Draykon (7 page)

She was still
attired in her kennel clothes, plain cottons layered against the
chill in the air. She wrapped a heavy wool cloak around herself,
allowing Rikbeek, her gwaystrel, to tuck himself into the folds. He
availed himself of an opportunity to bite her en route, which she
ignored. It was an old custom. She left the house, keeping her
thoughts bent on the dringle-bird pacing up and down her
glove.

It maintained its
station obediently as she made her way through the streets beyond
her house. Glour City was built in a series of rings, widening
steadily from the nucleus of the city out to the broadest streets
on the outermost edges. The innermost circles were the most
prestigious: the first through to the fourth were reserved for city
government offices and the manor homes - palaces, really - of its
richest and most prominent inhabitants. Eva's position on the Fifth
placed her among the second rank of citizens. She could have moved
into the third or fourth circle years ago, taking her place among
the other peers and government officials of the realm, but she
liked the house she'd inherited. It made her feel a little bit
closer to the father she'd lost, and the mother she'd barely known
at all.

Her destination
was the house of her friend Meesa's husband, Numinar Wrobsley. A
prominent and skilled herbalist, he lived on Circle Twelve in the
heart of the trades quarter. Instead of situating his dwelling on
the edges of the forest, as any reasonable potion maker might do,
he had brought the forest to his home. The building was stacked
atop tall stilts, which wasn't that unusual in Glour; many citizens
liked to raise their houses a little closer to the firmament.
Wrobsley's house was easily twice the height of even the tallest of
the residential buildings elsewhere in the city. He had a garden
spread atop the roof and he spent hours and hours up there,
carefully tending the rare plants he'd had imported from the Lower
Realms. He swore that the proximity to the pale moonlight kept his
plants stronger and healthier than their sicklier cousins elsewhere
in the city. It was as reasonable an explanation as any for his
particularly potent concoctions.

Eva found him in
his rooftop garden as usual, bent over pots of seedlings. He was
cursing their lack of progress with an enviable fluidity,
impatiently pushing his escaping strands of hair back behind his
ears as they repeatedly fell forward. She noticed he was wearing
mismatched colours.

'Lackadaisical
monsters! Destined to grace the most delicious and marvellously
effective potions in Glour and you fail to produce more than a
SINGLE miserable leaf?'

She cleared her
throat. He shot upright, turned and stared at her.

'Damned
laziness,' he muttered darkly.

'I can assure
you, I have never trained a dringle-bird faster.'

'Not you,' he
said impatiently. He never did have much of a sense of humour, she
reflected. He was far too intense for that. His wife, on the other
hand...

'It's these
absurd milkleaf sprouts. Couldn't ask for a better environment,
could they? Pampered like children. Food, water, moonglow, never so
much as a
hint
of strong daylight...' He stepped forward
suddenly, his face brightening as he observed the glove and the
pacing bird. 'Dringle-bird, you said? Is this him? It's about time.
I lost an entire crop of darsury grass to the mites not two days
ago.'

She drew off her
glove and passed it to him. 'He'll respond to the whistle, every
time.'

'Perfect,
perfect.' Wrobsley eyed the bird. Skritch paced, fluffed his wings
and clucked. Eva gave him the hunt signal, and Skritch took to the
wing. Eva and Wrobsley watched as the dringle systematically combed
the tubs of plants, snaring insects and mites with deft, quick
snaps of his tiny beak. Wrobsley began to walk after it, selecting
pots at random and inspecting the leaves. Eva knew there wouldn't
be an insect left in sight.

He returned to
her at length and nodded approvingly. 'Thank you. I know you don't
train much anymore. Meesa will appreciate it.'

She smiled. 'Only
for friends, yes. Glour Council seems to have other things for the
High Summoner to do, for some reason. Where is Meesa?'

He turned back to
his plants. 'Downstairs somewhere.'

'One more thing,
Numinar, if you've a moment.' He straightened up again, eyeing her
impatiently. 'I've run out of the prophylactic and I need some
more, fairly quickly.'

Numinar frowned.
'I don't have much. One bottle. The rylur shortage is killing
me.'

'There's a
shortage?'

He led the way
back down to his workroom and fell to rummaging through cupboards.
'You haven't heard? I can't get any at all at the
moment.'

This was curious
news. Rylur was one of the trickier plants, impossible to rear
properly outside of the Lowers. That meant supply was always a
problem - it had to be carefully gathered by herbalists trained in
Lowers survival and excursions down there were always brief and
tightly controlled. But she knew that Numinar didn't always rely on
the fully legal sources.

Numinar was
throwing bottles around with a carelessness that made her wince,
but nothing broke. 'All sources have dried up lately. I can't get a
straight answer out of anybody as to why. Something about increased
dangers.'

That dovetailed
with a few odd reports she'd received recently from summoners. A
few of them felt that the Lowers were growing more unstable, more
difficult to navigate. She hadn't taken them too seriously; it was
the sort of conclusion newer summoners often reached when they
found themselves out of their depth down there. But perhaps there
was something in it after all.

'Here,' said
Numinar at last, shoving a bottle into her hands. 'Next batch I
make is yours, okay?' He was already heading back up the stairs,
anxious to return to his plants.

'Thanks,' she
said, belatedly. She didn't bother to say goodbye; she knew he
wouldn't hear her. She made her way back down the cramped staircase
to the lower floors.

There were no
lights anywhere in the Wrobsley home. This was not unusual; the
Night Cloak had been in place for generations across the whole of
Glour and the surrounding irignol forests, and the eyes of
Darklanders were accustomed to the gloom. However, silvery
light-spheres mimicking moonlight were popular for indoors. Eva
kept some lit in her own home, and she knew that Meesa did
likewise. Perhaps she was in the garden.

Eva let herself
out of the house, stepping carefully through the gardens. Meesa and
Numinar both would be incensed if she crushed any of their plants.
She kept to the pathways between the neatly tended rows, watching
for bobbing light-globes in the darkness.

She rounded the
north corner of the building. There - a silver gleam announced a
sphere at low ebb, bobbing hazily a few feet from the ground. She
followed the little drifting beacon, calling her friend's
name.

No answer greeted
her, nor sign of movement. She caught up with the globe, dousing
its light by tucking it inside her cloak. She stood still,
searching the darkness.

'Rikbeek,' she
murmured, opening her cloak. 'Search for me.' She pictured Meesa
for him, offering an image made up of movement and sound. The
gwaystrel sneezed in protest, but stretched out his webby wings and
took flight.

Within a few
minutes she caught the faint sound of Rikbeek's signal. She walked
in the direction of his call, puzzled. He was using his warning
sound. How could that be?

'Stop pranking
me, you little beast,' she grumbled. 'Just because you didn't want
to be disturbed-'

She stopped
speaking. Her nose was registering a new scent: sharp, wrong. She
tensed, her heart suddenly thudding.

An inert, dark
shape lay on the darker ground. She released the light-globe, its
feeble glow lightening the gloom by a few shades.

Meesa lay among
the crushed remains of blooming milkleaf plants. She was barely
recognisable, her upturned face displaying long gashes running from
her temple to her chin. Deep wounds latticed the flesh, blood still
glistening wet and red in the low light. Her flesh was cleaved
through, glimpses of pale bone visible beneath the shredded
meat.

Eva clenched her
jaw against a desire to retch. She knelt resolutely, searching for
signs of life. Nothing.

It occurred to
her that the fresh wounds indicated a very recent demise. Was
Meesa's attacker still nearby? She leapt to her feet and tried to
listen, both with her ears and her summoner senses. Her heart
thumped wildly, rushing blood drowning other sounds, but she felt
the imprint of an alien beast's mind not far away. Too
close.

As Rikbeek crowed
and dived, Eva caught a glimpse of movement near the ground to her
right. Pale eyes gleamed coldly in the darkness. She backed away,
horrified, unable to look away from those icy orbs. Seconds passed.
Then the blue-lit eyes winked out, and the presence vanished. She
breathed, then turned, stumbling in her haste to reach the
house.

Numinar's
reaction was swift. He didn't wait to ask questions; he merely tore
outside, leaving Eva to follow at a slower pace. She stepped into
the street and accosted the first person she met, a young man who
she sent hurtling away to fetch help. Returning to the garden, she
found Numinar on his knees in the mud and spilled blood. He didn't
move as she approached, didn't make a single sound. She took up a
station nearby, trying not to look at Meesa's poor ruined body,
unwilling to disturb Numinar.

Lord Vale was
quick to arrive, with his boys in tow. He marched through the
garden, heedless of the plants he was crushing underfoot. Reaching
Eva, he wrapped her in a brief embrace.

'Take Wrobsley
inside,' he murmured. He bent to speak to Numinar, though she
didn't hear what he said. Numinar blinked and stood up dazedly. He
allowed himself to be led indoors. She had to guide him carefully
to prevent him from falling over anything. Behind her she heard
Vale barking orders to his men.

A little later,
Eva sat tucked into a corner in the Wrobsley's front parlour,
slumped rather inelegantly into a wing-backed chair with a blanket
wrapped around her shoulders. She was still shivering with shock,
and no amount of blankets could warm her chilled frame.

Numinar Wrobsley
sat nearby. He hadn't spoken a word in the last half hour. Eva
glanced at him from time to time, alarmed at the pasty hue of his
face, the way his pale eyes stared without seeing. She could do
nothing for him. They waited, together yet separated by
immeasurable distance, as Vale's team conducted their
investigations.

Eva finally
roused herself as Meesa's body was brought in. Her stomach turned
over anew at the sight of her friend's poor stricken body, her
blood drying in crusted patches of rust-red. There was so much of
it, staining her face, her neck, her torso. All her clothes were
soaked through with it. She was laid gently on the table, her limbs
arranged in as much a semblance of repose as possible. Vale drew a
sheet over her ruined face, casting Eva a quick glance of
sympathy.

Wrobsley's
reverie was broken, too. He watched fixedly as his wife's body was
laid out. Eva expected some reaction from him: tears, rage,
despair. Instead he observed the proceedings almost
expressionlessly, as if his ability to feel anything was
temporarily suspended. It was far more terrible to watch than any
explosion of grief. Eva looked away.

One of Meesa's
arms had slipped from beneath the sheet. Her right hand was
blood-soaked but undamaged. Eva felt tears prickling at the backs
of her eyes at last, looking at that lifeless hand, those clever
fingers forever stilled. She stood up, letting the blanket drop
onto her chair, and gently lifted Meesa's hand. She was going to
restore it to the scant dignity of the sheet covering, but she
stopped, her eyes narrowing.

Last time she had
seen her friend, her pretty white hands had been adorned with
rings. The most prized of these, her beautiful new istore piece,
had occupied the third finger of her right hand. The bloodied
fingers Eva now held were bare.

She gently tucked
Meesa's arm beneath the sheet, then moved around the table. Meesa's
left hand was bare of jewellery as well.

Meesa's voice
echoed in her thoughts.
I shan't take it off my finger
.
She'd grinned as she said it, full of her usual good humour, but
Eva felt sure she'd meant it. Where was the ring?

'Numinar.'

He twisted his
head towards her, but he didn't seem to be seeing her. She sat
beside him, picking up his hands in her own, and looked full into
his face.

'Numinar, this is
important. Did Meesa take off her ring?'

'What?' His lips
moved soundlessly; she divined the word from the shape his mouth
made.

'The istore ring,
the one you bought for her. Did she remove it? Did she store it
somewhere?'

'She says she
won't ever take it off.'

'I know, but-'
Eva shook her head. She wasn't getting through to him. It was clear
enough, though, that he knew nothing about the disappearance of
Meesa's ring.