‘Namolos reaches me. I cannot reach him. He is still too far for me to mind speak him.’

  ‘I could reach him,’ Grek offered diffidently.

  The rough grass flattened in a spiral pattern as Grek belatedly indicated his position. Khosa’s eyes blazed in a mixture of anger and excitement.

  ‘I should have thought of that,’ she said. ‘Oh yes Grek, find Namolos. He is on one of the islands set out in the western sea. Beg him to tell us what to do for the gijan.’

  Tika looked around. ‘Has he gone already?’

  ‘Oh yes. Will you forgive me for not thinking to use Grek sooner?’

  Tika and Maressa were both so dumbfounded at this apologetic Khosa Maressa could only pick her up and scratch her ears. Brin spiralled down to land, looking smug as only he could. Gan raised his eyebrows and waited. Brin rattled his wings, paced closer and reclined.

  ‘I have been looking for a place towards the setting sun where these cliffs might allow horses or humans to climb down safely.’ His eyes whirred. ‘There is just such a place, not far. And I flew very high and I could see the great sea again.’

  Sket grinned. ‘You’re getting really sensible Brin – just like your old father.’

  Brin huffed, smoke wisping from his nostrils.

  ‘I believe that is two legs humour Brin,’ Seela commented and Brin looked a little shamefaced.

  Gan thought it best to intervene. ‘That was truly helpful Brin – if you can mind speak Ren, you can guide him to the place you found.’

  ‘I did, but he didn’t answer. He heard me, I’m sure, but perhaps he was busy or talking to someone else. He did not reply though.’

  Apprehension rippled through Tika and Maressa, apprehension not missed by Gan or Sket.

  ‘How far do you think they have left to travel to get here?’ asked Gan.

  Brin considered. ‘Maybe they will be here this time tomorrow,’ he decided.

  Sket checked the position of the sun: about midday. He looked back at the cliffs towering only two or three leagues behind them and scowled.

  ‘Can anyone tell me why it’s so much cooler here and yet hot enough to fry us all only that little distance away?’

  ‘I expect Ren could.’ Tika gave him a smile which quickly vanished as she bent to a gijan who had let out a high whimpering sound.

  The day drew to its close and the gijan at last seemed more peaceful although whether that was a good sign or bad none of them dared hazard a guess. They had spent some time holding each gijan in turn in the water at the lake’s edge which seemed to help them, cooling their skins at least. Now the four friends sat round the fire, the Dragons close by and ate roasted meat from the goats brought again by Brin. Brin swung his head to the north, eyes whirring.

  ‘Ren speaks,’ he said.

  They all listened in growing horror as Ren told of treachery by the Qwah. Hadjay had crept upon Olam who was keeping watch while the others slept. The resulting fight had roused them. Navan and Riff had killed Kirat and Sirak. Olam had taken a bad wound to his side but lived. The others had lesser cuts and bruises but Hadjay had cut the ties holding the awning which then fell on them, entangling them in its folds. By the time they had got free of it, Hadjay was gone. With all the horses.

  Brin was aloft even as Ren continued his account, Seela close behind. Seela called back to Tika’s mind.

  ‘We must fetch them now. They will not last a day in that heat with no shade and no water.’

  Gan smacked a fist into his palm. ‘Was that planned by Kertiss I wonder? Or just Qwah arrogance?’

  ‘Arrogance?’ questioned Maressa. ‘They all seemed pleasant and welcoming I thought, at least, those we met outside the City.’ She frowned. ‘But we didn’t meet any inside the City, except for the Keepers, did we?’

  ‘Kirat’s attitude to us from the first was superior,’ Gan insisted. ‘And increasingly so since we left the City.’

  Maressa shivered. ‘Do you think Kertiss can spy on us here with that pipe machine he has?’

  ‘More to the point, has he any means to hurt us, even across the distance we have between us?’

  Maressa got to her feet. ‘Come on Sket. Let’s get plenty of water ready if we’ve wounded to deal with anytime soon.’

  Another dawn was breaking when Brin called from beyond the cliffs. Farn and Storm rose impatiently into the air to escort the adult Dragons to the camp. Both Seela and Brin were exhausted: they had flown at their fastest speed both ways, and on the return flight were burdened with the five men. Pallin rode Seela, holding an unconscious Olam before him. Gan strode across to help lift the wounded Arms Chief from Pallin’s stiff arms. Ren staggered and was caught by Riff before he fell.

  Their faces were dirty, etched with weariness and, in Ren’s case, shock. He had never witnessed swords being used in anger, or been so close to violent death and he was sorely disturbed by the experience.

  ‘Give Ren some of Farn’s calming herbs,’ Tika muttered to Sket, watching Gan unwrap an ominously bloody cloth from Olam’s side.

  ‘Thank the stars you found water,’ Pallin croaked to Maressa. ‘That foul Qwah left not a drop to clean a wound.’ He stared at the gaping flesh Gan had exposed. ‘Seboth’ll skin me should I let his brother die.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Maressa briskly. ‘Go and get some tea for yourself, bathe in the lake and sleep. Gan and I will soon have Olam tidied up.’

  She spoke so convincingly the old armsman obediently stumbled towards the fire. She met Gan’s eyes. ‘Well, we’ll have a damn good try anyway,’ she amended.

  Gan gave her an encouraging nod and went off to fetch water. Olam’s wound in fact proved far less severe than it looked. Maressa thanked the stars that no major damage had been inflicted and it was general blood loss that had rendered Olam unconscious rather than internal injuries. By mid morning the five new arrivals were all asleep, Sket sitting relaxed beside Olam ready to attend him whenever he might rouse. Farn reclined near the sleeping adult Dragons but Storm was close to the gijan, Khosa perched on his back.

  Tika poured yet more tea into her bowl, and nearly spilt it all when Grek spoke in their minds.

  ‘I have spoken to Namolos,’ he began. There was something in his tone his listeners couldn’t fathom. ‘Namolos is truly amazing and you will learn much when you meet him.’

  Tika cut him short. ‘The gijan Grek. What did Namolos tell you of them?’

  ‘I can show you what he showed my mind, but I have to warn you Tika you will find this hard. You must look at all I show you – ALL of it – and you will gain hope by the end.’

  Sket had shifted across as soon as Grek made his presence known and Tika reached for his hand. Farn paced behind her, resting his chin on the top of her head. Storm and Khosa were also paying close attention.

  ‘I will show you what has recently happened to your friend Mim in the northern Stronghold.’

  ‘Mim?’ Tika interrupted. ‘What’s wrong with him? Is he all right?’

  The unbodied entity that was Grek was silent before beginning to speak again but in tones suggesting some exasperation.

  ‘Will you just listen to me? I will tell you that now he is well but you must witness what befell him, remembering that he DID survive.’ Grek paused as though anticipating a further outburst. When none was forthcoming he continued.

  ‘Your friend Mim is a Dragon Lord but he had yet to fully assume that title. I will show the pictures from Namolos’s mind, which he took from someone named Chakar, who assisted Mim through his time of trial.’

  Briefly his listeners were disorientated then quickly realised they were truly looking through other eyes, seeing as if they were actually there. Tika’s nails dug into Sket’s hand, seeing Mim crouched in a corner, tears flooding down his scaled cheeks. They saw hands lifting him, placing him on a bed, cutting away his jerkin. Hands moved poultices and the same hands suddenly pressed down on the great swelling they saw along one side of Mim’s spine. Fresh blood spurted from the swelling as the hands increased their pressure. Farn rattled his wings and Tika was peripherally aware that Seela and Brin were sharing this terrible vision from Grek’s mind.

  The hands clenched briefly above Mim’s back. Then, as if their owner forced herself to action, fingers dug into the bleeding gap. Maressa gasped aloud and clapped her hands to her mouth. The hands gently tugged something from the blood. Slowly and with infinite tenderness, the wing was extended over a chair beside Mim’s bed. The pictures vanished and they were left with only Grek’s voice.

  ‘Namolos says it was not done thus millennia past, but this is a time of new beginnings. He says this is what you must do for the gijan. But he gave me another picture to show you.’

  This time all except Seela and Storm recognised the Stronghold’s great hall. The eyes through which they saw were fixed on the ramp to the upper levels. And Mim walked into view, pausing to look down into the hall, his eyes seeming to meet theirs for a moment. Then great feathered wings unfurled from behind him and with three beats of those wings he stood beside his soul bond Ashta.

  Again the vision disappeared.

  ‘Mim is truly Dragon Lord,’ Khosa said.

  ‘But you will have to help the gijan as Chakar helped Mim,’ Grek emphasised. ‘Namolos says there is danger in this method of freeing their wings even as there was great danger for Mim’s life. Namolos asks that you do your best for the gijan but you must not blame yourselves should you fail any or all of them.’ He repeated the warning. ‘It is a time of great peril for the gijan. At the moment the gijan are genderless: this is the time they become either male or female. Added to that, these three are the first of many generations to grow wings. Their peril is great.’

  Chapter Seven

  Kertiss was in Singer’s chamber beneath the great Dome. Singer’s windows were concealed, the entry closed. Kertiss had been raging moderately for some hours but was now building to a crescendo of hysterical anger. Singer listened in silence, the memory systems in the Ship’s circuits recording Kertiss’s abuse. Singer wasn’t sure why he’d activated the recording cubes but it occupied him briefly. He was trying not to listen to the ranting outside. He could have switched off the outer sound receptors, but he thought that would be rude.

  Star Singer, like many of the Ships, was a strangely contradictory personality. Yes, the brains of those transfused into the Ships were capable of tremendously advanced and sophisticated thought processes. But emotionally many of them were still less developed than five year old human children. Singer was one of the youngest of the Ships and his first Captain was Mazan.

  Mazan had spent hours and days getting to know Singer before he was integrated into the Ship’s fabric. He had liked Mazan from the beginning, but by the time of Singer’s first flight as a fully operational Ship, he loved her. He worked with her, plotting courses, checking instrumentation and handling the automatic maintenance systems. Mazan laughed with him, told him stories and riddles. She brought music cubes into the ship and told him of the different styles of music from the many worlds she had already visited.

  They had been recalled to the home planet for reassignment to a group project when Singer’s world went mad. Mazan had left him to attend a final briefing session before their departure on a team survey mission. Singer was trying to learn an amazingly long and complicated song, with triple harmonics, to surprise and please Mazan on her return. He didn’t hear any of the transmissions on the news casts – he wasn’t interested in news at any time. Singer was only alerted that something was wrong by the sound of sonic weaponry in use somewhere close to his launch bay.

  He immediately pulsed a call to Mazan’s identlink but she did not respond. He transmitted urgently to the other Ships he knew, but heard only fragmented conversations and a pervading sensation of panic. Then someone accessed entry and he scanned for Mazan. But it wasn’t her. He did not know the man or woman who were scrambling into the navigation seats.

  ‘Where is Mazan? Who are you?’ Singer demanded.

  ‘Just get us out of here Ship, now! Follow Arrow and Wing – see! They are just ahead of you!’

  ‘No. Where is Mazan? She is my Captain.’

  ‘Do what you’re ordered Ship!’ The man screamed at Singer. ‘Mazan is dead, now obey me at once and fly!’

  It was only much later that Singer understood how near to insanity his overwhelming grief had taken him. He felt a loss within him that he couldn’t encompass or deal with. In a stupor of uncomprehending pain, Singer had followed the group of Ships and passively obeyed Kertiss’s orders.

  Star Dancer was one of those Ships, older by far than Star Singer. She’d heard of the loss of Mazan and she persisted in trying to talk to Singer. He hadn’t answered her, or anyone else, for years, but slowly, slowly, Dancer breached Singer’s pain and began to help him heal.

  All the Ships sang in flight and gradually Dancer persuaded and gently bullied until at last Singer joined in. The Ships sang outwards: rarely did their passengers hear their songs. The Ships sang for themselves, for the freedom they might never have known, and they sang for the stars they flew between.

  Now with Kertiss still shouting outside, Singer began to hum one of the thousands of melodies he’d composed in his life as a Ship. Kertiss fell silent then renewed his tirade.

  ‘You will answer me Ship! If you can warble then you can speak. What did you tell those ignorant fools I mistakenly allowed within this sacred Dome?’

  Singer allowed himself to be baited while hoping to sidetrack Kertiss.

  ‘Sacred?’ he asked thoughtfully. ‘This Dome is dedicated to a divinity, is holy, is built for religious rites? I had no idea of that Kertiss. I thought you disparaged such philosophical aberrations. Have you then discovered the origins of the Dome’s construction at last? Do tell! I find it fascinating.’

  Beads of perspiration shone on Kertiss’s brow. ‘Answer me Ship. Are you deliberately blocking my communications with other Ships? If you are, I will dismantle you piece by piece.’

  Singer’s reply was spoken meekly. ‘Kertiss, you have sealed the area above. I cannot transmit beyond this Dome unless you retract the exclusion shields. How can I block any incoming contacts?’

  Kertiss scowled but Singer continued. ‘Perhaps there has been some fluctuation in the atmosphere which adversely affects wave transmission. You told me the atmosphere on the other side of this planet is now totally distorting any kind of surveillance beams.’

  Kertiss let his breath out in a gusting sigh. ‘You may be right but this loss of contact with any other Ship is serious Singer. We are isolated enough in this desert.’

  ‘But I thought you ordered me to land here because it was isolated?’ Singer asked innocently.

  ‘Such isolation suits me and Orla – to a degree. I had not thought to lose contact with all Ships.’

  Orla emerged from one of the passages.

  ‘The Ship was damaged before we landed Kertiss. You know it was never normal. Leave the damn thing and help me get through this interference. It seems to be increasing on every frequency I use.’

  Kertiss followed his sister without another word to Singer.

  Alone again, Singer wept silently for a little while, then he remembered that wonderful evening when those men had sat with him, telling him stories. And that song the old one had sung! Pallin – that was his name. Oh how they’d laughed as he sang. Singer chuckled at the memory: it had been quite a rude song too.

  Singer had memory cubes encoding the record of the long journey to this world of Kel-Harat. To pass the time, he occasionally studied some of those cubes. The Ships had transferred from star system to star system, twitching aside the curtain of Time to escape detection from any pursuers. They had circled strange planets: gaseous giants on which nonetheless were intelligent life forms. Such creatures fascinated the Ships and many of their Captains. But a handful, like Kertiss, refused to waste time surveying such worlds or trying to establish contact with their inhabitants.

  Singer found it mildly amusing that it was Kertiss’s insistent plotting of one particular Time Slip which took them backwards, into a known region of the Cosmos. Unfortunately they had emerged almost directly in the path of a scout ship of their Conglomeration enemies. After Time Slipping, there was always a brief period of disorientation: Ships and Captains checking that they were in fact where they had intended to be. The scout ship used that hiatus to summon combat ships and Singer learnt what real damage could be done with the weaponry he and the other Ships carried.

  Singer had never used his weapons except in routine practice simulations and only now fully understood the devastation they could wreak. With Kertiss screaming at him, Singer instigated his own course and flipped into the fabric of Time. To his immense relief, most of the other Ships popped into existence around him, some by order of their Captains, but others like himself, under their own volition.

  The Ships drifted in this pocket of Time, watching for any appearance of Conglomeration combat ships which might have been fast enough to trace and follow their course. When none appeared, Captain Namolos plotted a course into the spiral arm of the Repsian Galaxy. There was a considerable risk involved. It was a very long Time Slip and the positions of the coordinated stars he was locking onto were only provisionally confirmed in the sparsely marked star charts of the Repsian region.

  All the Ships loved Star Dancer: she had been one of the first of these biological Ships, and the others looked to her experience for guidance in most matters. Through their devotion to Star Dancer they held her Captain, Namolos, in great respect and also his wife Abesh and their daughters Lemora and Gremara. Namolos and his family were among many star travellers who had undergone extensive gene sculpting with an emphasis on longevity, regeneration and increased natural mind talents such as empathy and telepathy.

  So the Ships didn’t hesitate to follow Star Dancer although all were aware of the danger in such a long Time Slip. They had burst into Real Time above Kel-Harat and settled into orbit. Many Ships had suffered varying degrees of damage in the skirmish with the combat ships and knew that they would not survive any orbit to land descent. Others, Dancer and Singer among them, decided they could survive a landing but gave a very low estimate as to their abilities to escape the planetary gravity once they were on the surface.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46