Drogoya: Book 3 Circles of Light series, page 25
‘Kill us now Lord Seboth. We cannot serve whatever has possession of Lord Hargon.’
Seboth raised his hand to silence the elderly armsman.
‘This constant talk of killing grows tedious. If you ask for refuge in Far then be assured you are offered it. The price is information regarding Hargon’s immediate plans for my town.’
Tarin did not hesitate. ‘He has a large force at the way station. They will attack at his signal.’
For the first time, Tarin glanced at Fryss before looking back to Lord Seboth.
‘I think he suspected that we would try to stay here – he did not tell us what his signal was to be.’
Lallia felt a sudden surge of power and realised that her husband was checking the truth of Tarin’s words. He nodded slowly and beckoned the two armsmen who remained by the door.
‘I think you had best change your clothes – that uniform will be inviting target practise from now on. Keep your daggers but for the moment I would have you leave your swords here.’
Seboth picked up the two swords and put them on the table.
‘My men will get you other clothes,’ he continued, but was interrupted by Fryss.
‘We would both be proud to be permitted to take the uniform of Far Sir Lord.’
Seboth paused then nodded. ‘Very well. Take them to Meran when they have changed their clothes,’ he instructed one of his armsmen. The other was ordered to fetch Seboth’s first and second officers at once. The room emptied and Seboth looked up at the grill with a rueful smile.
‘No worse than we anticipated my love,’ he said.
‘But what was wrong Seboth? Hargon had his back to me so I could not see his expressions.’
‘His eyes. There were flames within them – did you not see how red they have become?’
‘Do you think it is the affliction Lady Emla spoke of?’
An armsman came hurrying in and Seboth swung round to hear his message.
‘Sir Lord, the two officers say that Lord Hargon seeks information of the strangers who travel with Dragons. He has scouts ranging across most of the northern territories looking for them.’
‘There is more,’ Seboth stared at the armsman.
‘Officer Tarin said Lord Hargon’s methods of questioning folk is extremely unpleasant and it involves much torture Sir Lord.’
‘If Officers Tarin or Fryss have any other details, tell them I will see them later. Meanwhile, begin the signal procedures at once.’
The armsman trotted away while a group of Seboth’s officers came quickly into the hall.
‘All defensive positions are manned Sir Lord.’
Lallia heard that one report as she slipped away from her watching post and climbed up to the floor which led to the sun tower. She stretched her hand to open the door to her apartments, and froze.
‘Lallia? Is it safe to speak with you?’
‘Maressa?’ Lallia whispered both aloud and in her mind. ‘Wait one moment and I will be alone.’
Lallia went swiftly into her maids’ sitting room, heading for the winding stair up to her private chambers.
‘No, no,’ she assured the girls. ‘I wish to sleep for a little while. I will call should I need you.’
Once in her own sitting room, Lallia sat on a heap of pillows. ‘Maressa? How can you speak to me from such a distance as I believed the coast to be?’
Maressa laughed. ‘I am but twenty leagues west of you Lallia. Brin and I come for some supplies. We hoped you would be generous enough to provision us once again.’
Lallia clasped her head in her hands. ‘Maressa, listen.’
As quickly as she could, Lallia explained how the problems with Lord Hargon of Return had degenerated into a war situation. Maressa remained silent while she tried to decide on her best options.
‘Maressa, you must not come any nearer Far, and Brin must not be seen – Hargon is determined to kill you all.’
Maressa described the area in which she and Brin were currently resting, relaying an image of sparsely wooded slopes and coarsely grassed plains stretching east and south.
‘Seboth will know where you are. I will try to organise what you need.’
Lallia squeaked when Maressa began to recite a list of requirements.
‘Wait! Let me write it down!’
When the list was made, Lallia studied it for a moment. ‘None of this should pose any problems, but getting it to you may take a couple of days Maressa. I will try to speak to Seboth, but you can imagine he is a little busy just now,’ she finished with wifely understatement.
She sensed Maressa’s amusement.
‘I will leave it to you to mind speak me when you can Lallia. I am sorry it seems unlikely that we shall meet for now.’
The link was broken and Lallia sat staring at the scribbled list. She went to the door and called for one of her maids to summon Meran. Meran arrived in a short while, suggesting to Lallia that he was keeping close personal watch on the sun tower. Rapidly she explained that Maressa had bespoken her and that she needed these supplies for the party who had travelled to the coast. Meran knew all that had transpired while the strange visitors had stayed in the House of Far and accepted all with equanimity. He had sworn his life forfeit to the wellbeing of Lady Lallia in her cradle at Tagria, and had been prepared to pay that forfeit every day of her life since.
‘I shall gather these items in one of the empty stables,’ he told her now. ‘Do you wish me to tell Lord Seboth? He is at present checking that the people are secure within the town. Many farmers have come in the last few days seeking refuge, as you know.’
It was growing dark before Seboth appeared in Lallia’s chambers. ‘I cannot stay long. There is much fighting around the way station. According to reports I am getting, the Return men fight like madmen whenever Hargon is in their midst but seem to have no heart for it when he is elsewhere. They have taken heavy losses but still Hargon urges them to fight on.’
‘Did Meran tell you of Maressa’s presence but twenty leagues west?’
‘Yes.’ Seboth frowned. ‘He has arranged for the provisions I understand so that two riders can leave at full dark. Show me the place Maressa pictured for you. Oh yes. I know it.’ His frown deepened. ‘It is too exposed there, particularly for such a very large, very red Dragon.’ He chewed his lip. ‘There is a ravine a few leagues south of that spot, they would be safer there. Call Maressa’s mind and I will explain it to her.’
Lallia concentrated as Maressa herself had taught her. She concentrated harder. Then she looked at her husband in horror.
‘I cannot feel her mind Seboth! Not there or anywhere near.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Each time that Mena went to the small overgrown herb garden, her heart thumped against her ribs lest the boy Tyen not be there. Each time, she fervently thanked the stars that he was. In the five days since she had found him, Mena’s food had improved: there was more of it and dried fruits and nuts had been added. There was apparently an inexhaustible supply of the hard biscuits and some of those, with nuts and fruit, she hid in her bed chamber.
She had also asked for a flask in which to take water outside, claiming that the water from an old pump she had found there, tasted unpleasant. Cho Petak suggested she might like meat but Mena assured him that she had never eaten meat, that it made her ill. In fact, she had always eaten meat before, but she wondered exactly what animal the meat might come from here, and was not prepared to take the risk.
She always took a few fruits and one of the biscuits to the garden for the boy. He stayed within the wooden building when Mena worked at the endless weeding, but they talked, and gradually Mena built up a vague picture of the Menedula and what it had, until lately, represented. Tyen told her what he understood of the hierarchy of the Order of Sedka: the Sacrifice, the Offerings, the Observers, the Kooshak and the Aspirants. Much of what he said Mena had already read of in her chamber, but Tyen had learnt it by rote in his school and it was thus merely a string of words to him, meaningless as a rhyme.
Cautiously, Mena asked of the other Order, stumbling over the pronunciation of Myata’s name. Silence followed her question.
‘My father and mother said that Myata had the right of things,’ Tyen finally replied. ‘But you wasn’t supposed to speak of her, except among others who you knew for sure believed the same.’
Mena weeded on, knowing that Tyen was still thinking.
‘Some of the Observers and Kooshak were known to favour Myata and there was always a party at our house if a Kooshak visited who would tell more stories of her.’
Mena heard the hitch in his voice and began humming softly as she went to empty her weed box. She had nearly refilled it before Tyen spoke again.
‘They say, the stories, that Myata gives a safe home to any who ask at her House in Oblaka.’
Mena paused in the act of winkling out a particularly stubborn and long rooted weed. That sounded like the name she had seen on a map upstairs, the place her eyes were drawn to each time she looked at it.
‘I think that is in the direction that I need to go,’ said Mena. ‘Could you get us there?’
‘Take us many days and it is dangerous out there now,’ Tyen sounded dubious. ‘As good a place as any I guess. Can’t stay here much longer anyway.’
That evening, when Cho visited Mena, he found her drawing a map. She looked up in time to catch his frown.
‘What is this place please Sir?’ she asked, pointing to a marked spot in the centre of the page.
‘It is the town of Krasato, where the Emperor lives. Lived,’ he corrected himself.
He looked at the way in which Mena had copied the map and his frown disappeared. Mountains took up an inordinate amount of space, and the tiny representations of woodlands, Mena had enlarged so that their branches trailed right across the page.
‘An interesting interpretation child, but I think I like your other drawings better.’
‘Yes Sir. I just thought this might be fun. Are all these squiggles towns as well then Sir?’
He stared down into guileless eyes. ‘Yes. At least they were towns, but now they are returning to the dust from which they grew.’
Mena nodded solemnly and drew a clean sheet of paper towards her.
‘I think you are right Sir. I do prefer to draw the flowers.’
Cho Petak watched for a while longer then silently left her. Mena slid out another paper on which the map was copied and checked yet again that she had everything in its exact position.
Cho had returned to his own rooms and was staring at the charts spread out before him. Perhaps the child would develop an interest in such things, as he had so long ago. He glanced at the darkening window and sighed. These creatures had such extended infancies. It would be years before he could hold an intelligent conversation with that girl. He sighed again when the air shuddered, announcing the presence of Grek.
‘Byess is destroyed,’ Grek began at once.
Cho frowned.
‘Yes,’ Grek continued. ‘Destroyed. In the east of the Night Lands. Taken apart completely.’
‘What of the other three? Have you located Rashpil yet?’
‘No. There is no trace of him at all, but I have found M’Raz and Zloy. Zloy is embodied in the eastern Night Lands, very near to where Byess was lost. M’Raz,’ Grek laughed. ‘M’Raz has taken the body of that child’s father.’
Fleetingly, Cho enjoyed the sound of Grek’s laughter. He so rarely heard it now, and when he did, it held a note of bitterness rather than the unalloyed joy Cho so well remembered.
‘They can stay there for now,’ he told Grek. ‘But I begin to grow concerned by Rashpil’s absence.’
The air flurried around the end of the table then stilled again.
‘There was some disturbance in a city called Gaharn. I have a sense that Rashpil was there, but nearly met with the same fate as Byess has done. Perhaps he was damaged, or frightened. I think that he is deliberately concealing himself from us at present.’
‘And you wonder, as I do, why he should feel the need to do so?’
‘Cho, are you sure of all the ones now freed?’ Grek asked earnestly. ‘Have you seen what they are doing to this land of yours? I had not seen Drogoya until I came in the body of the girl, but it is a pleasant land Cho. Greener, more lush than the land of Sapphrea where I have spent all these long years. Do you really mean them to ruin it so totally?’
Cho shrugged. ‘It is of no importance.’ He tapped the chart in front of him. ‘There is a world which will be within range and would suit us far better than this one. It is far richer in the elements we most benefit from. I have planned that we will move there within this year and remain there as long as it takes to increase our strength beyond belief.’
His eyes had begun to burn as he spoke and the unbodied Grek watched him closely. Conviction underscored Cho’s words: he believed in the rightness of his plans.
‘I will seek Rashpil once more,’ Grek announced abruptly and left Cho’s apartments.
But he went only to the roof of the Menedula, an unbodied spirit drifting with the slight breeze. Cho’s words convinced him less each day and he feared that Cho was a far lesser being than he had seemed when Grek fell under his spell. In the brief time that Grek had been back once more in Cho’s company, he had discovered far too many discrepancies in Cho’s conversation.
Grek slid through the air particles, towards the east. He felt no strong urgency to find Rashpil, but he did feel a need to distance himself from Cho Petak while he struggled to decide his own course of action. Grek had once had true human form, unlike Cho Petak. He had been beguiled by Cho’s talk, Cho’s promises to all those who followed his path. Even now, Grek was not sure what Cho’s true form might look like. Nor did he know from whence Cho had originated, whether he was the solitary representative of some distant race or the one survivor from an equally distant catastrophe.
Grek had been unaware that Cho was not what he appeared until shortly before Cheok’s punitive attack on Cho and all who followed him. The unbodied spirit of the young man that Grek had been on that day drifted with the increasing wind, high above the eastern coast of Drogoya. He alone had lived in many bodies since his arrival here, all of them in Sapphrea in the western Night Lands. D’Lah and Cho Petak had each only used one body through all these years and Cho had killed the mind of his host within days of taking over that body.
D’Lah had forced his way into the body of an Asatarian woman at the moment she gave birth to a boy child. He had swiftly transferred to the new-born, and was now so closely entwined with that one’s mind that Grek did not believe they could ever be separated again. He alone had experienced many bodies, many minds, and in so doing had learnt much more of the inhabitants of this world. Grek realised that both Cho and D’Lah could accuse him of over sympathising with the resident people, and Grek knew they would be right.
The laughing boy, so fondly and frequently recalled by Cho, had done little harm in the centuries of his sojourn here. He admitted to himself that many times he had immersed himself into the life of his current host, enjoying the simple experiences through them as once he had enjoyed them for himself. He had been in Mena’s blood line since he reached this world, when her ancestors lived in the coastal city of Parima. Three generations he enjoyed in that stupendous place, before the Valsheban cities were blasted into ruins.
He had escaped because his host was on a visit to the inland city of Kedara, north of present day Tagria. That was the first time that Grek interfered in his host’s life, by blanketing the web of power which would have betrayed him to the vengeful farmers. All those lives he had shared, Grek thought, as he idled along on the air currents over the endless sea.
Then, at last, the summons from Cho Petak, the excitement of reunion with his old teacher and master, the fury at being in a female child’s body at such a crucial moment. Savagely, Grek had captured the unsuspecting Dragon’s mind, his rage burning through Mena’s eyes, and forced them to Drogoya. Yet he had felt the pain from them both, seeping through into his mind. He had been aware of the child’s anguish when he made her urge the failing Dragon to fresh efforts.
The lands of Drogoya were in the process of being devastated by Cho’s minions. Grek had doubted Cho’s insistence that some of those spirits within the Void should be released to serve him. Having seen the horror these same spirits had wreaked upon Drogoya and its people already, Grek’s doubts were leading him to the only choice he could make. He would have to betray Cho Petak again. As he had before, to the Grand Master Cheok.
Volk was ecstatic. Four of his horses had reappeared, grazing placidly among the goats on the hillside below the caves.
‘But what use are they Volk?’ Finn asked him that night in the common room. ‘They could die of old age before it might be safe to venture out from here.’
Volk scowled. ‘Always useful to have a horse around,’ he insisted.
Finn abandoned the point as Melena joined them. ‘The boy?’ she asked quietly.
Melena nodded. ‘He died a few moments ago. Kooshak Arryol worked so hard on the poor child, but he believes the poison was already too deep when the boy arrived here.’
Volk’s scowl became even more ferocious. ‘Poor lad. Didn’t even know his name. Cursed be that Sacrifice.’ He got to his feet and rolled away to seek solace in his new brews.
Sarryen had come to sit with them. ‘He is a good man, that Volk,’ she said.
Finn snorted. ‘For light’s sake, never let him hear you say that – he would be mortally offended.’ She shook her head at Melena and Sarryen’s puzzled faces. ‘Of course he is a good man, one of the very best. But he works so hard giving everyone the impression that he is a bad tempered, hard headed man of business without a heart, you would destroy all that effort if you let him know you can see through it.’
Finn stopped as she began to cough. Sarryen stared at Melena, silently warning her not to fuss, and after a quick glance of concern the girl got to her feet.
