Dark Realm: Book 5 Circles of Light series (46 page)

‘You will still send
Tika.’ Gan’s voice was bleak.

Again Coby reached to
touch his arm. ‘We must my dear. There is no choice. She has a very
definite connection with the creature. You do know
that.’

Gan managed a smile.
‘If I could go with her, I might not fear for her quite so much.’
He looked over at Corman. ‘Can you trust what that bird
says?’

Corman grunted. ‘We
have to I’m afraid. But I don’t believe she would lie over this.
And oddly enough, I suspect she really has taken a liking to
Tika.’

Gan wasn’t so sure that
was such a consolation but he kept quiet.

‘Will you help us write
our reply to your Lady Emla – she was such an interesting person to
meet. I regret there was so little time I could spend with
her.’

Gan smiled properly:
Coby was very hard to resist.

Corman left them to it
and returned to the First Daughter’s bedchamber. Peshan sat in an
armchair at the bedside, Akomi asleep on his lap, talking quietly
with Catha. Corman approached the bed and studied Lerran carefully.
Khosa stared up at him, her turquoise eyes unblinking. There was no
change. Lerran’s face remained distorted, tusks protruding from her
jaw, but it had not altered for several days now. The healers said
it was a good sign, indicating that the First Daughter’s physical
condition was stabilising.

Privately, Corman was
alarmed that Lerran might stabilise too much and remain this way.
Looking at her, he recalled Gan’s words. Tika had described Karlesh
as being tusked. Was there a clue there? Coby would surely have
picked up on that and would no doubt be scouring the archives for
further clues at her first opportunity.

Peshan sighed. ‘The
young woman Tika. Will she go to Kelshan?’ he asked.

Corman nodded. ‘We hope
she will. The decision must, of course, be hers.’

‘And what of our exiled
prince? Do you know his plans?’

Corman drew another
chair close to the bed. ‘My guess is that he will go directly to
the Citadel to confront the Imperatrix. I don’t know whether
Chindar is ready to sanction the sending of Dark guards to support
him.’

After a pause, Peshan
spoke again, but with an odd glance around the walls of the room.
‘Has Dabray spoken of any of this?’

‘The last person he
spoke with was Tika, several days ago.’

Silence descended, the
two men watching the woman they both loved and respected, helpless
in the face of her private battle.

Gossamer Tewk, The
Bear’s mage Lemos, and Tika, had made quite a mess of the den.
Chairs were pulled clear of the wall and they each concentrated on
different sections of the vast mural. Papers lay, like fallen
leaves, across the floor, over tables and couches. It was quiet but
for the occasional mutter as one or other talked to themselves.
They all jumped when a sharp voice asked exactly what they thought
they were doing.

Emas stood at the door,
scowling at the untidiness, a large sack clasped in her arms.
Gossamer and Tika turned as one to Lemos: it was his sister after
all – let him explain. Emas listened to a few hoarse sentences and
interest took over from the scowl.

‘Let me put these in
the kitchen.’ She indicated the sack with her chin. ‘We found far
more than I could have hoped.’

She vanished and Lemos
gave a sigh of relief. He saw Gossamer and Tika grinning at him and
returned a scowl, identical to Emas’s.

‘She can be very
difficult if she’s annoyed,’ he defended himself.

Gossamer smirked. ‘I
think you’ll find most women can be difficult when men are
particularly irritating.’

Lemos opened his mouth
to argue, thought better of it and turned back to his part of the
painting in dignified silence.

Gossamer winked at Tika
as Emas re-entered the den, wiping her hands on a towel. She went
straight to her husband’s enormous chair and curled herself into
the wide seat.

‘Right. Explain what
you’ve found,’ she commanded.

Somehow, despite three
people interrupting, and contradicting, each other, and having
numerous papers thrust under her nose, Emas did seem to understand
what they’d discovered. She studied the sketches they’d drawn and
then went to compare them with the actual mural. Tika and Lemos,
suddenly exhausted, slumped on couches, but Gossamer stood behind
Emas watching which parts she was following.

Emas looked back at her
brother with a triumphant smile.

‘All very well, but you
have left out the Dragons.’

Lemos and Tika lurched
up and shot across to Emas. She pointed to first one tiny figure,
then another, and a third.

‘They are not inside
your pipe things. I’ll wager none of them are, and they are all
through the whole painting.’ She folded her arms and looked smug.
‘I’ve checked them lots of times.’

Lemos was on his knees,
a paper in his hand, as he hunted along the bottom of the wall.
Emas wandered back to the great chair and sat calmly watching them.
A smile tugged at her mouth when she heard Gossamer Tewk speak to
Tika in a tone of deep annoyance.

‘Simert’s Balls, Tika,
she’s absolutely right.’

‘I know what balls are,
but who is Simert?’ Emas enquired, her expression all
innocence.

Tika blushed but
Gossamer shrugged. ‘In Kelshan he is the God of Death.’

Emas frowned. ‘Really?
Don’t they know of Ferag in your land then Gossamer?’

‘No,’ Gossamer replied
shortly.

Tika rubbed her eyes.
‘I can’t concentrate anymore,’ she admitted and sat on a couch near
Emas with her eyes closed. After a while, she opened them and met
Emas’s gaze.

‘Do you mind if I ask
you something?’

Emas
shrugged.

‘What will you do with
the girls? With Shea and Kerris?’

To Tika’s surprise it
was the mage Lemos who answered her. He came to sit down next to
Tika.

‘We think The Bear is
using this trip to the Eagles’ village to speak with Kerris. Both
girls would be most welcome to stay here.’

Emas nodded vigorously.
Lemos took a sip of the cold, long forgotten tea to moisten his
throat and grimaced. Tika closed her eyes again,
thinking.

‘Kerris would be very
happy here I believe. I’m not sure that Shea would want to stay
here all the time.’

Lemos smiled. ‘You
don’t know, do you?’

Tika’s eyes snapped
open. ‘Don’t know what?’

‘Shea told us that she
has sworn an oath, on her father’s name, that she will serve
you.’

Tika was appalled. ‘But
she can’t. She just can’t.’

Emas laughed. ‘But she
has.’ She grew serious. ‘We would be happy for her to regard this
as her home, us as her family, but she is utterly sincere in her
determination to serve you.’

‘But she’s only a
child.’

‘Huh, a child,’ Emas
scoffed. ‘She has seen nearly thirteen summers. Are you so very
much older?’

Tika opened her mouth,
and closed it.

‘Shea knows more about
deviousness, about duplicity, and about when to listen and when to
speak, than most adults ever learn.’ Emas continued. ‘She also
knows that if you hadn’t healed her, as my daughter Essa witnessed,
she would have a permanently crippled arm.’

‘But I told her, she
owes me nothing for that,’ Tika protested.

Emas clapped her hands
in irritation. ‘You say she owes you nothing. She feels that she
does. Do you belittle her feeling?’

‘I’m going into a
dangerous place,’ Tika spoke very softly. ‘I would not risk her
life.’

Gossamer sat next to
Emas and snorted. ‘And you think she didn’t understand what we
risked, fishing you and Sket out of the Splintered
Kingdom?’

‘And if you go to
Kelshan another mage will be with you this time,’ Lemos
croaked.

‘Another
mage?’

‘Favrian won’t leave –
he’s Sword Master and will only leave here again if absolutely
necessary now.’ He coughed and rubbed his scarred
throat.

Emas muttered something
and took the tray off to make her brother fresh tea. Tika still
looked puzzled.

‘I expect Cyrek will go
with you as the second mage.’

‘Second?’

Now Lemos looked
puzzled as well. ‘Well, you are a mage, aren’t you?’

‘Me?’ Tika sat bolt
upright. And stared at him, thoughts churning through her
brain.

Lemos grinned and
Gossamer Tewk leaned across and patted Tika’s hand in a kindly
fashion. ‘Of course you are. Did you really not know?’

‘But. But, I’ve never
been trained as a mage – or whatever it is you do to become one.’
Tika felt real panic at Lemos’s suggestion.

It was Gossamer Tewk
who realised how shocked Tika was. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you
realised, but I see you didn’t. But listen Tika – you can heal the
most awful wounds. You can speak mind to mind with other creatures
as well as with people. You have survived situations I can’t even
contemplate. I know a few, a very few, mages who might be able to
do one of those things. But only a fraction as well as you can. My
dear, you must be the most powerful mage in the world right
now.’

Tika had listened to
Gossamer’s words, but in increasing horror. Surely she would have
known what she was? What she had become? Suddenly Lemos was
kneeling beside her, reaching for her hands which he held firmly
between his own.

‘Listen child. Think
back. Someone must have wakened your power, opened your mind.
Someone must have at least begun to teach you. Think back,’ he
repeated. ‘Who was that first teacher? What was his
name?’

The brilliant green
eyes surrounded by the tiny silver scaling, began to fill with
tears. Tika’s hands turned within Lemos’s grasp and gripped his
fiercely.

‘Her,’ she whispered.
‘Emla’s friend, Iska. A sweet lady. She showed me. She began to
show me,’ she corrected herself, her voice hitching. ‘But she was
murdered. Then we had to rush to the Northern Stronghold. I saw
Iska’s body there.’

She leaned forward, her
tears falling on their clasped hands. Lemos leaned in, his forehead
bumping gently against hers.

‘Then now you must
honour that sweet lady my dear. Remember all that she taught you.
And think how proud she would be to see you now. Because she would
be you know.’ Lemos eased back to sit on his heels and gave her
hands a little shake. ‘Mother Dark knows, I am proud of you, and
I’ve only known you a few days.’

There was a gently
teasing note in the voice which was now a cracking rasp. Emas
reappeared with a tray of tea and hot cakes and rolls. She took in
the situation in a glance and simply sat down and began to pour tea
into the bowls. Tika freed one of her hands and reached out to
Lemos’s scarred throat. His eyes widened and he almost pulled away,
but held himself still. Tika’s hand dropped away and she gave him a
shaky smile.

‘Perhaps you can teach
me some of the things I ought to know?’

‘My knowledge is yours
for the taking my lady.’

Emas gasped. Her
brother’s voice was a rich baritone, clear and unstrained. She had
not heard him speak in that voice since they were about fifteen
years old and the bear had taken his voice and given him his mage
powers in return. She met his eyes and, in the manner of twins,
knew he too was astonished at what this woman had done. And done so
simply.

Emas had watched tribal
healers at work, including occasionally her brother. There had been
rituals, chants, songs and the heart beat throb of drums. Yet this
woman had merely touched Lemos’s poor scarred throat and although
those scars remained, the damage within was clearly healed. Tika
got to her feet.

‘I think I’d like to
see if Farn’s back,’ she said. ‘I need him.’

Lemos nodded, edging
away still on his knees.

Tika almost ran to the
door then stopped. ‘I would like to ask you many things Lemos. But
later.’

‘Whatever you wish,
whenever you wish.’

Emas listened to her
brother in amazement. Such a beautiful voice, ruined for thirty
years and more, given back to him so easily. She hurled herself
into his arms, weeping with joy. Gossamer Tewk sat silently
watching, absorbing all she’d just seen. No, Tika’d had no idea of
her strength. Would she accept that knowledge now? Gossamer thought
she would, but not happily. From the little she’d gleaned of Tika’s
life, she thought the woman would prefer things as they’d been when
first she’d met the Dragons.

Gossamer felt an
unusual pang of pity. Life moved on, and right now it was moving
far too fast to try to stop and turn back. She hoped Essa and
Menagol would be back tonight, she needed to talk to
them.

Tika blinked in the
sunlight, a surprise after the lamp lit den. She knew Farn and
Storm were still playing at the foot of the Ghost Falls with Shea
and Theap; not far but she hesitated to call Farn back.