Drogoya: Book 3 Circles of Light series (31 page)

Tika watched her soul
bond racing to intercept Storm. She dug her bare toes into the warm
sand and wondered what the Elder might need to speak to her
about.

Chapter
Nineteen

Cho Petak was slightly
perturbed: not worried of course, just perturbed. He had discovered
that four of his minions were missing from Drogoya. He was aware
that Rashpil was somewhere in the Night Lands – he had sensed his
departure from the main part of the horde that descended in such a
chaotic fashion days ago. But he had sensed no other such
divergence. He sent Grek out a second time, to try to locate the
missing three. One truanting servant was quite enough.

He was also bothered by
the continuing foul stench that appeared to emanate from the child.
He had stood by her door on the second evening and had commanded
her to strip and scrub herself clean in front of him. It had made
no difference, and apparently neither Krolik nor the child herself
seemed to notice it. He could find no disease within her small
body, check as thoroughly as he had. On the contrary, she seemed
quite disgustingly healthy, a point Cho resented when his own body
was so close to disintegration.

Whenever he bothered to
overlook her during the day, she was in an untidy garden which Cho
did not recall visiting for very many years. Often she sang:
nonsense rhymes and nursery songs. He toyed with the idea of
forbidding her to go outside but decided against doing so. Her
skill at drawing had improved dramatically he had noted, and it
amused him to see her growing skill with pens and brushes. She
brought twigs, leaves, and odd shaped stones back to her room from
the garden and then spent hours trying to copy them
perfectly.

Cho had woken yet again
from his increasingly brief naps. His mind viewed the town of Syet
below the Menedula, then he checked for the child’s mind signature.
She was in the garden as usual and Cho dipped back into sleep
again.

Mena had cleared a
sizeable area of the choking tendrils of weeds and the plants thus
freed were growing fast. The pale new tips protruding from the
sage, quivered towards the sun. The young rosemary bush had
thickened, her blue flowers fully opened now. Mena hummed and
chattered as she worked and imagined that the plants answered her.
She got to her feet and took the box filled with weeds to a pile of
rotting vegetation she had found beyond the wooden
house.

She stood there for a
while, watching a fat bumble bee lurching in and out of the hedge.
That was when she heard something fall within the little building.
She held her breath but there was no further sound except for the
drone of the bee as it swooped past her towards the open garden.
Quietly, Mena moved to the door, which she always left open. Now,
it was half closed. Slowly, she leaned to peep inside and saw a
bare foot, not much bigger than her own, the toes clenched as if
their owner was ready to run.

Mena crept back to
where she had left the small fork and, humming quietly, moved close
to the door again. She knelt beside the door and began to work
loose the weeds matted around a very ancient sage bush. She put
words into her humming, repeating them at intervals as she worked.
Time passed and Mena weeded. Then out of the corner of her eye, she
saw both bare feet on the threshold.

‘Hello,’ she murmured,
without turning fully round. ‘My name is Mena. What is
yours?’

She waited patiently
but eventually half twisted and glanced at the figure in the
doorway, then looked back at her heap of weeds.

‘I wish you would talk
to me. You might tell me how you got in here because I surely long
to find a way out.’

‘Come here at nightfall
usually. Safe place to sleep.’

The boy’s voice was
husky and low but Mena’s heart raced. He had spoken to her, not
just run away! Perhaps he would show her how he came and went. In
the quick glance she had given him, he had seemed about her own
age, thin beyond belief and extremely dirty. Unidentifiable rags
covered some of his body although his legs were bare to the
thigh.

‘Have you nowhere else
to sleep? No home?’

‘Burnt. Bashed up. All
the town went crazy when those students came down there. Eyes red
as fire. Only a few of us left I reckon.’

‘Why have you stayed
then?’

‘Don’t know nowhere
else.’

Mena bit her lip.
‘Well, like I said, my name is Mena and I would like to be friends
with you.’

‘Why you here anyway?’
The question came out in a belligerent tone.

Mena sat back and
hugged her knees. ‘I come from very far away. Cho Petak keeps me
prisoner here.’ She looked fully at the boy for the first time and
he took a pace back inside the building.

‘You a
Kooshak?’

Mena frowned, shaking
her head. ‘I don’t think so. What are they?’

‘Why you got silver
eyes then if you ain’t Kooshak?’

Mena put her hands up
to touch her eyes in bewilderment.

‘I do not know what
might be wrong with my eyes. Are Kooshak bad people
then?’

‘No. They’re the best –
help anybody anytime.’ The boy stepped forward again. ‘You really
don’t know about the Kooshak?’

Mena shook her head
again. ‘I told you. Cho Petak had me brought here from such a long
way.’

The boy stared at her
through a tangled mass of black hair. ‘I’m Tyen,’ he
said.

Mena’s smile was
radiant and the boy continued to stare. He had never seen a girl
like this: almost white blonde hair curling close round a
triangular face. A face dominated by enormous violet blue eyes set
in silver.

‘Can you help me get
out of here Tyen?’ Mena whispered. ‘I have to go in that
direction.’ She nodded to the north west.

Tyen shrugged. ‘Expect
so. But it’s bad outside here. Specially nights.’ He shivered.
‘That’s why I hide in here. Slept too long today because it was
near day when I got here. Lots of those changed ones in the town
again. You sure you ain’t Kooshak?’

Mena smiled faintly. ‘I
wish I was, if it would help, but I don’t think I am.’

The boy fell silent for
a while. ‘Can you get food?’ he asked. ‘There’s not much out
there.’

‘Some. Not much. I am
not given much and I don’t know where it is kept. Will you be here
tomorrow, I should go in now?’

‘If I don’t get caught
then I will.’

‘Have you no family?’
The question was out before Mena could stop it.

Tyen’s face closed
tight. ‘Not any more.’ He turned his back and disappeared into the
shadows within the small hut.

Mena collected up the
weeds and took them to the rotting pile, cleaned the box and fork
she had used and put them back in their places. Drawing the door
closed as she left, she murmured:

‘Stars keep you safe
Tyen. I’ll be here tomorrow.’

Climbing back up to the
top rooms of the Menedula, Mena deliberately walled off thoughts of
Tyen, pushing the memory of him into the hard centre deep inside
herself. She could not risk Cho picking up the faintest hint of the
boy’s presence in the garden. Briefly, she wondered how the boy had
gone undetected: Cho regularly checked the building and its
immediate surroundings, as well as the town in the valley. Not now,
she warned herself. Think only of the plants you will
draw.

When Krolik brought the
hard flat biscuits, Mena caught his arm.

‘May I have a little
more food Krolik please? I am very hungry when I have been working
in the garden.’

The once Master of
Aspirants released himself from the girl’s grasp, but quite gently
Mena noted. He stared at her with the same blank expression he
always wore, then left the room. Mena sighed. She had no idea if
Krolik had heard her, or understood her if he had. There was a
small risk in asking for extra food, but she was confident that she
could convince Cho if necessary that she was hungry all the time
here. Because she was.

She was concentrating
hard on getting a sprig of lavender exactly the right shade of grey
green, when she felt the air stir close to her. She had felt it
before and had been made uncomfortable by the sensation. This time,
it seemed as though someone was standing close to her left shoulder
– much too close. Her throat tightened in sudden fear. She knew
that it was not Cho’s thought checking up on her activities. It
felt unpleasantly familiar though. She nearly jumped from her skin
when the door opened and Cho Petak stood there. Mena heard him use
the mind speech, his tone icy with barely controlled
rage.

‘I understood that I
had forbidden you these apartments, my dear Rhaki?’

Rhaki? Mena sat frozen
in her chair. She had been completely unaware that the Grey Lord
was here in this land. She remembered hearing the name D’Lah, but
she had not realised that D’Lah and Rhaki seemed to be one being.
The presence vanished from her side but Mena saw Cho’s gaze move
down the room as if following someone’s movement. She did not hear
any reply but then Cho snapped again:

‘Your reasoning is but
a feeble attempt to excuse your flouting of an explicit
command.’

The flames leaped and
writhed in Cho’s eyes.

‘Lord Rhaki, let me
explain so that there may be no further misunderstanding on your
part. It would be the simplest of things for me to unmake you. Do
you follow me? I could take your mind apart, tiny piece by tiny
piece, until it was completely unmade. And there is no restoring a
thing so thoroughly unmade.’

Cold sweat prickled
between Mena’s shoulders as she listened to Cho’s side of this
conversation. She had no doubt at all that Cho Petak could do
precisely what he had just described. Cho lifted a nearly
transparent hand.

‘I have warned you too
many times already, my dear. This is the last time. Now
go.’

Mena felt the
unwholesome presence dissipate and realised she was trembling.
Carefully, she laid her brush against the lid of the box of inks
and hid her hands below the table, gripping them tightly
together.

‘I regret that you
witnessed that unpleasantness child. He will not trouble you
further I think.’

Mena swallowed, her
mind devoid of any suitable reply. Cho moved closer to the table,
lifting the drawing Mena had been working on.

‘You improve daily
child. I commend your close attention to the detail.’

He laid the paper back
in front of her and studied her bent head for a while. She had
asked for extra rations and his suspicions had been instantly
alerted. But he could see that she was in fact thinner than when
she had arrived here. He realised that her body was still in its
growing stage and would thus demand more nutrition. He turned to
go. He would instruct Krolik to improve and increase the child’s
diet. Where Krolik might find the ingredients to do so in the
shattered ruin that was the town of Syet, Cho neither considered
nor cared.

Sarryen had quickly
adapted to this strange existence in the Oblakan caves, and took
her turn instructing groups of students in history and botany. She
also took her turn with the routine chores: sweeping the
passageways, cleaning the dishes and helping with the laundry. One
of Lyeto’s refugees arrived in the caves with a dreadful cough and
feverish cold, which swept through the community with enthusiastic
speed. Arryol, in constant proximity to the victims, was the only
one to escape the illness, and wore himself out caring for everyone
else.

Finn Rah was most
annoyed to discover she had the cold and she was unspeakably bad
tempered for the next four days. Lyeto insisted that he still go
outside and search for any survivors even though he returned with
fewer and fewer people. Finn Rah sensed a certain relaxation among
the students, as if they felt that here, beneath the burnt out
Oblaka complex, they were impregnable. She fretted over this while
she cursed the cold in her head in the privacy of Chakar’s sitting
room. Volk delivered her “medicine” each morning and evening, and
in the common room later he swore he had heard the Offering singing
one of the bawdiest tavern songs ever to burn his ears.

Sarryen had caught the
cold days before and was recovered enough to resume her duties when
Finn Rah succumbed. This evening, she tapped cautiously at Finn’s
door. Lyeto had reported that a mug had been thrown at him that
morning. Taking the distant croak to be a call to enter, Sarryen
opened the door a fraction.

‘Oh come in, come in,’
Finn snapped. ‘You have all been tiptoeing around as if I was
either mad or dying.’

Sarryen tactfully
refrained from answering and Finn Rah’s scowl turned to a reluctant
grin.

‘Have I been that
awful?’

Sarryen smiled back.
‘You have rather.’

‘Aah. So apologies will
have to be issued at once. Do I need to apologise to
you?’

‘No. I have managed to
avoid visiting you.’

Finn laughed, which
brought on a paroxysm of coughing. Sarryen pushed the Offering
gently back into the armchair and set about making tea until Finn
regained her breath.