talk to you. It’s important.”

Something stronger than stone grabbed Devon’s shoulder and he froze, his breath catching in his throat as the hand dug in hard enough to hurt and another clamped over his mouth before he could speak.

Despite Devon’s muffled protests, the battle sylph had no problem hustling him and the others out.

CHAPTER TEN

E
apha sat heavily on one of the few chairs in the room, this one a chaise covered with embroidered fabric. She and the other women were too used to only having pillows to really be comfortable sitting on harder surfaces, but right now she wanted something solid underneath her.

Ten-foot stone walls were all that could stop this thing? Plus it was invisible? She remembered having nightmares as a child, horrible dreams where she was being chased by something she couldn’t see. She’d run down the streets of her neighborhood and always it would be after her, following her around every turn, and no matter what she tried to say to anyone, no one would believe her. Not a little slave girl like her.

Over in his corner, Haru looked up from Fareeda and over at Eapha, a frown on his face as the battle sylph studied her and then sniffed the air. Was he trying to sniff out the Hunter? she wondered. Haru just turned back to his lover, still frowning.

Kiala bent down in front of her, the woman’s face skeptical and a little annoyed. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. “You’re not worried, are you? The battlers will find that thing and destroy it and we’re safe up here until they do. Yahe says that Hunters attack along the ground, not this high up. This place is completely safe for us, and that dome will protect everyone else.” The other women nodded in agreement.

“It won’t be able to hide from them for long,” Abra added, “even if it is invisible. Did you feel how excited they were? They finally get to do something important.”

The women laughed, all of them bragging about how their own battle sylph would be the one to kill it. Eapha’s shoulders sagged. They were right, of course. There wasn’t anything to worry about, was there? She couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Tooie had hoped for something else out of her though.

She frowned for a moment. Was she imagining that? With all the emotions going on in the room, it had been hard to separate any of them out. She’d been overwhelmed by the excitement of all the battlers and her own friends, familiar with them as she was. She hadn’t even been able to pick out Leon Petrule’s representative. He hadn’t been all that impressive; he looked even younger than her and terribly frightened. She looked around, but he’d already gone. She sighed. He must have been as unimpressed with her as she was with him. She knew her friends were. Their indifference for Eapha’s position was like a burn on her soul that she flinched from. Devon must have felt the same about her. No wonder he left.

“Someone suggested a card game?” she asked at last, straightening her shoulders and looking up at her friends. Pleased at that, they all went back to their pillows. Eapha joined them, their happiness a balm to her, despite her own doubts.

In the corner, Haru watched them from where he knelt before his lover, just as he always had. Nothing of what he was thinking crossed his face, but he studied his queen for a long moment and then looked at his sweet Fareeda. Her mind was broken, but her soul was still there and she was vulnerable, so frighteningly at risk. Haru flicked his gaze to the huge, airy windows that made up the majority of the palace and touched his lover’s face, whispering silently to her for a moment before he rose and went to look out those windows, leaving her whimpering in fear behind him.

He didn’t look for the Hunter; that would have been a waste of time. Instead he looked for signs of the earth sylph who’d just left, and the walls of the hive she and her kind would raise. When it was ready, he and Fareeda would go there and wait it out. After all, pride and bravado were nothing compared to the safety of the woman he loved.

“Damn!” Devon swore. “Damnit, damnit, damnit! I am such a failure!”

No, you’re not,
Airi told him.

“Devon!” Zalia gasped and blushed, looking embarrassed at actually having called him by his first name; then she firmed herself and said it again. “You did nothing wrong, Devon.”

Xehm nodded in agreement. “She knows of the danger now. The Hunter will be found and killed, and until then, we’ll be safe in Shasha’s hive.” He nodded again decisively. “You’ve done very well.”

Devon tore his hands through his hair, Airi squeaking as he disrupted her careful mess of it. “I didn’t do anything! She didn’t even hear me. Airi
said
that the battlers couldn’t hunt the Hunter. Shasha said it too! And who gets to go into this hive they’re going to make? Is everyone going to agree to it? Or will it be just the sylph masters and to the grave with everyone else? And that’s just the most immediate problem. This whole city is falling apart and no one’s taking responsibility for it.” He glared up at the palace, floating so far over their heads that he couldn’t make out any detail. Was Eapha safe up there? Devon had no way of knowing. He just knew the rest of them weren’t and he had to force away a very real shudder at the thought that the Hunter could be right in front of him and he wouldn’t see it.

Xehm looked uncomfortable at his outburst. “She said that the sylphs were in charge,” he started to argue.

“That’s the whole problem!” Devon wailed, aware that he was starting to sound hysterical. They were back in the master section of the city, behind the great wall, though not in the crowded square they’d been in before. Still, people passing on the street looked at them curiously, those who weren’t huddled in doorways or walking in a mindless daze. “Sylphs can’t be in charge of anything!” He dipped his hands over his shoulders, into Airi’s pattern.
I’m sorry,
he whispered to her silently.
I’m sorry.
“People don’t get this. Sylphs are hive animals. They’re like godsdamned
bees
. They do what they’re told, they don’t think independently. In the whole damn Valley,
Heyou
is the only sylph who does anything without direction. Even Ril has to have the threat of Leon’s boot up his ass to do something without a handbook, and gods forbid that Mace do anything that’s not for the good of the hive.”

I’d be offended if I didn’t agree with you,
Airi said, giggling.

They gaped at him. “That stupid idiot,” he continued, pointing up in the direction of the palace, “is supposed to be giving the orders and she isn’t!”

Even Gel and Shasha were staring now. The earth sylph had been rubbing her master’s hands, kissing them gently every once in a while as he looked down at her. He was definitely awake now and he stared at Devon, his jaw hanging open.

“Maybe you should have told her that,” Zalia said hesitantly.

Devon spun on her and sagged. She was so beautiful and kind. He really did love her, he decided, even if he had just met her and the whole idea was crazy. It didn’t matter. He loved her anyway. “I really don’t think that would have gone over well. They tossed me out for disobeying one of those useless women there. How would they react to ‘Hi, Your Majesty. You’re a dolt.’ The battle sylphs probably would have torn my head off.”

A faint smile tugged at Zalia’s lips.

“Maybe I should just rip your head off now,” a gleeful voice said from behind him.

Airi shrieked in Devon’s ear, turning into a visible swirl of screaming sand as the surprise of it jerked him forward and he tripped over Xehm’s feet, stumbling against him. The old man staggered under his weight and they both fell over, landing painfully on the stone ground.

A beautifully chiseled battle sylph stood where Devon had been standing, his hands on his hips as he grinned down at them. He laughed and looked at Zalia.

“That was fun!” he cheered. “He’s easier to scare than most people!”

Zalia blinked at him, her huge eyes filled with an expression Devon couldn’t quite recognize. “Don’t scare them,” she whispered, her hands trembling slightly.

Immediately, the battler’s full attention was on her. “But it’s fun!”

She shook her head. “You could have hurt my father!”

“Okay, Zalia,” he sighed.

“You know him?” Xehm managed as he and Devon untangled themselves from each other. He looked understandably horrified at the thought.

Zalia ducked her head as the battler walked over to stand beside her, pausing a moment to sniff her hair as he did so. Xehm’s breath caught in his throat. Devon wasn’t breathing at all.

“His name is One-Eleven,” she admitted. “He’s the one who defended me against Orlil, and got me better working hours at the restaurant.”

Xehm hesitated for a long moment and then stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “Thank you for helping my daughter,” he said.

One-Eleven looked at the hand for a moment and then finally shook it with what was probably more gentleness than his norm. “Welcome,” he muttered.

“Why are you here?” Zalia asked. “I thought you were all sent out to hunt for that thing?”

One-Eleven grinned at her in a way that made Zalia blush and Devon start to feel very uncomfortable. Finally the battler’s face sobered. “I’m supposed to make sure the earth sylph doesn’t have problems getting the wall set up.”

With everything that had happened, Devon managed to forget that Shasha was supposed to be raising a ten-foot-thick wall to protect everyone. Standing up, he looked back at her.

She still seemed tired—Gel was utterly exhausted—but that didn’t matter. While the rest of them had been interacting with One-Eleven, she’d obviously put out a call. Hundreds of earth sylphs were trudging heavily down the street toward them, some little more than stumpy pillars of mud, others as delicate and finely formed as Shasha herself. She turned toward them, drawing herself up to her full height, and Devon could only imagine what she was telling them in that silent mind speech the sylphs used.

It was obvious what it had to be. The earth sylphs looked at her and then at each other, their expressions—those who had them—nervous. Finally, they reached out to hold hands, the entire mass of them.

The earth shook.

Zalia screamed, One-Eleven catching her when she stumbled. Devon just fell down again. The ground heaved, rumbling so loudly that he could barely hear the screams of people caught in the quake all around them.

A wall erupted out of the ground. The leading edge of it was only fifty feet beyond the group of them and Devon stared at the hugely thick stretch of stone as it blasted upward, easily ten feet thick and dozens high in seconds. He could only see the edge closest to them for the first few seconds, but it grew fast, the earth continuing to rumble and groan as it fed the growth, the swirling patterns of different types of stone rippling as they fled past to their right. The entire thing was rotating as it grew from the ground, he realized, corkscrewing itself into the sky. Deafened by the sound, he felt Airi clinging to him and wanted to hold Zalia, only she had her face buried against One-Eleven’s chest while he held her, looking calmly up at the wall. Devon felt a sudden surge of jealousy and the battler turned to him, his eyebrow lifting. Terror flooded through Devon.

The roar of the growing wall became even louder, the length of it suddenly rising high enough that it blew past the height of the buildings, casting its shadows over the city as it continued to corkscrew upward, starting to curve inward now, far over their heads. It had to be dozens of blocks across, Devon thought in horrified amazement. The energy of it had the hair on the back of his neck rising and Airi was shivering against his neck, frightened by it all. Surely it could keep the Hunter out. Even a battle sylph wouldn’t just be able to blow through that much rock.

How many people were still outside? Everyone who hadn’t been a feeder? How were the rest of them going to survive in here? How much food was there? Water? Sanitation? How much planning had gone into any of this beyond “put up a wall”? Devon lay sprawled on the ground, watching that massively thick stone wind upward, the ground growling and shaking like a live thing as it was birthed under the control of the earth sylphs, and felt a great deal of trepidation. Perhaps even worse, he felt relief as well, that he and Airi and Zalia and the others were safe, even if no one else outside that wall was.

The shadows deepened, unnatural night falling across the buildings. The screams of people in the sudden silence that fell once the stone closed overhead echoed with horrific loudness, until a dozen or more glowing dots shot upward, gathering at the peak of the dome. They swirled together, flaring into light, and Devon squinted at the tiny sun provided by the fire sylphs.

He let his breath out in a long, shaky sigh. There was even a breeze starting in the enclosed air, keeping the air moving.