Survivors: Book 4 Circles of Light series, page 46
‘Well, I must take my chance now.’
Tika studied each face around her and knew just how much she had come to love every one. ‘You will wait here, although I’d prefer you to move further away. I will go onto that hill, the cave is close to the top I judge, from Maressa’s picture of it.
‘I will take you.’ Farn’s voice was soft, perfectly calm, and his eyes gleamed pearl and sapphire in the grey gloom soaking them all.
Without a word, Sket climbed onto Farn’s back, his expression set like stone. Akomi leaped up Sket’s leg and glared balefully down at the companions as though daring them to make him move. Tika took Maressa’s hands in hers.
‘Stars bless you and guard your heart,’ she murmured.
Maressa choked back her tears and hugged Tika’s small body fiercely against her own. Tika freed herself gently and moved to Ren, to Navan, to Jakri and Khosa. Khosa’s turquoise eyes burned into Tika’s but she said not a word. Tika hugged Storm and then stood before Gan’s towering figure. He bent down to her, pushing her unruly curls off her forehead as he’d done so very many times before. Somehow he managed a smile.
‘Stars guard you, little one.’
Tika’s throat ached with tears but if Gan could smile, well so could she.
‘Family, Gan?’
‘Always family Tika.’
She nodded, hugged him hard and lurched away towards Brin. She leaned against his broad chest for an instant and then moved quickly to mount Farn.
‘Shield your minds now,’ she ordered as Farn lifted away.
Tika did not look back, instead she forced all thought of those friends from her mind, centering her concentration as Iska had taught in her first lessons in the use of power. Farn landed as gently as thistledown on the oddly stepped hilltop and Tika slid from his back. Her pendant hung at her chest, free of it leather cover. She nearly jumped out of her skin as claws dug in the top of her shoulder. She bit back an exclamation; she need to focus her attention on what she must do, not yell at a mottled old cat.
Sket moved to her right side and she was distantly aware of him hooking the remaining fingers of his left hand firmly under the back of her belt. Tika’s mind sank into the bare rock beneath her feet, filtering through the ancient layers until she knew she approached air once more. The grey dimness of the rock gave way to sudden firelight and Orla’s corpse.
Above on the hilltop, Tika’s body went rigid and Sket tensed, murmuring prayers his grandmother had taught him and which he’d not repeated for years. While Tika’s mind watched, she saw the misshapen child lap at Orla’s blood and then turn its head towards the cave wall opposite Tika. For one heartbeat, Tika saw the thing that was Qwah, then it disintegrated in a mass of nothingness and diminishing screams. Her attention snapped back to the thing which still squatted in Orla’s gore. Tika gathered every scrap of concentration before her heart could beat again but the thing laughed, staring straight at her. She heard thunder, the hiss of lightning far overhead, then something tore within her mind and she fell.
As she fell she caught the briefest glimpse of Brin, his great wings outstretched, trying to cover the companions as lightning, thick and solid as real spears, plunged among them. Beyond the protection of those massive wings, impaled and unmoving lay Maressa and Gan. Tika’s ears were filled with the sound of Farn screaming in pain and anger. She fell, a weight at her back and the faintest smell of mint in her nose. She fell unendingly it seemed, but then she landed with a thump that completely winded her. She lay, breath whooping into her battered lungs.
She opened her eyes and found Sket wheezing beside her. Akomi was squeezed between them, every hair on his body on end. He stared into her face, whiskers bristling forward around his nose.
‘Where are we?’ He spoke in her mind, his tone offended, aggrieved and frightened.
Tika’s breathing was coming under control and Sket was peering around them. She struggled up, wincing as her ribs protested. She stared at the jagged dark stone walls and her heart sank even further. She touched her pendant and found it was cold as any inanimate lump of stone.
‘I’m afraid we’re in a place Between,’ she said aloud, her words sounding weak and small.
She stared at Akomi, then at Sket. She reached to touch them and felt her own legs and arms while Sket watched her warily.
‘We’re here completely,’ she said. ‘Not just our minds.’
‘Is that good or bad?’ Sket asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice wobbled treacherously. ‘Did you – did you see anything – just as we fell?’
Sket’s eyes narrowed. ‘No. What do you think you saw then?’
Tika grasped at the thin excuse Sket offered. ‘Nothing really – we weren’t even looking in Brin’s direction, were we?’
But she knew in her heart that she’d seen true. Maressa, the beautiful Vagrantian air mage, pierced, pinned to the rock with a spear of flame. And Gan. But no, she mustn’t, she couldn’t think of that now. Somehow she got herself to her knees, then to her feet, helping Sket as much as he was helping her. She looked around. It was dark but she could see and she knew Sket and Akomi could too.
Briefly, Tika sent her mind questing outwards for Farn. Nothing. It was like a mirror – her probing mind simply rebounded on her.
‘I’ll try and explain,’ she told Sket, lifting Akomi to her shoulder. ‘I was in a place like this after we faced Valesh. Seela explained a little.’
‘Seela?’ Sket touched the strap of his pack and Tika remembered he still had four of Seela’s purple scales tucked in there.
Before she could describe the place Between life and death, Akomi sneezed. Sket and Tika sniffed at the same instant. The very faintest fragrance of mint. Tika felt hope surge through her and she tugged Sket along the passage in pursuit of that elusive scent. They had taken half a dozen shaky steps when laughter echoed down the tunnel. A voice neither of them recognised said something in a language they couldn’t understand. The laugh rang out again and the voice spoke in the common tongue.
‘Gotcha, meddlesome brat! Gotcha!’
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Now read 'Dark Realm', the fifth book in the 'Circles Of Light' series.
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Circles Of Light series available at smashwords.com
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Circles Of Light series
1 Soul Bonds
2 Vagrants
3 Drogoya
4 Survivors
5 Dark Realm
6 Perilous Shadows
Coming Soon - ‘Tilliat’ - 1000 years after the events in ‘Circles Of Light’.
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E.M. Sinclair, Survivors: Book 4 Circles of Light series
