Drogoya: Book 3 Circles of Light series (30 page)

Those who muttered
overloud, vanished. They just disappeared from the barracks and
were seen no more. The mutters became whispers breathed softly into
another’s ear, and to all outward purposes, the men obeyed their
officers. Navan’s second officer, Fryss and the veteran officer
Tarin, wore similar expressions of blank obedience, but they had
let it be known that they were extremely doubtful of Hargon’s
command now, and especially of his new Armschief Trib.

The ordinary armsmen
found Trib an offence. He was from their ranks, so they knew him
rather too well. In various squads, he had been known as lazy,
brash, quick to put blame on another man rather than admitting a
wrong of his own. Now, as Armschief, he was above officers and men,
and took great pleasure in underlining that fact at any
opportunity.

This night Hargon
paced. He planned to ride on to Far at dawn, just himself and a
minimum escort of twenty armsmen with his officers and Armschief.
The main body of men, under third officers, would follow, keeping
themselves from view until the last, open league to the town. When
the sun reached its zenith, they would attack. He intended that he
would have killed Seboth by then and the armsmen of Far would
surrender swiftly enough. He needed time to speak with the fool
Seboth first though.

He had heard rumours
that some of those strangers, including his slave Chena, were still
in Sapphrea. He needed to know where they were lurking so that he
might dispose of them next. Then he would ride west to destroy
Tagria, and more importantly, smash the cursed circle to pieces, as
he had already ordered done outside Return. None of these fools
realised the danger they were in. Hargon knew beyond question that
he had to unite this whole land under his rule and stamp out, once
for all, the verminous blood of those who had once nearly destroyed
Sapphrea completely.

Hargon turned back into
the shelter of the way station. In the dimness, he saw officers
Fryss and Tarin sitting silently, staring into the small fire. Trib
was not present: no doubt he was throwing his weight about among
the men. Hargon had no illusions about Trib’s qualities. For now,
he was suitable. He had loyalties only to himself, which was fine
with Hargon. For now. Hargon sat down, leaning against the wall by
the hearth.

‘You will accompany me
at first light,’ he said flatly.

Tarin and Fryss looked
up at the Lord of Return and somehow kept their faces
expressionless when they saw the flames dancing in his
eyes.

Tika followed the
others in the direction Storm and Farn led them. It was in truth
only a short distance from the caves but further back behind the
cliffs. They saw at once that the boulders half covered with sand
and salt crystals were not natural rock formations. The lines were
too sharp, too straight, for them to have been shaped by wind or
water.

Ren knelt by the first
tilted block and began shovelling sand clear of its base. Riff and
Sket joined him, scooping handfuls away from the sides. Olam and
Navan watched, then moved over to help too. Pallin grunted and
ambled further along, vanishing behind further boulders. Tika
grinned. She would wager he would find himself a cosy place to doze
the morning away. She wandered over to the other men and saw that
the dry sand had been moved sufficiently already to reveal the
darker, damper sand below.

Olam had got to his
feet and was running his hands over the upper part of the block.
Tika went round the kneeling men to his side.

‘Feel it, Lady Tika,’
he said. ‘It is almost like metal or glass.’

She put her hand on the
smooth black surface and found that Olam was right. It did not feel
like any stone she had ever touched.

‘What is it made of?’
she wondered aloud. ‘It must have been carried here from far away.
And do stop calling me “Lady” Olam. It makes me wonder who you are
talking to.’

‘Oh. Erm, well – Tika,
I know of no place where such stone as this might be
found.’

‘It could well have
been changed if there was an explosion and tremendous heat close
by.’ Ren’s voice was muffled and they craned round the block to see
what he was doing.

The Offering’s head and
shoulders were out of sight down the hole they had dug out. He
wriggled up and wiped damp sand off his face.

‘It is but one block on
its own,’ he announced. ‘I shall try another.’ He trudged on to the
next block, but examined the way it protruded from the sand before
shaking his head and moving further on among a more densely jumbled
heap of odd shaped boulders.

‘What exactly is he
looking for?’ Navan asked discreetly as he followed Ren with Tika
and Olam.

Tika laughed, green and
silver eyes glinting up at him. ‘Stars know Navan. But we had
better help him I think.’

She looked round for
Gan, spotting him eventually on top of a pile of blocks that
resembled a huge version of nursery toys – a tower built with great
care, then sent crashing down with a wave of a child’s
hand.

Ren was on a patch of
ground surrounded by the blocks, talking to Gan who still perched
two man lengths or more above him.

‘I will have to see
from above,’ Ren was saying.

Tika nudged Navan in
glee. ‘Farn would be happy to lift you, however high you wish,’ she
offered innocently.

Ren glared. ‘Although I
am not as strong with air as Maressa, I am still capable of doing
it that way.’

‘But will you not get
ill?’ She sounded most concerned.

‘No I will not,’ he
snapped. ‘Watch. You might learn something.’

Sket scowled but Tika
smiled. ‘Very well, we will all watch you Offering.’

She sat on a block and
cast her mind outwards, netting the awareness of the five men, then
smoothly linking with Ren. Navan and Olam hastily sat beside Tika
as, through Ren’s mind, they saw the ground drop beneath them. More
unsettling was the fact that they could see themselves, sitting
around Ren’s central figure while they floated high overhead.
Olam’s mind was suddenly agitated.

‘Calmly Olam,’ Tika’s
mind murmured to his. ‘What is it you have seen?’

‘I have seen houses
laid out in just this way. A few cycles past, I went to one of the
further southern towns, and they showed me such a place. They said
that the earth had trembled and shaken and most of the houses in
one villages fell down.’

‘Come higher.’ Farn
joined the linked minds and Ren ducked instinctively, sending Farn
into shrieks of amusement.

Ren’s ire simmered
briefly through the link then his equable nature reasserted
itself.

‘That was most alarming
Farn. Why should I go higher?’

Farn sent a panoramic
view of the area and Ren caught his breath. Without another word,
he sent his mind to Farn’s height and they all just stared. What
had seemed like a few scattered blocks, stretched for leagues
inland, and south along the coast.

Tika released the link
and stared at Gan. ‘It must have been vast.’

Gan nodded. ‘A dozen
times larger than Gaharn,’ he agreed.

Ren opened his silvered
eyes and drew a breath.

‘Did you notice
anything odd?’ he asked.

‘All fallen the same
way,’ Sket volunteered.

Ren beamed at Tika’s
personal Guard.

‘They did indeed. The
explosion or whatever it may have been, came from the south and
everything would have been blown away from it.’ He stared
thoughtfully at the block in front of him.

‘These all lie parallel
to the coast, so the event would have surely occurred directly
south along this shore.’

‘Maressa said there
were four big cities by the Bitter Sea,’ said Tika.

‘Did she say what they
were called?’

‘The same as the
Vagrantian craters – this must be the furthest one north –
Segra.’

‘Lashek was the Speaker
of Segra Circle was he not?’ Olam enquired. ‘He would love to be
here now.’

Farn settled on some of
the blocks near Tika.

‘Will you dig in the
sand all day my Tika? Why do you not come and play with the
water?’

Tika clambered across
to the silvery blue Dragon and swung onto his back.

‘A good idea,’ she
agreed, then added aloud: ‘Farn wishes me to see something. I will
not be long.’

Farn settled upon the
wet sand at the water line and Tika slid from his back.

‘Look my Tika! It is
not quite as pleasant as the hot pools in the Domain, but it still
feels good.’

As Tika watched, in
some alarm, Farn paddled out several paces into the water. The
waves were pushing against his chest when he sank out of sight.
Tika shrieked in horror, bringing the men scrambling down the
cliff, when Farn surged up, water cascading from his body. He
stretched his wings and disappeared again. Gan and Sket reached
Tika as Farn erupted once more, hurling the water on his wings,
with great accuracy, straight over them. It was cold. Gan and Sket
gasped, but Tika began to laugh.

Farn waded towards
them, beating his wings and sending huge showers of water over all
three again. Sket and Gan hastily withdrew, leaving Tika, soaked to
the skin, giggling helplessly. Farn struggled out of the water and
flopped rather than reclined on the sand, his eyes whirring in
delight.

‘It is cold at first my
Tika, but then it seems warm enough. It is wonderful
fun.’

Tika pushed wet hair
off her face and grinned at him. ‘Your new friend Storm showed you
this game, did he not?’

‘He said he knew you
would enjoy it.’ Farn sounded hugely pleased with
himself.

‘I am sure he did. I
think I may have to have a little talk with him later.’

‘Oh you must,’ Farn
agreed. ‘He has many such ideas.’ He looked around the beach and
out over the sea. ‘I wonder where he is. He said he would love to
see you enjoy this joke.’

‘How very odd that he
is not here to enjoy it then,’ said Tika, giving Farn a soggy hug.
‘Why do you not go and find him while we go back to the caves for
some food?’

‘I think I will.’ Farn
rattled his wings and prepared to rise. ‘It was a good joke, was it
not?’

‘Oh undoubtedly Farn, a
most excellent joke.’

As Farn swept lazily
towards the sea Dragons cove, Tika walked up the beach towards the
others. Sket was wringing water from his shirt while Navan and Riff
attempted to conceal their amusement.

‘It was all a joke,
arranged by Storm,’ Tika explained.

Sket merely grunted,
but Gan smiled.

‘I suspected as much.
That water was very cold though.’

Tika nodded. ‘And it
feels sticky, not just wet.’

‘That is because of the
high percentage of salt contained in the water,’ Ren told her. ‘It
will dry on your skin to tiny crystals – like it is on all the
rocks.’

She noticed that the
Observer kept his head turned towards the cliffs as he
spoke.

‘Do you think that
Pallin will have got a meal ready?’ Riff asked from behind Tika and
Ren. ‘Where did he go to anyway?’

‘Perhaps he decided to
go in search of the plants you and Sket were looking for? What were
they by the way?’

Ren extended a hand to
pull Tika over a heap of shattered boulders.

‘We were looking for
mint. I thought I could smell it the first night we were here, then
Sket said he had smelled it as well.’

Tika stopped and stared
at him. ‘But I smelled it too, three or four days ago, when we had
just arrived on the coast.’

Ren looked back at her
for a moment then continued walking. ‘So far we have not found any
sign of the plant. But all three of us cannot be imagining it can
we?’

Day followed day in
similar fashion: the party went further into what was left of the
shattered city, but found only endless black blocks. After six
days, Farn had begun to fret over Brin’s absence.

‘He said it would be
eight days Farn,’ Tika told him for the tenth time that morning.
‘Tomorrow he may be close enough to mind speak us.’

‘I think Storm and I
should fly to meet him and that dear girl.’

Tika looked at him
sharply. She had hoped he had forgotten his penchant for referring
to his dear girls.

‘You will do no such
thing Farn.’ She thought rapidly. ‘Who would protect us, protect
me, if you were to go off like that?’

There was a long
silence. ‘I think you may be right. Unless you would like to come
too?’

‘My place is here with
our friends Farn, I could not abandon them.’

‘Oh.’ He sighed
heavily. ‘Then I will wait with you.’ He lifted into the air to
join Storm who was zigzagging high above. ‘I nearly forgot my Tika.
The Elder Salt asks to speak with you.’

‘With me, or with all
of us?’

‘With you. He said you
may go to his cave whenever you wish or he will fly to the beach
when the stars appear tonight.’