Draykon (36 page)

She furled her
wings and dropped, but too late. The heat vanished, the mist
dissolved, and Llandry fell into deep lavender moss. Towering
glissenwol caps rose around her, far taller than those of her home,
decked with dazzling colour. Lights filled the deep blue skies,
glittering like polished gems. She saw drifting coils of silvered
mist, tasted honey and nectar on her tongue. Her eyes filled with
tears at the extreme onslaught of beauty, and the sheer richness of
the scents and tastes and sounds struck her senses like an assault.
She fought for breath as she lay helplessly on the ground, dread
and rapture filling her soul and pain ripping away her
strength.

The smells and
sounds and sensations were familiar, so familiar, even though her
one and only previous visit to the Upper Realm had been eleven
years ago. She had stood in the Daylit Off-World for only moments
that time, but the experience had stayed with her ever since, as
clear as a memory of only yesterday. Helplessly intrigued in spite
of her father's strictures, Llandry had always hoped, someday, to
repeat that experience; but not like this. Not while Devary
remained in Glinnery, beleaguered and in danger, and it was all her
fault.

Mastering herself
with an effort, Llandry pulled herself to her feet, gritting her
teeth against a sudden renewed rush of grinding pain. Funny, that
part she did not remember from last time. Turning wildly, she
searched for the gate that had brought her through. It would appear
as a ripple in the air, splashes of colour out of sync with the
surroundings, a sense of heat.

There; a few
metres above her and to her left. She opened her wings, but as she
tried to fly her back muscles screamed in agony and she fell to the
ground again. Undaunted, she launched herself once more, forcing
her objecting muscles to cooperate. Another minute, another effort,
and she would be back through into Glinnery.

The gate pulsed
and her winged friend appeared, its small body spat out with enough
force to send it tumbling helplessly through the air. She caught it
quickly and surged on, frantic. The tell-tale ripple in the sky was
fading, the colours had disappeared, she felt no heat as she
approached. A final spurt of effort availed her nothing: the way
back to Devary closed forever and she was left hovering helplessly
in nothing but empty air.

Chapter Twenty Four

Working his way
laboriously through a bristling set of bushes, Tren almost tripped
over the shortig that sat, panting, in the midst of the
undergrowth. The dog grinned up at Tren, tongue lolling, with the
air of a workman reaching the end of the day's business.

'What? That's
it?' Tren stood still, looking in puzzlement at the self-satisfied
creature. He couldn't see any reason why the animal would consider
its task finished. He hadn't found Griel, or Ana, or Eva. He didn't
appear to have discovered anything.

Tren groaned. The
absurd creature had probably been following the scent of one of the
brightly-coloured tree beasts that Tren had repeatedly glimpsed as
they journeyed. The dog hadn't been tracking Griel at all. He
exhaled slowly and sat down where he stood, weary and discouraged
and afraid.

Rikbeek swooped
down from above, chattering. Tren frowned. He couldn't place the
meaning of the gwaystrel's utterances the way Eva did, but the
string of notes sounded like a warning. Tren surged to his feet,
alert. His straining ears caught the sound of cracking underbrush
as somebody made their way through the jungle ahead of
him.

He grabbed Bartel
and slipped into the bushes. Rikbeek stopped chattering and
followed, settling once again on the dog's back. Tren took up a
station several feet from the little clearing the dog had found. He
wanted to be out of the sight of whoever was approaching, but he
also wanted to observe that person himself.

After a couple of
minutes, a whurthag emerged from the trees. The beast moved with
the sinuous grace of an enormous feline, at ease and apparently
docile. Nonetheless, the raw power in its muscled limbs sent
shivers down Tren's spine. He hoped it was fully under
control.

Then Griel
appeared, walking a few paces behind his terrifying companion. He
whistled briefly and the whurthag stopped and sat on its haunches.
The sorcerer paused approximately where the shortig had been
sitting moments earlier. Tren couldn't see what he did, but he did
see the door that opened in the ground. Griel and his companion
walked through, their figures diminishing as if they descended a
staircase. Then the door closed neatly behind them.

Tren darted
forward, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the patch of ground that
had apparently held a door. He knelt before it, searching with eyes
and hands. He could see nothing but damp earth and the sparse fungi
that struggled to grow under the heavy canopy. His fingers,
however, met wood, smooth and warm and unmistakeably forming a
rounded door like the one he'd seen in the sands.

Tren cursed
himself for having failed to expect that. It was an advanced
illusion, one bound into the darkness that held sway beneath the
trees. It wouldn't have been possible under the strong moonlight
that bathed the exposed white sand, but here it was a relatively
simple matter to replicate the appearance of shadow-bound
earth.

He didn't expect
to find a handle. The door in the sands had not had one, and he
couldn't find one here either. He dispelled Griel's illusion, and a
neat round door materialised in the ground. Tren blinked. There was
a stylised face painted into the wood, a congenially happy face
composed of a mere few lines. Beneath it was an arrow pointing to
the bottommost edge of the door. Tentatively, Tren pressed the spot
beneath the arrow. A latch sprung and the door popped
open.

He paused for a
moment, sitting on his haunches. It occurred to him that he was
being toyed with. Had Griel known he was there, crouched in the
bushes? Had he expected that Tren would discover the entrance to
his home, or were the face and the arrow aimed at someone
else?

No matter. He had
no choice but to proceed. Checking that the shortig and Rikbeek
followed, Tren descended a set of packed earth stairs into a dark
underground passage. The staircase was long, leading him far under
the earth. The door closed silently behind him.

***

Eva followed Ana
through a series of rooms, each sumptuously - if somewhat
fancifully - furnished. Their underground dwelling was impressively
expansive, but then, why not? People who could so freely manipulate
their surroundings could have anything that they wished. She was
beginning to understand the importance of the so-named "istore"
stone, an example of it still adorning her finger. She'd felt the
surge of empowerment from the ring as she manipulated her former
prison. It was more than that, though. It seemed to bring her
closer to this off-world, make her a part of it. With the istore on
her finger, she could see through the solidity of Ana's house. The
outlines of the furniture and objects held a degree of
insubstantiality; she could easily reshape them herself, move them
around, alter everything as she chose. The possibilities were
staggering. But this did not seem to be a preoccupation to Ana.
What, then, was the mysterious purpose she spoke of?

They paused at
last in a small room that looked like an antechamber to something
larger. Griel walked in through a door on the opposite side of the
room, a whurthag at his heels. Ana smiled and crossed to
him.

'Griel, dear,
look who found us!'

Griel smiled at
Eva and offered her a courtly half-bow. She inclined her head
frostily, refusing to be drawn by his display of
manners.

'Were you
successful, darling?' Ana tugged affectionately at the lapels of
her husband's coat, smiling winningly at him.

'Everything went
very well, yes. Here.' Griel placed something into Ana's hand. She
beamed sunnily at him, holding up a silver-wrought pendant worked
with a pattern of stars.

'Beautiful,' she
said, then plucked the stone from the centre with the ease of
picking fruit. She bounced it in her small hand, admiring the way
it sparkled.

'Your timing is
really excellent, dear. I was just taking our guest to see the
project. Now I will be able to add this at the same time.' She
kissed Griel's cheek.

'You're welcome,'
he said affably. He nodded politely to Eva and turned to follow his
wife as she opened the door through which he'd arrived.

But just then it
clicked open and Tren appeared. His eyes were a little wild and he
looked startled to walk straight into a cluster of people. He saw
Eva, and for an instant relief suffused his face. But only for an
instant.

'Have you seen
this thing?' He ignored Ana, ignored Griel and the whurthag. He
looked so aghast that her own relief at his safety quickly
dissipated.

'What
thing?'

'The project!'
Ana clapped her hands like a child, and flung the door wide open.
'You're quite resourceful after all, boy - Tren, was it? - so you
can stay. You can help Griel.' Tren's eyes had lingered on Eva's,
but at that he refocused on Ana, nonplussed.

'Help with what?
This is your
project
?'

'Isn't it
marvellous?' Ana swept through the door, Griel trailing after her.
Eva tried to smile at Tren as she moved past him, touching his hand
briefly as she did so.

Then she stopped,
frozen with shock. She understood, all at once, what Ana's
'project' was, and Tren's wild look was all too clearly
explained.

She stood in a
vast chamber, far bigger than any room she'd seen before. The
ceiling stretched away and away, its precise reaches lost in
shadow. Tiny light-globes bobbed everywhere, softly illuminating
the skeleton of an animal so big that it barely fitted into the
room. Ana and Griel had to hug the wall in order to edge around it.
Tilting back her head, Eva stared at the vast rib cage that rose
before her eyes, overlapped by a wing as large as the city square
in Glour.

The bones
resembled nothing she'd seen in biology before. They were polished
and perfect, indigo in colour, and gleaming silver. Not just a
faint sheen but a strong glow that pulsed as if with a
heartbeat.

She swore under
her breath. The istore, as it had been called, was certainly no
stone. It was the bones of a creature easily fifty times the size
of anything she'd ever heard of.

Worse, it was
more than a collection of bones. Eva could feel the energy rippling
through this marvellous construction, the hint of an awareness
clinging to the physical remains. It slept, but not deeply; it
stirred as Eva's mind touched it, and she sensed an obstruction, or
rather, an absence. A gap yawned in its skull, not large but
sufficient to retard its progress. Sluggishly, sleep-fuddled and
confused, the beast was trying to close that hole, generating new
bone matter to complete itself. It tried and repeatedly failed, as
if it needed wholeness for complete renewal.

The missing piece
was exactly the size of the stone Ana had plucked from the
pendant.

Dragging her
thoughts back, Eva stood reeling. One word repeated in her mind, a
name previously confined to legend and forgotten memory. It worked
its way to her lips, relentless though she tried to stifle
it.

'Draykon?
'
The word emerged cracked and breathless, but even so it echoed in
the vast hall, seeming to grow larger. Every story she'd ever heard
about the draykon rushed in upon her all at once: never many tales,
but all horrifying when applied to the undeniable solidity of the
beast that crouched on four legs before her, wings half-open as if
it was about to launch into flight.

'Isn't he
beautiful?' Ana's voice, full of pride and delight, floated back to
her from somewhere on the other side of the beast. Eva sensed her
probing ceaselessly at the ancient draykon's consciousness, nudging
it, pushing it towards wakefulness.

'What are you
doing
?' gasped Eva in pure disbelief. 'You can't wake this
creature up!'

'But I can! He
wants
to wake, and he likes me.'

'Likes you?
You're completely insignificant to him. We all are.' Even that may
be a charitable interpretation. If the stories were true, the
draykon had plenty of reasons to hate humans.

'Nonsense. He
knows me. He'll be grateful to me for waking him up. He already
feels
grateful.'

Eva sensed
nothing like gratitude in the draykon's sluggish awareness. If
anything, she felt a stirring irritation.

'You can't make a
companion out of him, Ana. He's far too strong, too wild. He won’t
submit to you.'

'Oh, now you
sound exactly like Griel. Always caution, caution. If you won't
help me I'll do it myself, and when my glory wakes up, you can be
draykon food.'

Eva gave up. If
even Griel couldn't reach Ana, nobody could. Their only chance was
to retrieve the istore piece from Ana, but even that was too
little, too late. The draykon was already almost complete, its
consciousness too close to wakefulness; sooner or later it would
succeed in its efforts to renew itself, with or without that last
piece of bone. When that happened, all they could do was hope that
Ana was right about her companion elect's feelings.