Perilous Shadows: Book 6 Circles of Light (25 page)

‘It’s just a short
narrow passage,’ Essa told him softly. ‘Then a wider, circular
place with the Weights of Balance.’

She sheathed her sword
and drew the long knife, more useful by far in a confined space and
Essa’s preferred weapon at all times. With his hand on the edge of
the door, Rhaki probed for life signs but found none.

‘Hold the door Onion,’
Essa murmured when Rhaki had tugged it open.

The three moved into
the passage warily then Rhaki formed another light ball, tossing it
ahead of them. When Essa muttered a curse, he shrugged.

‘There is nothing alive
along here, Essa.’

‘Except us,’ she
retorted. ‘For now.’

Rhaki gave an
appreciative chuckle and followed his light along the passage. He
stopped suddenly, Essa and Kazmat pressing close to his
back.

The body sat with its
back to the wall, hands in its lap, placed as if they held
something. Kazmat remained watchful where the passage widened and
Essa observed while Rhaki squatted beside the body. The head was
bowed, chin sunk onto the chest, thin white hair tumbled over the
face. Rhaki slipped his fingers under the chin and gently raised
the head.

Brown eyes surrounded
by silver, dulled and lifeless and set at a tilted angle. Two tusks
protruded from the heavy jutting lower jaw. The skin was slack on
the face, patterned with hundreds of tiny wrinkles. Rhaki sat back
on his heels, still holding Ren’s head up. Essa squatted beside
him.

‘He looks a thousand
years old,’ she whispered. ‘And one of the Weights is
gone.’

Chapter
Fourteen

Rhaki’s dark grey eyes
were slightly unfocused and Essa knew he was mind speaking either
Tika or the Dragons. She waited, leaning against the wall and
studying the strange gold disks hanging apparently unsupported in
the centre of the small space. The lowest, largest, disk, had risen
an arm’s length from where it had hung when Essa first saw them
only a short time ago. The smallest, topmost disk was gone and Essa
guessed the remaining six had realigned themselves
somehow.

Voices from Cho Petak’s
room warned of Tika’s arrival with Sket puffing at her heels. He
stared at Ren’s corpse then at the remaining Weights, then he
joined Essa by the wall. As Tika knelt by Rhaki to examine Ren,
Sket folded his arms.

‘Shall I tell you
something Sergeant?’

Essa stared down at him
with mild interest.

‘I am sick of stairs.
Everywhere, stairs, stairs, and then more bloody stairs. Give me
plain ordinary mountains if you must, but I’m coming to hate even
the word stairs.’

Filed purple teeth
gleamed as Essa’s smile broadened.

‘Feel better now?’ she
asked, with no sympathy whatsoever.

Sket ignored that and
nodded towards the corpse. ‘Seen him look better.’

Essa gave a choked
laugh then grew serious.

‘I wonder why these
changes keep happening.’ She spoke very quietly, for Sket’s ears
alone. ‘The First Daughter’s face and body changed in this same
manner. I have dreamt of such faces Sket, since Tika gave me -’ Her
left hand lifted towards her chest where, Sket knew, a pendant lay
under Essa’s shirt.

‘Have you told her?’
Sket replied as softly as Essa had spoken.

The huge woman
shrugged. ‘I’ve told her some of it, but she’s got enough to worry
about, don’t you think?’

Sket watched Tika,
talking to Rhaki across Ren’s body.

‘I don’t know Essa.
Perhaps if you get too many dreams, or worse ones, you ought to
tell her.’

Tika and Rhaki were
getting to their feet. Tika turned to look at the Weights
thoughtfully.

‘So, the three lots we
know of, are now balanced again – one disk has been taken from
each.’ She shook her head. ‘Some of the others are searching the
building. I can sense no life, nor can the Dragons. But I want to
find Mena. Dead or alive, I think we need to know where she
is.’

‘What about those
shadows we saw when you performed the far seeking?’ asked
Essa.

Tika started back along
the passage. ‘They seem to have gone, as completely as
Mena.’

Essa and Kazmat
followed Tika, and Sket waited for Rhaki. They were halfway along
the passage when Rhaki stopped. His little circle of light hovered
over his head. He flicked his fingers and the ball floated back to
the tiny room where Ren’s body sat beside the Weights of Balance.
Rhaki gave Sket a lopsided smile.

‘It will last quite a
while,’ he said. ‘Better than sitting in the dark.’

Sket nodded, marvelling
yet again at this man. He had never met Rhaki when he was in his
Asatarian body. He would have looked something like his sister Lady
Emla, Sket guessed: incredibly tall and thin, dark haired, perhaps
the same green eyes. Sket had yearned to kill that man. But this
man in front of him now, medium height, grey haired, dark grey eyes
in a broad face, was a man Sket could like. That sudden compassion
in leaving a small light glowing, that was the action of a kindly
man.

They continued along to
Cho Petak’s large room and watched Tika reseal the door.

‘How did Ren open
that?’ asked Essa.

‘I didn’t secure it
permanently,’ Tika explained. ‘At that point I thought Ren was
still part of this company.’

‘And now?’

‘I could reopen it.
Perhaps another could, but it would take them time and effort
now.’

Geffal appeared at the
door. He looked a bit green.

‘There’s a woman in a
bed.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Next floor down. Not
pretty.’

Tika sighed. ‘Finn Rah.
It must be her. I’ll come.’

Darrick was leaning
outside the door of the bedchamber, considerably greener than
Geffal.

‘Wait here.’

Tika pushed open the
door and entered, but found Sket and Essa stubbornly to each side
of her and Rhaki trailing them. The shutters were closed across two
tall windows and Essa went to throw them open. The bed was a dark
crimson mess, the covers around the body drenched in blood and
gore. Tika stared. Something had ripped into Finn Rah in a frenzied
attack, dragging internal organs out of her torso and scattering
them around her. Then her head had been removed and placed, almost
daintily in the half empty cavity of Finn Rah’s belly.

‘Mother Dark be
merciful,’ Essa whispered.

Tika bent closer.
‘Finger bones,’ she murmured,

‘What?’ Essa went to
Tika’s side.

Tika pointed. ‘Finger
bones,’ she repeated. ‘That’s what’s been used to keep her eyes
open.’

Swallowing hard, Essa
saw that Tika was correct. ‘Why?’

Tika straightened. Her
eyes were shards of green ice when Essa met them.

‘For fun, I would
imagine.’

‘Ren did this?’ Sket
sounded as though he found it hard to believe the timid-seeming Ren
could think of doing something this vicious, let alone actually do
it.

The ice in Tika’s eyes
thawed just a little as she answered Sket.

‘Whatever was using Ren
did this, Sket. I doubt if there was much of Ren left by
then.’

She headed out of the
bed chamber.

Rhaki closed the door
gently behind them. ‘What shall we do with her?’ he
asked.

Tika, already several
paces along the corridor, paused. ‘I’ll speak to Volk and
Dromi.’

They found the company
had set up a sort of camp in the same walled garden they had used
before. Volk had a fire going, over which the tea kettle steamed.
Tika saw Shivan, wrapped in blankets on a bed roll, sound asleep.
Shea and Khosa sat beside him. By the time Darrick, Fedran and Dog
rejoined them with the news that they hadn’t found any more bodies,
alive or dead, the sun was sinking towards the west. It was a
fairly subdued group that sat around Volk’s fire, waiting while
Tika contemplated the flames.

Farn spiralled down to
land, paced to Shivan and peered closely at the Dark Lord for a few
moments, then paced on to Tika. When he had curved himself around
her, he rested his chin on the top of her head.

‘Can we make this place
fall down?’ He spoke to all their minds and watched smiles spread
around the glum faces.

Tika reached up to
stroke Farn’s cheek. ‘I don’t think so, dear one, although it’s a
good idea.’ She saw three pairs of eyes gleaming at her across the
fire.

‘No.’ she said firmly.
‘You haven’t enough of those things I’m sure, not to knock this
building down and still keep enough for anything we might need them
for.’

She watched the
engineers’ faces fall with disappointment, and reconsidered.
‘Perhaps the – um – bed chamber could be -’

The three were gone
before she finished. Tika raised her gaze to the top of the
Menedula then mind spoke Kija. To her relief, the other Dragons had
chosen to settle outside the walled gardens, a short distance into
the parkland, rather than on the roof.

A slim young woman
entered their garden and Tika recognised Hesla. Hesla bobbed her
head in Tika’s direction.

‘We saw something leave
here during last night. We’ve been following. I’m sorry, I didn’t
realise you would be here today.’

‘What did you follow
Hesla?’ Tika asked, leaning forward.

‘It was a misshapen
thing. Nothing that we’ve ever seen before. It carried the child,
sometimes over its shoulder, sometimes under its arm. It moved
fast.’

Hesla knelt by the
fire, accepting a bowl of tea gratefully from Dromi.

‘It didn’t notice us at
first.’ Hesla frowned. ‘We wouldn’t have expected to be
noticed.’

Tika nodded her
understanding.

‘But then it started to
look up, and roar at whoever of us was closest. As if it knew they
weren’t ordinary birds, but were Old Bloods. But people never
recognise Old Bloods.’ Hesla sounded badly puzzled.

Tika looked between
Volk and Hesla. ‘But where did this creature go?’

Before either could
reply, there was a loud explosion somewhere high in the Menedula.
People jumped and heads turned to look up at the building. A single
window on the eastern side of the top floor emitted a cloud of
smoke, or dust. After only a few moments, the three engineers
ambled into the garden, looking immensely satisfied with
themselves.

‘No bed chamber left,’
Dog reported succinctly.

‘Aah. Good.’ Tika
ignored the three smug faces and turned back to Hesla.

‘Where did it go?’ she
repeated.

‘Merriton.’

Tika looked to Volk for
clarification. He was frowning.

‘South east, about five
leagues.’

‘Is there anything
particular there?’

Volk was shaking his
head when Hesla spoke up.

‘It went into the old
mine workings. Copper mines,’ she explained. ‘They closed up long
ago, when my granny was a child I think. The thing just ripped away
the rocks and bushes, then the rotten boards across the entrance,
and went inside.’

‘Marvellous. Bloody
marvellous. Bloody mines.’

Tika grinned at Onion’s
irritated expression.

‘I am inclined to
agree,’ she said. ‘But we’ll still have to check it
out.’

‘I left people
watching,’ Hesla told her.

Tika nodded. ‘That was
good of you, and of them to stay. But mines have a nasty habit of
going for leagues in all directions. That thing may even have
popped up and out somewhere quite close to where it went
in.’

‘No.’ Dromi looked
apologetic. ‘Those mines produced excellent quality copper for many
years, but they went deep down, not in horizontal seams. That was
partly why it was closed in the end. Too many
accidents.’

‘Ooh. It gets better
and better,’ Dog smiled brightly, but unconvincingly.

The company laughed and
the atmosphere among them lightened noticeably

‘Five leagues you
said,’ asked Sket. ‘Do we need to get there fast Tika?’

Tika chewed her
lip.

‘We can carry you
easily enough,’ Farn commented.

‘I think we’ll travel
together, on foot,’ Tika said finally. ‘Perhaps you could go ahead,
with Hesla, and see if you sense anything?’

‘Of course we can,’
Farn agreed at once. ‘But you could come with me,’ he added
craftily.

Tika laughed. ‘You go
ahead first. I will fly with you later.’

Shivan woke the next
morning, completely restored. He explained to Tika that he had
never used cold fire for such a sustained period of time, or to the
concentrated degree he had yesterday. Rhaki walked beside Shivan
when they left the Menedula. Both men halted as the company cleared
the southern outskirts of Syet, looking back at the great building.
Shea stopped beside them, Khosa draped over her
shoulders.