Perilous Shadows: Book 6 Circles of Light (55 page)

‘And?’ Garrol prodded
when Shivan appeared lost in thought.

‘Oh. Yes. Well, she was
asleep for three days afterwards.’

‘What?’

‘But her body was
unaffected. Konya couldn’t understand it either, she didn’t need
food or liquid. Rhaki and I couldn’t tell where her mind was, but
the Dragons weren’t in a panic.’

‘Well where was she
then?’

‘Ferag took her to the
Realm of Death, put her to bed in her very own bed and fed her
dainties with her very own hands. For three days.’

Garrol sat down
abruptly. Rather enjoying the reaction, Shivan added:

‘Tika said Ferag was
very sweet.’

‘Enough.’ Garrol’s
hands snapped up in a defensive gesture. He scowled at Shivan.
‘This is true?’

Shivan suddenly looked
glum. ‘Absolutely.’

Corman returned to the
large chamber. ‘Darallax wants me to tell you that he will be with
you shortly. He was very shocked by Lerran’s state, but he said he
will visit again.’

‘I will wait then. Tika
said I was to return if he wanted to stay here longer.’

‘She got the Chyliax
out of the Splintered Kingdom, Corman. All this time, we thought
they were vanished, like Shadow. And they’ve been imprisoned in
that place, poor souls.’

Shivan gave a quick
gesture of apology as he interrupted the Shield Master.

‘Have you any news of
Cyrek?’ he asked.

Corman’s face was
grave. ‘Nothing. He was traced to his family lands, as you were
told, but then he just disappeared again. I have people watching
for his mind signature – Alloc is almost constantly searching, but
so far he has found no sign.’

‘So he’s probably
causing trouble out in the world. Any reports from Kelshan or
Sapphrea?’

Corman shook his head.
‘Lady Emla sent a long letter by way of Shiral two days ago. She
says all is calm and peaceful throughout her lands and also the
lands around whose rulers are in contact with her. But she did say
she “felt” there is something amiss, that the calmness is false.
She did not admit as much, but Peshan and I both believe Lady Emla
is worried. We cannot decide what we should do. And I leave it to
your judgement as to whether you pass this on to Lady
Tika.’

Shivan grimaced. ‘But
nothing has actually happened yet? No earthquakes, no violent
changes among the people?’

They sat for a moment
then Shivan stirred. ‘Did you know that Darallax lived in the north
of what is now called Drogoya?’

Corman leaned back
wearily. ‘Yes. But after the first battle, he and his people were
gone, his cities razed. We thought them all lost.’

‘Corman, who is the
First Son?’

Corman smiled, every
one of the centuries he had endured etched on his face.

‘The First Son of
Mother Dark was Hanlif, Lord of Light. He truly is long
gone.’

Chapter
Thirty

The company were
gathered in the garden room next morning when Shivan returned. He
was immediately the centre of attention.

‘They’ve completely
lost track of Cyrek,’ were his first words. He hesitated only
briefly. ‘Corman thinks Lady Emla is worried. Nothing definite, she
just senses trouble lying in wait.’

Tika frowned. ‘Did
Darallax’s visit go well?’

‘Corman took him to the
First Daughter and left him there for a while.’ Shivan gave a half
shrug. ‘Darallax said nothing when he rejoined me, nor when we got
back here. He went off upstairs.’

‘I think Emla’s safe
for now. Yes I do,’ she insisted when several faces showed
surprise. ‘Any attack on me will not begin with such an obvious
ploy. If only we knew exactly where the Splintered Kingdom is, what
it is, and how we can get into it unnoticed.’ She sat forward.
‘When you came to get us out Shea, did Peshan open a
gateway?’

‘Favrian did, not
Peshan.’ Shea corrected her. ‘I don’t understand gateways so I
don’t know where he asked for us to go.’

Tika stared at the
girl. Slowly she turned her head to Shivan. ‘You ask to go
somewhere when you open gateways?’

He nodded.

‘What language do you
use?’

‘Well that’s quite
interesting. When we arrived here and Konrik welcomed us, he used
the language we speak to open a gate. We learn different phrases
and are taught – roughly – how to find the word for a
place.’

Tika was horrified. ‘So
you’ve been taking us to various places and you’ve been guessing
the right word to get us there?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Dear stars,’ Sket
muttered while more colourful comments came from several
others.

‘You are telling me the
Shadow language is the one you use for accessing power? Surely the
oldest among you must know that language then?’

‘No one’s ever
mentioned such a thing.’ Shivan started to chew the side of his
thumb and Shea slapped his hand. ‘We learn the phrases, only a few
in fact, by rote. We aren’t told what any of the words mean, only
what might be achieved by saying them.’

‘Cold fire. Do you use
words for that?’

‘No.’ He raised his
hand, fingers waggling. ‘Patterns.’

‘I need to think.’ Tika
made for the permanently open doors to the courtyard, leaving her
company staring suspiciously at Shivan.

‘All these years you’ve
been moving squads here and there, all over the Realm, and you’ve
been guessing the word for our bloody destination?’ Sergeant Essa’s
tone was deceptively mild.

‘It’s not like that.
Not completely.’ Even to himself Shivan heard the weakness of his
defence.

Tika wandered from
arbour to arbour, ending up at the one where she’d first met
Darallax. She sat on a bench whose high back was swathed in pale
green leaves and dark purple, flat faced flowers. Shivan’s mention
of patterns had recalled her first attempts to reach for
power.

Emla’s Seniors, Kemti,
Nesh and Iska, had tried patiently, over, and over, and over again,
to show her how to move a tea pot across a table. All she’d been
able to do was make the poor tea pot break into hundreds of tiny
fragments. Until in stubborn despair, she’d grabbed the threads of
power, clearly visible to her although not, apparently, to the
Seniors, and had woven them into a pattern. But she did it in her
head, she didn’t waggle her fingers. Was it the same?

She closed her eyes and
summoned a memory of Lord Favrian in the lowest corridors of the
Karmazen Palace. He had called cold fire, to destroy the corpses of
guards taken over by the Crazed One. In her mind, Tika watched the
play of his fingers. She dismissed the memory, opened her eyes and
stared at the air directly in front of her. She drew a tiny morsel
of power, split into many strands, and wove those strands. Flame
hovered in the air a few paces from her bench, cold white flame,
that burned silently and with no visible source.

Tika let the threads
disintegrate and the flame was gone. Emla’s people had been
fascinated by the way she manipulated power, but although she had
shown them what she did, they had little, if any, success in
copying her method. She plucked one of the flowers and stared into
its pale creamy centre. The Dark Ones must surely once have shared
the same language as those of Shadow. Tika knew that many Dark Ones
she had met were of incredible age; older even than the black
Dragon, Fenj, and she’d once worked out that he must have lived for
around a thousand years.

If the Splintered
Kingdom had arrived here two, even three, thousand years ago, that
language common to both Dark and Shadow would still be known.
Subaken had greeted her in that language and she spoke the common
tongue with an accent. Tika sighed, twirling the flower between her
fingers. She didn’t remember Ren or Babach ever mentioning a secret
or ritual tongue in Drogoya. She sent a thought to Shivan, asking
him to join her, and allowed herself a moment to hope the First
Daughter was recovering.

Shivan peered round a
column which was smothered in blue trumpet flowers and Tika waved
him to the bench beside her.

‘Did you have much
chance to talk with Corman?’

‘Not really. I did ask
him about Light. He said Hanlif was the First Son, Lord of Light,
but that he was long gone from this world.’

‘And yet Light seems
more welcomed throughout all the lands I’ve seen. Corman explained
it to me once, about the Dark, and it made sense and I understood
it. But still, people live their lives in the light rather than the
dark, even your own people.’

‘But light was a gift
from Mother Dark,’ Shivan explained patiently. ‘Light and Shadow
both are her children, her creations.’

‘When Corman said the
Lord – Hanlif? – was gone from this world, did he mean he’d died,
or – gone somewhere else?’

Shivan spread his hands
helplessly.

‘Oh well. Let’s see if
Darallax is feeling either helpful or talkative yet.’ She stood,
holding a hand out to pull Shivan up. ‘What were your main
interests at the Academy? Daylith said he liked history best, but I
wager he knows nothing of all this.’

‘I was, and am,
interested in time. But everyone told me all I was doing was
wasting it.’

It was afternoon in
fact, before the Shadow Lord, his Chancellor and Subaken joined
Tika and her companions. The sun had grown hotter over the last
days and they were sitting on the river bank beneath small trees
whose blossoms were just opening into tiny scented flowers. Navan
and Sket were telling stories of the Ganger Wars in western
Sapphrea to the three guards and two engineers. Occasional ribald
and sceptical comments interrupted the stories but couldn’t
actually stop them.

Farn reclined by Tika,
watching Storm plunge into the river and return with fat fish which
he insisted on giving to Shea. Shea now had seven fish on the grass
beside her and was trying to persuade Storm that she really didn’t
need any more.

‘Visitors,’ Tika
murmured as she caught sight of the three most important people in
the Shadow Realm emerge from the roadway. Storm had just deposited
an eighth fish and now watched Subaken approach.

‘The Chyliax have gone
exploring,’ he announced in mind speech. ‘Some are still here. They
told me where the best fish were.’

Subaken cleared her
throat. ‘I can see you are one of the most skilled fishers I have
ever seen.’

Tika grinned. ‘But that
probably is enough for our supper Storm. Really.’

Slightly disappointed,
Storm reclined next to Farn and prepared to listen to the
conversation. For the first time, Tika saw Darallax a little
unsure. But then, she thought, he can’t have had many serious
discussions sitting on grassy river banks with a couple of Dragons
paying keen attention. The guards too had moved closer. Konrik
glanced at his master.

‘It has been decided
that we must tell you what we know of the Splintered Kingdom,’ he
began, but Darallax waved him to silence.

‘You might consider us
weaklings, cowards, for choosing to hide all this time,’ said the
Shadow Lord. ‘But we have tried to study the Splintered Kingdom
during our concealment. With some success. You told me that you,
and most people, including our Dark brothers, believe the Kingdom
to be what you called a Place Between. Or another Plane of
Existence? We know something of those things and we conclude that
the Splintered Kingdom is neither.’

A breeze rustled the
tender leaves above them and sent a fresh burst of fragrance into
the air. Darallax gazed out over the river then back to
Tika.

‘You know of the Ships
that came from the most distant stars?’

He waited for Tika’s
nod.

‘We conclude that the
Splintered Kingdom is similar to those Ships. Of a different size
and form and nature, of course, but nonetheless, it is a Ship. The
Crazed One is its occupant, or maybe he is the Ship itself. Our
opinions are divided on this.’

‘How much do you know
of the Ships?’ Tika demanded of both Darallax and
Shivan.

Shivan replied first.
‘We know that some of them came down to this world and they had
people inside them.’

Darallax nodded. ‘We
too knew this.’

‘But these Ships were
alive. They were made – I don’t know how – but they had living
human brains.’

Darallax looked
appalled. ‘Brains?’ he repeated faintly at the same time as Shivan
asked: ‘Living?’

‘Show them Star Flower,
my Tika,’ Farn suggested. ‘My Tika mended Star Flower. She was near
death. Show them.’

Tika picked through her
memories and showed a mental picture of the battered Ship Star
Flower. She let them see inside, to the place where Captain Sefri
revealed the compartment in which floated a living brain. Tika
allowed Darallax and the others to hear Sefri’s explanation of
where that brain came from, and finally she showed them Star
Singer. Storm became agitated when he saw the picture of Star
Singer again, but he was distressed rather than angry. He leaned
close against Farn and let Navan and Shea soothe him.