Drogoya: Book 3 Circles of Light series (44 page)

‘We cannot let him
spend his life for us.’ The words burst from Pachela. ‘We
cannot.’

Orsim shrugged. ‘If he
is willing to do this, we surely need some help.’

Pachela glared,
regardless of the fact that she was but a student and Orsim the
Speaker of Kedara.

‘Would you do the same
then?’ she demanded, her fists clenched against her knees. ‘Should
the Dragons, or the people of Gaharn, or the Stronghold, be in
peril, would you offer yourself for them?’

Orsim frowned at the
girl but he moved uncomfortably in his chair.

‘And don’t you dare
tell me that would be different. It would be no different to what
this Dragon is prepared to do for us.’

Pachela fled the study,
unable to restrain either her tears or her anger.

‘I believe Lashek will
learn more from Lorak, in his own way, than we could hope to do by
questioning him further here.’ Thryssa spoke into the silence. She
smiled at Orsim. ‘And I do think Pachela has made a valid point.
Fenj is old: older than any of the other great Dragons, from what I
know. Perhaps he truly feels it is near his time to travel Beyond,
and if he can help us, at the cost of his life, it would but speed
his journey?’

Kwanzi sighed as he
stood up. ‘I must check the change of mages,’ he said, opening the
study door. He hesitated, looking back into the room. ‘I fear that
I side with Pachela in this matter. I would find it hard to live,
knowing that the death of that Dragon was the reason I did
so.’

Orsim too prepared to
leave. ‘It must be considered,’ he insisted to Thryssa. ‘Otherwise
our people are condemned to this containment indefinitely. And I do
not think that I could live with that.’

‘Oh Pajar.’ Thryssa
closed her eyes for a moment. ‘How do you counsel me then, my brand
new, first councillor?’

‘There is a case for
both sides, obviously. The decision can only be yours High
Speaker.’ He fell silent and Thryssa recalled how instantly he had
suggested the destruction of the three young Firans.

‘I could not ask, or
allow, the Dragon to die for me Lady Thryssa,’ he finished
softly.

‘Then I fear that you
must go, with all haste, and with Pachela, to Talvo. Regardless of
what Lashek may dig out of that old gardener, we must refuse an
offer entailing such risk for Fenj.’ She smiled as Pajar’s
expression of relief was quickly replaced with doubt.

‘I have never met any
of the Dragons. Is it my place to go? As first councillor, I should
surely be with you?’

‘It is precisely
because you are first councillor that you must go. You are second
only to me, and thus Fenj must accept the importance and finality
of our decision.’

The High Speaker tilted
her head to one side and regarded the young man
quizzically.

‘Well? Have you more
questions Pajar, or did you not understand your orders? I believe I
said go to Talvo, and go with all haste.’

The door closed behind
Pajar and Thryssa leaned her head wearily against her chair
back.

‘And may the stars
ensure that you reach Talvo in time to stop him,’ she murmured
aloud.

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

Tika had conceded to
Farn’s insistence that she stay out of that hole in the sand. He
had become more than usually agitated and she suggested that they
spend the day wandering along the shore, just the two of them. Farn
had cheered up at once – he thought it a perfect idea. Storm came
calling hopefully for Farn to join him.

‘I am busy,’ Farn told
him. ‘I will spend this day with my Tika.’

Storm clearly did not
understand what Farn could mean, but flew off to the south
anyway.

‘That was not too
polite,’ Tika scolded, scrambling down over the great boulders
strewn along the edge of the sea Dragons’ cove.

Farn skimmed over her
head, nudging a wing against her back and making her stumble. She
stopped, hands on hips, and glared at him.

‘If you are not going
to behave, I am going back to help Ren.’

Farn settled on the wet
sand, an incoming wave purling over his tail. His prismed eyes
shone with innocence.

‘But I always behave,’
he said, and beat his wings furiously in the next wave.

Then he was in the air,
flying ahead along the waterline, his laughter pealing in Tika’s
head. She looked down at herself: trousers and shirt were soaked
through and her hair dripped into her eyes. She laughed, watching
Farn swoop and turn. She wished Kija could see him – a young Dragon
playing in the hot sun, carefree and inquisitive.

Tika caught up with him
eventually to find him trying to dig something from the sand. Waves
creamed against his back as he scrabbled and snuffled in the small
hole he had dug.

‘Should you leave your
tail floating out like that?’ she asked.

His head swung up level
with hers, eyes bright with sudden concern and a neat heap of sand
upon his nose. He whisked his tail in around him, shovelling water
all over them both. Tika gasped and spluttered and bent quickly to
scoop handfuls of water over Farn’s head. Instantly, his tail flung
yet more over her and she retreated up the beach coughing and
giggling. Gleeful delight radiated from the silver blue Dragon and
Tika suddenly realised how close her giggles were to tears: this
was how Farn was meant to be. She sank onto the drier sand and
pushed wet hair off her face.

‘What were you looking
for?’ she asked, when he flopped beside her.

‘It was a very odd
thing. Many legs and horns. It just disappeared into the
sand.’

‘If you stop splashing
me, I will help you look for it. You remember when Kemti made me
try to feel through the ground when we left Hargon’s lodge?’ She
ignored the surge of mixed feelings from her soul bond at mention
of the Lord of Return and began poking with her bare toes in the
place Farn had been searching. Tika was half aware, throughout that
totally lazy, contented day, of Sket’s watchful presence, but she
was unaware of Mist and Salt’s constant surveillance. Nor did she
know that Khosa watched, from high on the cliffs above
them.

Ren had taken several
empty packs down into the passage which Riff had so inadvertently
found. He hoped that he might find something tangible of the people
who had lived here so long ago. They had tried to scratch or mark
the exposed blocks on the surface to no avail. So Ren took down
extra lengths of rope, which he tied to the one they used to get up
and down. He also placed glow stones, about twelve paces apart,
along the beginning of the passageway.

‘It seems strange,’
Olam remarked as they entered the passage after breakfast. ‘If this
is inside a building, as you seem to think, then surely there would
be doors opening off such a long corridor?’

Ren came to an abrupt
halt, turning to stare at Lord Seboth’s brother. He shook his
head.

‘My brain is failing,’
he said ruefully. ‘We should check both sides from the entrance
with our fingertips. If you would take this side Olam, and Navan
that, we may find you a door.’

Riff had moved ahead to
where the passage split into three and Gan was last, nearest the
open door to the shaft. They worked unspeaking, the only sounds
that of their breathing and the shuffle of feet on the smooth stone
floor. It was Navan who called.

‘Is this something,
Offering Ren?’

Ren went to Navan’s
side, lifting the glow stone he carried high, to peer at the
apparently flawless wall. He slid his hand beneath Navan’s and felt
the three tiny indentations. He turned his head, hearing steel
leaving scabbards and saw all except Navan had drawn either daggers
or swords. Muttering under his breath, he pressed firmly into the
three dimples. The door swung silently away from him and he raised
the glow stone he still held.

Olam and Gan stood
close to Ren’s shoulder while Navan and Riff held back a little,
wary and watchful. Ren stepped into the room, asking for someone to
fetch more glow stones. There was a strange feeling to the room, so
long abandoned. At first glance, it appeared to be almost square,
each wall about fifteen paces long. Shards of glass still lay below
what had been floor to ceiling windows, but which now looked only
onto rock. A boxlike desk stood between the windows and a half
rounded chair tilted against it. As the five men advanced into the
room, no one spoke. They all felt the weight of time pressing upon
them in here.

‘Look,’ Olam
whispered.

The wall in which the
door was set had three large pictures to one side of the door, rows
of bookshelves to the other. Ren and Olam held the stones aloft to
see what the pictures revealed. They stared for a long time at the
central one. It was a view from a high place, obviously in the
heart of the city as buildings clustered close all around. Some
were buildings of the type they all recognised, but others had
domed roofs, or needle thin spires with what looked like bubbles
spaced up the spires’ height. Bridges linked some of the spires,
delicate filigree work which looked too frail to be functional, but
tiny figures could clearly be seen upon the bridges. As they
stared, they all realised that the spires and their interlinking
bridges formed a web like pattern across the sprawl of lower
buildings.

In the left of this
picture a market scene was depicted: stalls and barrows, heaped
with fruit, vegetables, flowers, bolts of cloth. The people were
shown quite clearly and when Ren held his stone closer, everyone
concentrated on those people. Many were fair haired, like the
present day Sapphreans, but there were many others mingled with
them – people with black or dark brown hair and dark honey
skins.

‘Look,’ Olam breathed
the word again, pointing to one figure at the edge of the market
crowd.

It was a man, grey
haired, his beard, in many braids, spread across his chest. And his
eyes were unmistakably as silvered as were Ren’s and Tika’s. The
picture was framed in a dark, carved wood, and Ren placed his
forefinger against it. He jerked his hand back when the wood
crumbled into powdery dust at his touch. He lifted the stone to
examine the two pictures on either side of the city scene, but they
were of lesser interest, showing as they did events of a rural
life. The Offering stepped across to the shelves beyond the
doorway. Books were tightly packed in each shelf, and some were
wedged in any space available above others. His fingers itched to
pluck one from its place but after seeing how fragile the picture
frame was, Ren feared to be too hasty. He turned back to the desk
and stared down at its cluttered surface. He bent closer. Scrolls
lay loosely coiled but one was flat, held thus by means of two
small stone jars on each end.

‘I will need to copy
this at once,’ Ren muttered, and drew paper and writing stick from
his ever present satchel. He put the paper carefully on a patch of
empty desk and asked Gan to hold another glow stone above him. Gan
stooped low over the desk, frowning at the lines of
script.

‘Can you read it Ren?’
he asked. ‘It is quite unfamiliar to me.’

Ren was concentrating,
copying the tall spidery forms with complete accuracy onto his own
paper.

‘No,’ he murmured. ‘A
few shapes seem to remind me of something, but no, I cannot read it
at the moment.’

The room was
surprisingly bare apart from the large desk: three other chairs
stood along the right wall, one on its side, and an oval table
against the opposite wall held three large bottles and a tray set
with six goblets, only two of which remained upright. Riff and Olam
left Ren copying and ventured further along the passage, their
hands spread lightly across the stone.

‘Here,’ said Riff, just
as Olam called that he had found more of the three little
marks.

Riff turned in time to
see another door swing open. Olam held a glow stone aloft and took
a step or two inside. Riff hurried to join him when he heard a
sharp intake of breath. A wooden settle with curved ends and a high
back stood at an angle to the door and Riff saw nothing until he
had moved around beside Olam. The armsman stared, as Olam was
doing, at the tangled skeletons that lay upon the settle. Olam
moved a little closer.

‘All this dust.’ He
squatted down by the settle and pointed out what he meant. ‘I would
think that is from cushions and pillows.’ He peered at the bones.
‘It is the same beneath them. Look Riff, pieces of clothing I would
guess and.’ He stopped and swallowed as he straightened.

Riff looked to find
what might have shaken Olam, and saw the husks of three shoes among
the dust, one no bigger than the breadth of his own hand, the other
two clearly adult sized.

‘Four, no five, skulls
Olam.’ He glanced at the Armschief. ‘Looks like one adult and four
children.’

Olam nodded and lifted
the glow stone to better see the rest of the room. It was roughly
the same size as the first, but was all too evidently a family
room. Metal dishes and jugs lay scattered on an oblong table and
some had fallen to the floor. Again, glass lay sprinkled below
windows now filled with rock. Various chests and dressers stood
along the walls and child sized chairs lay overturned. A slab of
stone was set by one of the windows, patterned in a circular design
and a few black stones still rested on it.