Draykon (11 page)

Tren lifted his
brows. 'Nice story. I'm twenty-five, by the way.'

'Oh? Well, never
mind. I'm sure you're mature for your age.'

'Tremendously.'

'Well, we'll see.
Let's get to work.'

Their quota was
the south-west sector of the city and forest, marked clearly on the
hand-drawn map that Roys carried. Eva had deliberately kept one of
the most able summoners with her, knowing that they would be
entering territory where the whurthag had been recently sighted.
The group mounted up on the outskirts of the city, taking to
nivvenback to explore the forest. They travelled for some time in
near silence, each intent on the search. Eva kept her mind on
Rikbeek, scanning his thoughts from time to time and listening for
his signals. None came.

Eva loved the
forest at this time of year. The glostrel trees were in leaf, their
pale foliage stark against the dark shapes of their trunks and
branches. Interspersed with these were the black irignol trees,
ever leafless, but decked with gleaming lichens. Moonlight filtered
down through the branches, dappling the dark forest floor with
patches of silvery light. The atmosphere was tranquil, calm; Eva
found it hard to believe that something as terrifying as a whurthag
may be stalking through the trees not far away.

Rikbeek's call
came at last, startling her out of her appreciative reverie. It was
the same sound he'd made when he had found Meesa's body. Eva reined
in her nivven, motioning to the others to do the same. She
dismounted, moving slowly and quietly. She followed Rikbeek's call
a few paces to the south, Tren and Roys falling in behind her. The
two guards circled out to the sides, keeping steadily up to pace
with Eva.

Catching up with
Rikbeek, she stopped. The gwaystrel circled madly high above her
head, repeating his high, thin call every few seconds. Eva narrowed
her eyes, scanning the undergrowth.

'There,'
whispered Tren. She followed his pointing finger. Oh yes, there it
was. A moving patch of inky shadow, stealthy as death, eyes
gleaming pale and cold in the gloom. Eva gathered herself mentally,
bearing down on the whurthag will the full force of her willpower.
She had to master it before it was fully aware of them, before it
gathered itself to resist. She sensed Roys joining her will to
Eva's, doubling the strength of the attack. Together they seized
the beast's will in an iron grip, subduing its desire to
fight.

They hadn't been
fast enough. The whurthag fought, straining to tear free. It loosed
itself enough to strike; Roys hissed with pain as its claws raked
across her legs, but she bore down all the harder, using her anger
and pain to compel it to obey. Nonetheless the whurthag twisted and
snarled, a sound terrible enough that Eva almost lost her grip. She
could feel the thing working itself loose, twisting out of her
control with slippery ease.

'Tren,' she said
tightly. 'Gate.'

He complied. It
was as though he tore a hole in the night; moonlight leaked through
from somewhere else, chilly and too bright and etched with metallic
blue. A cold wind blew through the portal, raising the hairs on
Eva's arms. She gritted her teeth, bearing down ferociously on the
whurthag, willing it to step in the direction of the
gate.

It didn't
move.

'Roys...'

Roys tightened
her grip, gasping with the effort. Eva had bitten her lip; blood
trickled down her chin, tasting sharp in her mouth. The whurthag
bunched its muscles and tried to leap in her direction. Fighting
panic - why in the Seven would anyone willingly summon such a
creature?! - she fought hard, streaming images of danger and peril
into the mind of the whurthag. Feeling it falter, she followed that
with impressions of safety beyond the gate, the comfort of the home
den.
It's probably not remotely
susceptible to such
things
, she thought desperately, but then the whurthag
weakened, gave up the fight. Inch by inch she and Roys forced it
towards Tren's gate. It stalked through, and the gate closed around
it, silently swallowing the whurthag's night-black form.

Eva stood
motionless for a long time, breathing hard. She felt completely
drained, and still rather terrified. She'd never known a fight like
that to control any beast, and she was one of the strongest of the
summoners.

Roys recovered
first. She blinked as if waking up, moved about stiffly. 'Tricky,'
she said laconically, bending over her injured leg. The flesh was
striped with scratches but they bled only sluggishly. 'It's not
deep,' Roys confirmed, waving Eva away.

'You were lucky,'
Eva said, remembering the ferocious sweep of the whurthag's claws.
She looked at Tren. He too was looking pale and shaken. She
wondered whether it was the effort of holding the gate open that
had tired him out, or the strain of being far too close to an only
barely restrained whurthag.

'All well?' she
asked him.

He nodded, smiled
wryly. 'You ladies clearly had the hard work. I'm fine.'

'Good work,
ladies,' said one of the guards. 'We'd better check for its
handler. We'll stay close.' Eva nodded and the two of them melted
into the trees, weapons drawn.

Eva tilted her
head to one side, wincing at a sharp pain in her neck. How tense
she must've been. How long had the job taken? The moon was still
strong overhead, but it could easily have been an hour. Eva sat
carefully in the grass while the guards were gone, welcoming a
chance at a brief rest before the ride home.

The search didn't
take long. The guards soon returned, weapons sheathed.

'No sign of any
handlers,' said the talkative one - Havely, Eva recalled. She had
never caught the other guard's name, and he hadn't spoken a word
throughout their journey.

No handler was
chilling news. It suggested that the whurthag had already broken
free of its master summoner's control. They had caught it barely in
time. She shivered.

'We'd better go
back and call the others in,' she said. They collected the nivvens
and mounted up, all three shaky and exhausted. The ride back to
Glour City was slow.

Three of the
teams were already assembled when they arrived back at Summoner
House. Eva frowned. They should have continued the search until the
whurthag was confirmed as found - or until the search was called
off. Why were they here?

'We found and
banished the whurthag,' she said, dismounting with none of her
usual easy grace. 'It's gone.'

'So did we,' said
Alys Spirin, one of her foremost summoners.

'And so did we,'
said another.

'We all
did.'

Eva blinked,
confused. 'What.'

'There was only
supposed to be one,' said Roys.

'Apparently not,'
said Alys. 'The count's up to four so far. No idea yet what the
other teams have found.'

Eva's heart sank.
'All banished?'

'Yes.'

Eva nodded, her
eyes threatening to close with weariness. The other summoners were
in little better shape; several sat with their heads in their
hands, others were actually lying on the floor.

'Any
losses?'

'None,' said
Alys, 'but a few injuries. Trace is in the worst shape. He's at the
medical halls now.'

Eva nodded again,
feeling deeply thankful. 'Right, well. If there were four, there
could be any number still at large. The search isn't
over.'

'There's one
other thing.' One of Angstrun's sorcerers stepped forward, a man
with hair as pale as Eva's own.

'Yes?'

'We found three
rogue gates out in the forest.'

Tren looked round
at that. 'Three rogue gates open at once?'

The sorcerer
nodded, his face grim. 'Maybe more.'

'That's unheard
of.'

Eva was shocked,
too. Rogue gates were a problem no one had yet managed to solve;
they opened and closed apparently according to their own rules. The
only way to deal with them was to close them as quickly as possible
when they were found. Part of Angstrun's job was to organise
regular patrols of the city and forest by sorcerers who could close
them up quickly and efficiently.

But they were
relatively rare. Barely one rogue gate was discovered per moon.
Three in one day?

She passed her
hands over her face, rubbing her tired eyes. 'I can see it's going
to be a long day.'

***

Eva and her
summoners worked past moonset and well beyond, relentlessly
searching the forests of Glour until they were, to all appearances,
empty of further dangers. The total number of whurthags discovered
rose to seven. Each one was found at a distance from the city
precincts, crouched in the shadows as if awaiting something. Eva
found it remarkable that they had not attacked the city again. Why
were these here?

More rogue gates
had been found, and closed. One further report had troubled Eva:
one of her teams claimed to have found an unusual type of reptile
in swampy northern Glour. With blue scales, long snout and horns,
it was no species commonly seen in the marshes. It had probably
come through one of the rogue gates, but Eva wondered.

When she was at
last free to retire to her home, it was nearly moonset. She slept
the long, deep, dreamless sleep of the exhausted, waking at last
long after moonrise on the following day. She cursed when she
realised the time, expecting to find a heap of messages urgently
requiring her attention. In fact, there were only two: one from her
second-in-command confirming that no further whurthag sightings had
been recorded, and one from Vale, announcing his intention to visit
around moonset.

He arrived a
little early, looking almost as tired as Eva had been. She ordered
dinner and had some cayluch sent in, thinking he looked in need of
a hot drink. He sank into the sofa beside her, cupping his hands
around the mug.

'What's the
news?' Eva allowed herself to lean against his shoulder, unusually
grateful for the company.

He sighed deeply.
'There've been some jewellery thefts in Orstwych, and one death.
All sounds far too similar. I sent a couple of the boys out there
for more details. Word is Glinnery's having some trouble,
too.'

'Same
kind?'

'More or less. A
civilian injury, probably whurthag inflicted, but no deaths yet.
I've sent enquiries about any jewellery thefts going
on.'

A chilling
thought occurred to Eva. 'Civilian injuries? Who?'

'I don't have any
names yet.'

Eva had sent a
warning to Ynara Sanfaer at her first opportunity. She hoped her
friend had received the note in time to act on it. If all of this
chaos was over the istore, then her daughter was in more danger
than anyone. She shifted restlessly, wishing there was some way she
could find out.

'Anything from
Irbel? Nimdre?'

'Working on it.'
He smiled tiredly at her, and she smiled back.

'Sorry.'

Vale's smiled
faded. 'I saw Angstrun earlier. He's out for blood. You heard about
the Night Cloak?'

'Mm. I was at the
Guardian's Office when the news came. He wasn't happy.'

'I imagine
not.'

'Does he know who
did it?'

'Think so. He
said one of his men's missing. Wants my help tracking him down.'
Vale sighed. 'We'll deal with it, of course, but I don't know how.
I've already sent most of my best men out picking up leads all over
the Darklands, and I've called in my contacts in the Daylands too.
We're a bit short-handed to be sending out man hunts.'

Eva allowed her
head to rest on Vale's broad shoulder. 'I know the problem. I've
got to keep teams of summoners out on patrol for the foreseeable
future. They need to be in groups of at least two, preferably
three, to deal with the whurthags safely. The guild's stretched
thin already. And we're leeching sorcerers out of Angstrun's forces
to pull the gates open.'

She felt Vale
turn his head to look down at her. He slipped an arm around her
waist and pulled her closer.

'I wonder if it's
significant that these events are taking all of Glour's best out of
the city and scattering them to the winds,' said Eva. 'I fear it
must be.'

'Possible.'

'I mean, those
whurthags weren't out for anyone in particular. They were just
standing there.' A new idea occurred to her and she sat up
slightly. 'Eyde. If we marked on a map where all the whurthags were
found, I wonder if we would find a pattern.'

'I'm surprised
you haven't done that already.'

She sighed.
'Sorry, Eyde. I was so tired yesterday I could barely remember my
own name. I'll get to it first thing after moonrise
tomorrow.'

He placed a kiss
on the top of her head. 'Don't blame yourself, Eva my darling. It's
been a long week for all of us.'

'Not much of an
excuse, that,' she said absently. Her thoughts were busy, drawing
links and mapping connections. 'Has Angstrun pulled the Night Cloak
back yet?'