Drogoya: Book 3 Circles of Light series, page 22
Mena had cleared a sizeable area of the choking tendrils of weeds and the plants thus freed were growing fast. The pale new tips protruding from the sage, quivered towards the sun. The young rosemary bush had thickened, her blue flowers fully opened now. Mena hummed and chattered as she worked and imagined that the plants answered her. She got to her feet and took the box filled with weeds to a pile of rotting vegetation she had found beyond the wooden house.
She stood there for a while, watching a fat bumble bee lurching in and out of the hedge. That was when she heard something fall within the little building. She held her breath but there was no further sound except for the drone of the bee as it swooped past her towards the open garden. Quietly, Mena moved to the door, which she always left open. Now, it was half closed. Slowly, she leaned to peep inside and saw a bare foot, not much bigger than her own, the toes clenched as if their owner was ready to run.
Mena crept back to where she had left the small fork and, humming quietly, moved close to the door again. She knelt beside the door and began to work loose the weeds matted around a very ancient sage bush. She put words into her humming, repeating them at intervals as she worked. Time passed and Mena weeded. Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw both bare feet on the threshold.
‘Hello,’ she murmured, without turning fully round. ‘My name is Mena. What is yours?’
She waited patiently but eventually half twisted and glanced at the figure in the doorway, then looked back at her heap of weeds.
‘I wish you would talk to me. You might tell me how you got in here because I surely long to find a way out.’
‘Come here at nightfall usually. Safe place to sleep.’
The boy’s voice was husky and low but Mena’s heart raced. He had spoken to her, not just run away! Perhaps he would show her how he came and went. In the quick glance she had given him, he had seemed about her own age, thin beyond belief and extremely dirty. Unidentifiable rags covered some of his body although his legs were bare to the thigh.
‘Have you nowhere else to sleep? No home?’
‘Burnt. Bashed up. All the town went crazy when those students came down there. Eyes red as fire. Only a few of us left I reckon.’
‘Why have you stayed then?’
‘Don’t know nowhere else.’
Mena bit her lip. ‘Well, like I said, my name is Mena and I would like to be friends with you.’
‘Why you here anyway?’ The question came out in a belligerent tone.
Mena sat back and hugged her knees. ‘I come from very far away. Cho Petak keeps me prisoner here.’ She looked fully at the boy for the first time and he took a pace back inside the building.
‘You a Kooshak?’
Mena frowned, shaking her head. ‘I don’t think so. What are they?’
‘Why you got silver eyes then if you ain’t Kooshak?’
Mena put her hands up to touch her eyes in bewilderment.
‘I do not know what might be wrong with my eyes. Are Kooshak bad people then?’
‘No. They’re the best – help anybody anytime.’ The boy stepped forward again. ‘You really don’t know about the Kooshak?’
Mena shook her head again. ‘I told you. Cho Petak had me brought here from such a long way.’
The boy stared at her through a tangled mass of black hair. ‘I’m Tyen,’ he said.
Mena’s smile was radiant and the boy continued to stare. He had never seen a girl like this: almost white blonde hair curling close round a triangular face. A face dominated by enormous violet blue eyes set in silver.
‘Can you help me get out of here Tyen?’ Mena whispered. ‘I have to go in that direction.’ She nodded to the north west.
Tyen shrugged. ‘Expect so. But it’s bad outside here. Specially nights.’ He shivered. ‘That’s why I hide in here. Slept too long today because it was near day when I got here. Lots of those changed ones in the town again. You sure you ain’t Kooshak?’
Mena smiled faintly. ‘I wish I was, if it would help, but I don’t think I am.’
The boy fell silent for a while. ‘Can you get food?’ he asked. ‘There’s not much out there.’
‘Some. Not much. I am not given much and I don’t know where it is kept. Will you be here tomorrow, I should go in now?’
‘If I don’t get caught then I will.’
‘Have you no family?’ The question was out before Mena could stop it.
Tyen’s face closed tight. ‘Not any more.’ He turned his back and disappeared into the shadows within the small hut.
Mena collected up the weeds and took them to the rotting pile, cleaned the box and fork she had used and put them back in their places. Drawing the door closed as she left, she murmured:
‘Stars keep you safe Tyen. I’ll be here tomorrow.’
Climbing back up to the top rooms of the Menedula, Mena deliberately walled off thoughts of Tyen, pushing the memory of him into the hard centre deep inside herself. She could not risk Cho picking up the faintest hint of the boy’s presence in the garden. Briefly, she wondered how the boy had gone undetected: Cho regularly checked the building and its immediate surroundings, as well as the town in the valley. Not now, she warned herself. Think only of the plants you will draw.
When Krolik brought the hard flat biscuits, Mena caught his arm.
‘May I have a little more food Krolik please? I am very hungry when I have been working in the garden.’
The once Master of Aspirants released himself from the girl’s grasp, but quite gently Mena noted. He stared at her with the same blank expression he always wore, then left the room. Mena sighed. She had no idea if Krolik had heard her, or understood her if he had. There was a small risk in asking for extra food, but she was confident that she could convince Cho if necessary that she was hungry all the time here. Because she was.
She was concentrating hard on getting a sprig of lavender exactly the right shade of grey green, when she felt the air stir close to her. She had felt it before and had been made uncomfortable by the sensation. This time, it seemed as though someone was standing close to her left shoulder – much too close. Her throat tightened in sudden fear. She knew that it was not Cho’s thought checking up on her activities. It felt unpleasantly familiar though. She nearly jumped from her skin when the door opened and Cho Petak stood there. Mena heard him use the mind speech, his tone icy with barely controlled rage.
‘I understood that I had forbidden you these apartments, my dear Rhaki?’
Rhaki? Mena sat frozen in her chair. She had been completely unaware that the Grey Lord was here in this land. She remembered hearing the name D’Lah, but she had not realised that D’Lah and Rhaki seemed to be one being. The presence vanished from her side but Mena saw Cho’s gaze move down the room as if following someone’s movement. She did not hear any reply but then Cho snapped again:
‘Your reasoning is but a feeble attempt to excuse your flouting of an explicit command.’
The flames leaped and writhed in Cho’s eyes.
‘Lord Rhaki, let me explain so that there may be no further misunderstanding on your part. It would be the simplest of things for me to unmake you. Do you follow me? I could take your mind apart, tiny piece by tiny piece, until it was completely unmade. And there is no restoring a thing so thoroughly unmade.’
Cold sweat prickled between Mena’s shoulders as she listened to Cho’s side of this conversation. She had no doubt at all that Cho Petak could do precisely what he had just described. Cho lifted a nearly transparent hand.
‘I have warned you too many times already, my dear. This is the last time. Now go.’
Mena felt the unwholesome presence dissipate and realised she was trembling. Carefully, she laid her brush against the lid of the box of inks and hid her hands below the table, gripping them tightly together.
‘I regret that you witnessed that unpleasantness child. He will not trouble you further I think.’
Mena swallowed, her mind devoid of any suitable reply. Cho moved closer to the table, lifting the drawing Mena had been working on.
‘You improve daily child. I commend your close attention to the detail.’
He laid the paper back in front of her and studied her bent head for a while. She had asked for extra rations and his suspicions had been instantly alerted. But he could see that she was in fact thinner than when she had arrived here. He realised that her body was still in its growing stage and would thus demand more nutrition. He turned to go. He would instruct Krolik to improve and increase the child’s diet. Where Krolik might find the ingredients to do so in the shattered ruin that was the town of Syet, Cho neither considered nor cared.
Sarryen had quickly adapted to this strange existence in the Oblakan caves, and took her turn instructing groups of students in history and botany. She also took her turn with the routine chores: sweeping the passageways, cleaning the dishes and helping with the laundry. One of Lyeto’s refugees arrived in the caves with a dreadful cough and feverish cold, which swept through the community with enthusiastic speed. Arryol, in constant proximity to the victims, was the only one to escape the illness, and wore himself out caring for everyone else.
Finn Rah was most annoyed to discover she had the cold and she was unspeakably bad tempered for the next four days. Lyeto insisted that he still go outside and search for any survivors even though he returned with fewer and fewer people. Finn Rah sensed a certain relaxation among the students, as if they felt that here, beneath the burnt out Oblaka complex, they were impregnable. She fretted over this while she cursed the cold in her head in the privacy of Chakar’s sitting room. Volk delivered her “medicine” each morning and evening, and in the common room later he swore he had heard the Offering singing one of the bawdiest tavern songs ever to burn his ears.
Sarryen had caught the cold days before and was recovered enough to resume her duties when Finn Rah succumbed. This evening, she tapped cautiously at Finn’s door. Lyeto had reported that a mug had been thrown at him that morning. Taking the distant croak to be a call to enter, Sarryen opened the door a fraction.
‘Oh come in, come in,’ Finn snapped. ‘You have all been tiptoeing around as if I was either mad or dying.’
Sarryen tactfully refrained from answering and Finn Rah’s scowl turned to a reluctant grin.
‘Have I been that awful?’
Sarryen smiled back. ‘You have rather.’
‘Aah. So apologies will have to be issued at once. Do I need to apologise to you?’
‘No. I have managed to avoid visiting you.’
Finn laughed, which brought on a paroxysm of coughing. Sarryen pushed the Offering gently back into the armchair and set about making tea until Finn regained her breath.
‘I have always detested being ill.’ Finn spoke softly, careful not to set the cough wracking her again.
‘I do not believe any of us much enjoys ill health,’ Sarryen said. She smiled over her shoulder. ‘Some of us are just a little more stoical perhaps?’
Finn’s scowl returned but her eyes danced with amusement. ‘What news since I got this cursed cold? Is anyone still standing?’
‘Arryol is the only one immune it seems, but as everyone else has had it or is suffering with it now, it should be finished with in a couple more days.’
‘Perhaps we should keep any new arrivals segregated to begin with – light alone knows what disease could appear next.’
Sarryen nodded. ‘Arryol has already suggested the same, and has organised two chambers near the entrance from the hillside for that purpose.’ She handed Finn a bowl of tea and caught the Offering’s glance at the bottle on the table. ‘Tea will be more beneficial for you at present,’ she said reprovingly.
‘Nonsense.’
But Sarryen noticed that Finn made no effort to get up again to fetch the bottle. Indeed, she looked very tired and pale the Kooshak thought.
‘Arryol has made a fine tonic remedy. It seems to work well on everyone. Why don’t I get you some?’
‘Oh very well. And ask Soosha to join us, would you – if he is fit?’
‘His cough is lingering a little longer than Arryol likes, but he is teaching again.’
When Sarryen returned with a large brown bottle, an equally large spoon, and Observer Soosha, Finn’s head was back against the chair and her eyes were closed. More concerned than she appeared, Sarryen poured a spoonful of Arryol’s tonic and made Finn swallow it.
‘Really,’ Sarryen scolded. ‘You make more fuss than the children.’
Soosha sat in the armchair opposite and chuckled. ‘You will recover almost at once Finn, if only to avoid taking too much of that stuff.’
‘What have I missed while I have been lingering at death’s doorway?’
Soosha looked into the fire. ‘Someone walks in my dreams.’
Finn and Sarryen stared at him, not sure they had heard him correctly. Sarryen knelt on the floor between the two armchairs and waited for Finn to question him.
‘Dream walkers are the stuff of legend Soosha,’ the Offering said quietly. ‘That is, if you discount deliberate mind speaking when the recipient is asleep. I believe Babach spoke thus to Ren. Is that what you mean?’
Soosha sighed. ‘No Finn. It is the stuff of legends variety. I hardly dare guess who she is, but she walks my dreams each night of late.’
‘She?’
‘Oh yes.’ Soosha grimaced. ‘There is only one name that seems to fit her.’
‘Does she speak to you?’
Soosha frowned. ‘I do not think so Sarryen, not clearly, in words, at any rate. She seems to be warning me of something. No.’ He raised his hand as both Sarryen and Finn were about to speak.
‘Perhaps preparing would be a better word than warning. It is not of a danger coming to this community.’ He shook his head. ‘This woman is a blurred shape in my dreams. She walks a garden, or fields, and two children run beside her. She is calm but the children are greatly afraid.’
‘How do you interpret these dream messages Soosha?’ asked Finn.
He shrugged. ‘Two children are trying to reach us. They are under the woman’s protection but there is still great danger for them.’
‘Can you see the children clearly in your dream?’ Sarryen was studying the Observer closely.
‘Yes, I see them. I would know them should they find their way here. It is the woman I cannot see properly.’
Soosha looked down at his hands, clasped around the bowl of tea. ‘When I wake, as I always do the instant this dream ends, my room is full of the scent of mint.’
Finn drew in a breath so sharply her cough began again. Sarryen took the bowl of tea from the Offering’s shaking hands while Soosha moved behind Finn and rubbed her back. When Finn’s cough slackened to a chesty wheeze, she forced out a question.
‘Do you know where these children are now, or where they come from?’
Soosha went back to his armchair. ‘From the east. The sun is rising behind them every time. How far they must come, I cannot tell.’
‘Are those children who walk your dreams clear in your mind still? Lyeto at least, should be able to recognise them should they reach us.’
Finn nodded her agreement with Sarryen’s suggestion.
‘I can show you the children but the woman disappears. In my dream she is a vague shape but I cannot even see that blurred figure once I wake.’
‘Show us,’ Finn whispered.
From Soosha’s mind Sarryen and Finn Rah saw the clear image of two small children. Light, thought Finn, how truly small they are! A thin boy with a wild mane of black hair, dressed in rags. But it was the girl who drew their attention. Nearly as frail as the boy, her hair gleamed white as snow. She was better clothed than the boy but not by much. In Soosha’s mind, the girl turned her head, seeming to look straight out of his dream into their eyes.
An unusually shaped face for a Drogoyan, which appeared to be mostly eyes: dark lavender eyes surrounded by silver. Even as this strange girl child turned her head away again as if to speak to the boy, the fragrance of crushed mint filled Chakar’s sitting room. The vision faded leaving the two women in stunned disbelief.
‘Who is that girl?’ Finn’s voice was a croak, a discordant sound.
Soosha shook his head sadly. ‘She most positively is not of the Lost Realms. I have spent much time pondering this – as you would guess. I have no idea how she could have reached Drogoya, but my feeling is that she is from the Night Lands.’
A brisk knock on the door made Sarryen jump even as Finn called: ‘Come.’
Arryol entered, Lyeto at his back, both wearing frowns.
Soosha smiled suddenly. ‘What brought you two here in such haste?’
Arryol glanced at his companion and then turned to Finn Rah.
‘The singing began. Lyeto was in the common room and I was reading – not healing.’
‘Join minds with the three of us,’ Soosha ordered.
Lyeto gasped and Arryol caught hold of the edge of the table as the picture of two young children filled their minds. At the same moment, the two women and Observer Soosha were swamped by a crescendo of harmonised music. The image disappeared, the singing ceased. But the scent of mint remained.
‘What, in the name of the light, is happening?’ Arryol gasped.
Soosha explained his dreams and the conclusions he had so far drawn. Lyeto was on the floor beside Sarryen, amazement still plain on his face. Arryol listened but had moved to Finn’s side and was feeling her forehead and her throat.
‘I am quite recovered thank you. Listen to Soosha. Concentrate on that, not on me.’
‘I was listening,’ Arryol retorted mildly. ‘And you are most definitely not recovered.’ He turned to Soosha. ‘According to the documents which Babach received from the Night Lands, they have no record of the eye changes which we have long been accustomed to here. If this child is from those lands, why are her eyes silvered? And have any of you heard tell of the silvering even starting so very early in life?’
Sarryen tilted her head to look up at her fellow Kooshak.
‘I have not. But it seems to me we are barely keeping abreast of events. Things are happening, changing, without any warnings or apparent reasons. It is clear I think that this girl child is of great importance. Why else would she appear to be travelling under the protection of Myata herself?’
