Draykon (20 page)

Trying not to
feel nervous, she climbed the stairs back to her room. The winged
creature she had rescued the day before seemed better today; its
breathing was calmer and it lay quietly in the nest Llandry had
prepared. She mixed up a solution of sugar in water and laid it
nearby, hoping it would eat. Doubtless it needed sustenance. She
nudged it with her thoughts, reminding it about the concept of
food, and to her pleasure it stirred and dipped its snout into the
dish.

'On balance, I'd
prefer more intruders like you,' she told it. 'No killer teeth. No
killer claws. No killer instincts. Quite undemanding, all told.' It
ignored her, drinking on until the dish was dry. Then it drank down
a second dish, after which it tentatively flapped its
wings.

'I suppose I
ought to send you back, when you're better.' It was pretty, as
Devary had said, and its mind was pretty too - full of colour and
sun. She wouldn't mind much if it chose to stay.

A door rattled
below and she bolted towards the stairs, alarmed. Was this Devary?
Her parents coming back? Another 'visitor'? She reached the kitchen
to find Devary slipping back inside. He looked relieved when he saw
her.

'What's
happening?'

He shut the door
firmly and barred it. 'Beasts are all over the city. All over the
forests too, it seems. The bulletins are screaming about it. The
summoners are out in force, sending them back, but they are finding
it hard to keep up. I had to fight my way past several just to
reach the nearest board.'

'How?
Why?'

'That is unknown.
There are rogue gates opening, more than there should be. Nobody
knows why this is occurring.'

She said no more,
noticing that blood seeped from the wound on his arm. She found her
mother's healing supplies in a box on the back of the door, bathed
the wound and bound it up.

'If you give me
the shirt, I will mend it for you.' She pointed at the tear that
marred the black fabric.

'Thank you,' he
said. He left, returning a few minutes later wearing a new shirt,
the torn one draped over his uninjured arm. She took it from him
and settled to her darning task.

'When's Mamma due
back?'

'She said maybe
today, or tomorrow.' He winced. 'I hope the summoners have caught
up with the problem by then, or they will have to fight their way
through.'

Llandry felt her
stomach tighten with anxiety.
No need to worry
, she told
herself.
They can handle it
. She sensed Devary thinking the
same. He prowled restlessly around the kitchen, picking things up
and dropping them.

'I wonder if I
ought to...'

'Hm?'

'Maybe I should
go out to meet them, make sure they arrive safely.'

She said nothing.
She understood his impulse to help - she felt it herself - but she
knew it would be exactly the opposite of her mother's wishes. After
a minute, Devary sighed.

'Your mother
would kill me if I left you alone,' he said. 'And she would be
right to.' He smiled at her, but his smile lacked some of his usual
warmth.

'I don't like
being barricaded in here either,' she said, putting a few more
stitches in his shirt.

'I am sure you
don't,' he replied. 'I'm sorry. It isn't your fault.' He collected
Ynara's teapot and filled it with water. 'Some more
tea?'

***

Sunset came and
Llandry's parents did not appear. The dusk hours dragged by slowly,
Llandry and Devary both too tense to settle to anything. At last
they retired to bed, though both were awake and up before sunrise.
Shortly before sunset came around again, there came a pounding on
the outer door. Devary leapt up and drew back the bolts, yanking
the door open. Aysun stood on the other side with Ynara behind him.
They both stepped hastily into the kitchen, and Devary slammed the
door shut quickly behind them.

'Ma.' Llandry
went to her mother, wanting to feel Ynara's arms around her. She
sensed weariness and looked up searchingly into her mother's
face.

'I'm all right,
love, and so are you it seems, so everything is well.' Ynara kissed
her forehead. 'We are in sore need of tea, though.' Llandry went
immediately to the stove.

'Did you run into
trouble on the way back?' said Devary.

'Some,' said
Aysun. 'Seems someone's put a small army of animals between Glour
City and Waeverleyne.'

'They were in the
city too, yesterday,' said Devary. 'Summoners have been cleaning
them out.'

Ynara looked up
at that. 'Any trouble here?' Her perceptive eye shifted from the
shuttered windows to her daughter's face.

'We had an
intruder, yesterday,' said Devary, sitting across from Ynara at the
table. He gestured with his hands, indicating the size of the
beast. 'Green hide. Big teeth. Llandry banished it.'

'Banished?' Ynara
looked intently at her daughter.

'Devary was going
to kill it,' explained Llandry, glancing guiltily at her father. He
lifted one shaggy blond eyebrow at her, but said
nothing.

'A second visited
us the night before last, which I was obliged to destroy,' added
Devary. 'Oh, and another newcomer two days ago. Small thing, wings.
Not dangerous. Llandry has been tending to it.'

'It's still
alive,' she reported. 'I'm going to keep it. Unless Sig tries to
swallow it again. Anyway, Ma, what's the news from
Glour?'

Llandry had the
sense that her mother was trying not to look at her. 'Some good,
some bad.'

'Start with the
good.'

'Mm, well. The
Glour summoners have taken care of the whurthag problem. Also, the
Night Cloak has been pulled back to its original
position.'

Llandry's spirits
lifted. 'Great! Then I can go to the cave soon?' She frowned.
'Maybe after the beast-army's gone.'

'The bad news,'
persevered Ynara, 'is that the cave is empty.'

Llandry's frown
deepened. 'Empty?'

'There's no
istore left. It's all gone.'

Llandry felt
suddenly cold. 'It can't be all gone. The walls were full of
it.'

'Nonetheless,
it's gone. I'm sorry, love. I saw it myself. There's no doubt about
it. Also,' she continued, 'our new beast friends are coming through
from the Lowers as well, in similar numbers. Some of them have been
identified. There are at least five species so far that were
previously thought to be extinct.'

'Five?' Devary
echoed. 'That is an extraordinary degree of error.'

'Mm,' Ynara
agreed. 'It's true that the Off-Worlds are large; there must be
areas that are unexplored, and these animals have been hiding out
of reach. Though why they would now be venturing into inhabited
territory is another question.'

Llandry stopped
listening. The stone had endangered her clients; she knew that.
She'd had no intention of making any more jewellery with it, and
besides, had there been any istore remaining in the cave it would
have been taken by the university. So why was she upset? The
prospect of its complete loss affected her deeply, almost as though
she'd lost some part of herself.

She slipped a
hand into the pocket of her skirt, curling her fingers around her
beautiful istore pendant. She had finished it yesterday while
Devary was absorbed in his music, and so far it remained a secret.
At least she could keep this one piece for herself.

'Ma? Do they know
who shifted the Night Cloak?'

'Yes, that's
known, and he's being sought. But it seems unlikely that he was
responsible for all of this chaos, no matter what some people in
Glour are saying. He isn't a summoner, for a start.'

Llandry pursed
her lips. The istore was remarkable, certainly, and its apparent
effects were desirable, but why should anybody go to such lengths
to acquire every known piece?

Ynara seemed to
guess her thoughts. 'Don't worry, love. Most of the University of
Glour is working on this now, and our own university. That's a lot
of very bright minds. And the person - the sorcerer - who changed
the Cloak, well, he may have information. We will learn something
soon.'

Chapter Fourteen

Eva was up to her
ears in sorcery, and hating it.

Once they'd left
the environs of Westrarc, Tren had been firm in the need for
defences. 'No telling what's about out here,' he said cheerfully.
He made Eva stand still with her eyes closed while he worked on
her. She felt a Cloak settle over her like a shroud, cold and
clinging and faintly damp. When he'd finished, she stood wrapped
and tangled in enchantments that lay heavily upon her.

'How repulsive.'
A violent shiver wracked her, and she wrapped her arms around
herself, trying to warm up.

'You're welcome,'
Tren smiled as he moved away.

Eva sighed. She'd
been Cloaked before, years ago. It was something she'd steadfastly
avoided since then. She knew it would take her hours to accustom
herself to the burden of breathing and moving beneath the weight of
the sorcery.

'It's quite worth
it, I assure you,' said Tren over his shoulder, as if reading her
thoughts. 'You're now part of the Night Cloak. Nothing's very
likely to spot you unless you speak.'

'Except some of
the more sensitive beasts pouring out of the Lowers these
days.'

Tren shrugged.
'Nothing's perfect.'

Finshay submitted
to his Cloaking without a syllable. Hours later, Eva still felt
stifled, cold and burdened by the weight. She refused to complain,
however; and so on they went, following the trail marked out by the
shortig and with the gwaystrel ghosting on silent wings overhead.
As they travelled further across Orstwych, the landscape changed
again: the gentle hills ended, and trees closed in. These were
different to the dark, contorted irignol that crowded the forests
of Glour and western Orstwych. Her night-eyes caught hints of deep
colour glinting in the moonlight, shades of blue and green and
purple patterning the bark. Frondy red foliage rose above like
tattered lace.

They saw nothing
of whurthags, though the forests were by no means as they ought to
be. Eva sensed several animal presences as they passed through the
woods, traces of beasts that were obviously far from home. They
were not aggressive, however, and not inclined to trouble their
party. Eva left them alone.

As the moon sank
out of sight and the Night Cloak rolled over the lands, Eva found
herself with cause to be grateful for Tren's sorcery. The eager
steps of the little hunting hound brought them through a dense
thicket, choked with the deep-hued ferns and mosses that were
everywhere in evidence in this part of the forest. They were deep
in the midst of the thicket when Rikbeek sounded his alarm call
from overhead.

The three halted,
wary. Movement caught Eva's eye, and she slowly turned her head.
Out of a shadowed burrow in the ground crawled a great creature,
furred like a mammal but built more like the ferocious reptiles
that lived on the shores of Lake Glanias in the north. An astwach,
definitely a predator and decidedly unfriendly. Its movements were
slow, but its head turned with alarming speed as it sought the
source of Rikbeek's cry.

The three stood,
immobile, as the beast emerged fully from its underground home.
Eva's breath stopped. It was longer than she was tall, standing as
high as her shoulder. Teeth glinted pale in the dark, and a long
tail twitched with the stealthy intent of a predator. It stood,
nose lifted to scent the air. Eva tried hard to remember whether
the Cloak would mask scent as well as visage. She thought
not.

As if reaching
the same conclusion, Tren beside her began to move. She mimicked
his movements, slow and measured, creeping steadily away from the
beast. As they were almost past the den, Eva noticed a smaller
animal emerge from the burrow: unsteady on its legs and ungainly in
its proportions, it was nonetheless an obvious copy of its
parent.

The creature
rounded on its young with a hiss, startlingly loud in the quiet of
the night. Eva could not suppress a spasm of fear at the sound,
full of menace and power. The smaller beast was relentlessly herded
back into the den, its mother turning to follow. She heard Tren
whisper, 'Run.'

And run she did,
though the moment she increased her pace the forest floor seemed to
suddenly bristle with twigs - dry ones that crackled loudly
underfoot. Cloaked or not, there was no hiding after
that.

Eva turned,
already reaching out with her summoner senses. Before she could
bring her will to bear upon their attacker it leapt towards her,
snarling. A jump back didn't quite take her out of reach: she
screamed as claws raked fire across her left hand, biting
deep.

Then she was
thrust aside. Finshay surged past her, daggers in his hands, and
hurled himself on the beast. He fought fearlessly, his daggers
flashing with astonishing speed, and within moments the astwach was
in retreat. Finshay didn't stop.