The Fiuri Realms (Shioni of Sheba Book 5) (2 page)

A
S A TINY NOISE
penetrated her dream, Shioni’s eyes snapped open. Her hand fell upon her sword. That was a wrong noise. The sound of the door of Princess Annakiya’s room swinging almost noiselessly open.

As quietly as a hunting owl, Shioni rose from her pallet beside the Princess’ bed and slipped into the shadows beside her curtains. Her heart walloped the inside of her throat. Her eyes strained to see who or what had opened the door, but the corridor outside was as black as the inside of a mineshaft. The usual night-time buzzing of cicadas was absent. Shioni’s fingers curled around the hilt of her new sword–the special, magical sword gifted to her by the King of Gondar in return for saving his family from his evil brother’s plot.

There was nothing in the doorway. Maybe she had heard the wind?

Except that the night was still. Utterly, chillingly still. Every instinct, every hair on the back of her neck, screamed that something was wrong. Thoughts rushed through her head. An assassin? A robber? A disgruntled Sheban soldier? Shioni prepared to defend her best friend, the Princess of West Sheba. This was her job. When she was a slave, it had been demanded of her that she should lay down her life for the Princess if needed. Now, as a free person, it was her choice.

Her eyes flicked to the Princess. The Princess slept in the upper corner of her bed, half-covered by the rich drapes hanging down from the top of her fancy bed, a recent gift from her father. She had a way of rolling about when she slept. Shioni had more than once been kicked by the dreaming Princess, or been poked in the eye, or had to pick her up off the floor halfway through the night and help her back into bed. What were friends for?

Azurelle, or Zi for short, lay curled up on the pillow next to Annakiya’s. The Fiuri’s wings flicked as though she dreamed, but her extravagant eyelashes brushed her cheeks, quiescent. Sweet.

A sickly green light snapped on in the hallway, just outside the doorway. Shioni’s head jerked. She glimpsed a man, cloaked and hooded, stooping over an eerie, glowing jewel, whispering to it as the light bathed his cruel face. He raised the jewel with a soft cackle of anticipation and drew the hood down over his eyes.

Protecting his eyes? Whatever for?

Annakiya! Shioni dove across the bed, flinging her body between the strangely intense green light and the Princess of West Sheba.

Crack!

It was as though lightning had struck within the room. Shioni howled. There was light everywhere; a momentary stab of pain as though she had cut herself on a knife, a weird crackling sound, the bed-hangings collapsing over her and suddenly the ceiling shrank away and she struggled amongst mountains of sheets and curtains.

“Come, Princess,” said a voice.

A giant hand swatted her back. Fingers curled around her body, trapping her arms and squeezing her ribs painfully. Shioni was helpless in that grasp. The hand whisked her into the air, toward a terrifying sight–a giant face with a mouth large enough to swallow her whole. A sneer of hatred twisted the massive lips.

“Kalcha’s going to enjoy torturing you, Princess,” roared the mouth.

Then the room reeled again. Shioni fell onto a hard, clear surface. Her ankle twisted sharply beneath her. Shioni hardly had time to gasp, because the surface tipped her up and dumped her against a clear wall. Her captor gave a satisfied grunt. In a moment, another body landed on top of her head. They sprawled together in a tangle of limbs, wings and antennae.

“Two pretty little butterfly-people in my bottle.” A round object descended toward them. It settled atop their prison and twisted shut. “Kalcha will pay handsomely for you two.”

The bottle lurched. The cruel eyes peered at them. Shioni realised that he was a man, the most enormous man she had ever seen. Or, was she tiny? What … what was happening?

Her companion babbled in terror.

They began to bob about. Shioni realised that the man was walking somewhere. It was hard to tell, because the bottle’s walls shimmered with magic, casting light inside the bottle while outside, all was pitch-black. She tried to steady herself somehow against the slippery surface, but kept falling over as the man’s movements rattled them about like seeds in a pod. Was he climbing the walls? Eventually Shioni braced herself by lying across the bottom of the bottle.

Her mind raced. Azurelle had once been trapped inside a bottle by the evil witch Kalcha. She had been unable to escape. Instinctively, she felt for her dagger and her sword. She had no weapons. Kalcha had turned her into a Fiuri? She shook her head. Was that even possible? Yet here she was, imprisoned, very clearly a mouse’s whisker smaller than her friend Azurelle, who lay curled up in a ball right next to her. As she watched, Zi’s shoulders began to shake.

“No, not again, not the bottle!” she wailed, between sobs. “I’m going to die. No, no, no …”

Shioni glanced over her shoulder. Wings! She had wings! But to her intense disappointment, she did not have Azurelle’s beautiful patterns on her arms and legs. Instead, her skin was smooth and pale. Even her wings were translucent, with no discernible colour. Then Shioni bit her lip in anger–how selfish was she? Her friend was snivelling her heart out and Shioni was worried about the colour of her wings?

“Hyenas bite me,” she whispered. “Zi, calm down.” Shioni put her arms around the Fiuri’s shoulders. “Look, I’m stuck in here with you. We’ll get through this together, I promise.”

“Shioni?” Azurelle flung tears about as she wagged her head in amazement. “What’re you doing … you’re my size! What? Oh … oh, it’s the first time we’ve ever hugged properly!”

This was the trigger for further floods of tears. After a long time, Shioni managed to calm Zi down. She knew that they were outside of Castle Hiwot now. By some unknown power their captor had managed to scale the walls, both the inner keep and the outer defensive wall. Now he was trotting westward into the Simien Mountains on the back of a hardy mountain pony. He did not release the bottle for an instant. Every so often, he would hold it up to his face. Shioni realised she could have stuck her fist up his nostril with ease. She imagined doing exactly that, and yanking out a handful of nose hairs, but the thought did little to comfort her.

Zi stroked her wings and plucked Shioni’s antennae. “Stop that,” said Shioni. “It feels weird. I feel like I have snail eyes poking out of my forehead.”

Azurelle’s clear blue eyes widened. “They’re real.”

“Of course they’re real.” Shioni bit her lip. Real wings? Really? On cue, the tips of her wings quivered and she felt that movement behind her shoulders. If the antennae were weird, wings were weird times a hundred.

“You’re a Fiuri. You’re kind of cute as a butterfly-person–ooh, what an adorable blush!”

“I am not blushing!”

Zi’s giggle tinkled in the bottle as her usual cheer reasserted itself. “Your eyes have changed colour, though. They used to be a lovely grass-green. Now they’re colourless. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. And I’ve never seen a colourless Fiuri either. You’ve got no patterns.”

Azurelle had the grace to sound sad as she lamented Shioni’s lack of patterns. Shioni was just about to say so when Zi extended her leg to compare it critically to Shioni’s.

“Hmm,” she said. “My legs are a lovely brown with these beautiful azure-coloured curlicue patterns. Ever so attractive! Yours look like fresh scroll leaf. I suppose I’ll just have to be pretty enough for the both of us, wouldn’t you agree?”

Shioni wanted to slap her. “Zi!”

“Oh, sorry. Your legs are pretty, too.”

What came out of Shioni’s mouth was a rather unattractive growl. “Why don’t you stop dreaming up ways of complimenting yourself and start thinking about how we can get out of here?”

Zi pouted. “Mean.”

“Sorry.” Shioni sighed. “I’ll try the lid.”

With a few experimental flutters of her wings, Shioni managed to fly up the glass wall. She reached out to stop her head from bumping against the lid.

Hiss!
She snatched her fingers back.

“Ouch! Oh, scabby hyenas! Double ouch with vulture droppings slathered on top.”

Now she had burned fingertips and had twisted her sore ankle even more. Shioni sat down cross-legged and held her head in her hands.

“Ha ha,” chuckled the voice outside the bottle. “No escaping today, my pretties. Kalcha’s going to give me a sack bulging with gold for the Princess of West Sheba and the Fiuri who brought down her enchantment at the Castle.”

They both cried out as the bottle jolted, before starting to swing back and forth with a pendulum motion. Shioni recognised that the man was hiking along the trail away from Castle Hiwot. Where were the patrols? Surely they should spot him?

Zi made a face at Shioni. “He thinks you’re–”

“Yes. Let’s keep it that way.”

“And just how much trouble will Shioni get into for impersonating the Princess?”

“Zi!” Shioni stuck out her tongue. It unfurled and slapped her on the nose. “Huh?”

Azurelle hooted, “Mind your proboscis, silly. It’s different to a Human tongue. It’s hollow and rolls up inside your mouth–no, not up your nostril, silly.”

The more Shioni scowled at her, the more she laughed, until Shioni settled for unrolling her amazing Fiuri proboscis–useful for sucking nectar out of deep-necked flowers and easily capable of touching the tips of either of her pointy ears–and waggling it at her.

The Fiuri glared at her. “Shioni, that’s rude.”

But they were too scared to make many jokes. A night had never passed more slowly for the two friends.

As the white-hot sun vaulted over the mountains and the day’s heat rose in waves from the dry bush and rocks beside the trail, Shioni and Azurelle slumped down in the stuffy bottle. They were both frightened and exhausted. Neither dared to mention what they knew to be true–this had to be Kalcha’s work. Only the witch-leader of the Wasabi, West Sheba’s deadliest enemy, could have the power to change a person into a Fiuri. She must have made the green stone which had captured Shioni. Not only that, but she must have recovered completely from the defeat that Shioni and Azurelle had handed her when she attacked Castle Hiwot and struck down the Sheban King himself. The King had only just gained consciousness, thanks to the
teshal
medicine Shioni had secured for him during a perilous journey to the ancient city of Gondar and the Sacred Lake.

Kalcha was back, and more dangerous than ever before.

Toward noon, Kalcha’s thief halted in the shade of a patch of giant heather. He set the bottle down on a rock and began to pace about, clearly waiting for someone or something. After a while, he opened the bottle, careful not to let either Fiuri escape. He grasped one butterfly-person in each hand and lifted them to a nearby bush to drink nectar from its sweet pink flowers.

“Don’t want you dying before Kalcha decides you can,” he joked.

Zi guzzled away, but it took Shioni several tries to work out how to use her tongue to suck up nectar from a flower. Then, sweetness burst into her mouth. Her eyes popped wide. “Amazing! That’s … wow. Sweeter than honey. Now I know why you like nectar so much, Zi.”

“Drink up,
Princess
.” Her friend smirked, before smiling up at their captor. “Say, handsome, you don’t want to just let us go? I’ll be your friend. I’ll kiss you on the cheek. I’ll be your slave forever.”

The scarred, horrible face glared down at Azurelle. “Kalcha can do worse things to a person than just kill them,” he growled. “She could turn you into a hyena, or a cockroach. I think you’d make a good cockroach. Then I’d squash you and your chattering little mouth under my boot. How does that sound, Fiuri?”

Azurelle went very quiet after that. Shioni did not blame her.

The man stuffed them back into his bottle, grumbling sullenly under his breath. After a long wait, a huge marabou stork landed nearby and stalked over to them. The bird was a scabby-headed, long-beaked carrion eater with a mean look about its eyes. Its lank black wings flapped and then folded across its back, making it look exactly like a man wearing a long black cloak. Shioni had never seen a marabou stork so large–and not just because she was the size of a Fiuri. The bird was not natural. It was taller than Captain Tariku.

The thief knelt quickly to untie a sack which Shioni had not previously noticed, fastened to the bird’s ankle.
Clink.
His payment, she thought. Quickly, he emptied the coins inside the sack into a small pouch beneath his robes, before picking up the bottle and popping it into the sack.

“Have fun with Kalcha!” he grinned, before everything went dark.

Shortly, the bottle tipped up, nearly throwing them against the dangerous lid. They must be airborne, Shioni thought, flying over the mountains to Kalcha’s lair. In the bottle’s faint light, Azurelle’s hand found hers. Shioni tried to be brave for Zi’s sake, but she was trembling almost as much as her friend.

Yesterday had been the best day of her life. Today was the worst.

W
hen they Thumped Down
on a hard surface, Shioni steeled herself. She had to believe that the courage in her heart had not been reduced in proportion to her newly diminished size. Nearby, a hyena yipped and cackled its eerie song. The sack twitched. Long fingers gripped the bottle and lifted it into bright candlelight. They were inside a tent, she realised. But her attention was riveted on a pair of blood-red eyes gazing at her from a distance of no more than six inches. Kalcha!

Shioni was so frightened, not even a squeak passed her lips. The witch’s cold face studied the two Fiuri as though she had discovered a pair of loathsomely large slugs in her bottle and was thinking about tossing them into the nearest fire. Slowly, her lips curved into a ghastly smile.

“At last,” said the witch. “I trust you had a most unpleasant journey, Azurelle of Fiuriel, and you, Princess Annakiya of West Sheba. I’m glad to see that my spell didn’t turn you into a toad or a rat, Annakiya. But I am most disappointed in your father’s recovery. Most upset. Your slave has become powerful. To defeat her, I need even greater power–power which you two are going to provide me, unfortunately for you.”

She threw back her head and cackled loudly and long.

Shioni, who had started to think that she had heard a dragon’s roar and lived to tell the tale, quickly decided that Kalcha’s laugh was far more chilling. The witch was insane. The redness in her eyes proclaimed for all to see that Kalcha had her power back. Shioni remembered all too well how much mischief Kalcha had caused for West Sheba. First, she had defeated the witch with an arrow dipped in Fiuri blood. Then she had defeated her apprentices at the Mesheha River bridge by magically setting army ants on them. Shioni would not be receiving any congratulations-on-your-freedom presents from Kalcha.

Kalcha said, “I’ll squash that Shioni like a bug. Once she’s gone, the Kingdom of West Sheba will be mine for the plucking.” She licked her lips. “Killing, burning and looting. I can’t wait!”

“Listening to you,” said Azurelle, “what I can’t wait to do is vomit.”

Shioni stared at her friend in frank amazement.

So did Kalcha. “Well, I’m almost sorry I’m selling you to Tazaka, Fiuri.” For a moment she sounded friendly, Shioni thought. Then she added, “He’s really annoyed you didn’t die in the bottle. Says he’ll finish the job properly this time.”

Azurelle sat down with a thump. Shioni had never seen her so pale–well, not since she had rescued her from dying in the bottle. But she had the courage to stand up to Kalcha. Shioni admired that.

“As for me, I’d start by plucking your wings.”

Her threat was so vile and unthinkable, Shioni’s knees gave way, too. She watched mutely as Kalcha picked up their bottle and carried them through a doorway inside her huge pavilion tent, down a short corridor and into a new section. She had never felt smaller or more helpless. Poor Azurelle. All this time, living in the Human world, she must have felt like this–stuck in pockets, hiding in saddlebags, having to be held up to flowers because she could not fly. Now this witch had nothing better to do than to bully them.

She clenched her tiny fists.

Kalcha swept aside a hanging curtain, entering a new room. “Behold, the battery.”

Zi mouthed to Shioni, “What’s a battery?”

The tented room was filled with a cage–a two-layer cage made of metal mesh, Shioni realised. The outer layer glowed with magical energy. The inner layer protected the inhabitants of the cage from the dangerous outer layer. The cage was large enough that Kalcha could have stood upright inside with room to spare, and it was five paces long by three wide. Inside, Shioni half-expected to see songbirds. The King of West Sheba kept dozens of birds in his royal menagerie in Takazze. Instead, she saw a few Fiuri. Four or five green Fiuri sat glumly on a wooden ledge beside what looked like a bird house. The cage had branches for sitting on, flowering bushes and a small pool along the nearest wall.

Her eyes returned to the Fiuri. They looked so sad.

“Tazaka gave me half a dozen Fiuri to experiment on,” said Kalcha. “I suppose you’re wondering what this cage is for?”

Shioni could not help herself. She snarled, “Killing defenceless butterfly-people?”

“Princess, do I hear a hint of lioness in that snarl?” But Kalcha seemed fixated on the Fiuri. “This cage is for harvesting Fiuri magic. They’ll perk up in a bit. They always move a bit slowly after I’ve robbed power from them, you see. A little honey, fresh flowers and some sunlight in the morning, and they’ll be fluttering about in no time. It’s like keeping butterflies. If a few Fiuri die, who cares?”

“You monster!” Zi sprang at the glass, hammering at it with her tiny fists.

Kalcha shrugged. “It’s convenient. I get all the power I need, and Tazaka gets rid of the troublemakers in his growing empire. One Fiuri was enough to fuel a curse on Castle Hiwot. Imagine what I could do with a whole cage full?”

Shioni tried to calm Azurelle, but ended up being slapped in the face by her furiously flapping wings. “You’re getting more Fiuri?” she called, over Zi’s cat-like hissing and spitting.

“A hundred of the little pests in exchange for you two,” said Kalcha. “Listen. Before I hand you over to Tazaka’s tender mercies, you’re going to help me answer a question.”

“Never,” said Shioni.

Kalcha shook the bottle, bouncing them off the lid. Hair sizzled. Shioni and Zi both cried out. Before they could recover, Kalcha twisted the top open and spilled them out onto her palm. Grasping the friends in her hand, she moved toward the cage.

“Shall I show you what this magic does to a Fiuri?”

The blue energy surrounding the outer mesh of the cage crackled hungrily as the witch brought them closer and closer. A smell like burning cloth came to Shioni’s nostrils. She tried to kick or prise Kalcha’s fingers loose, but it was hopeless. The witch was far too strong.

She said, “I’ll tell you what you want to know, Kalcha.”

“Good. How many keys are there to the cave of Belshalar?”

Shioni stared at the witch. That was the last question she had expected Kalcha to ask. She knew the legend of Belshalar, the Mountain King, who had turned into a dragon because of his greed. Months ago, when Shioni had travelled into the Simien Mountains with Talaku and Tariku to recapture the King’s Horse, she remembered hearing the story of Belshalar from an old villager whom they had helped, an old
shemagele
called Girma. Belshalar had been locked away in a cave behind seven great doors. Was Kalcha planning to free a dragon?

She could not bear to imagine how terrible that would be for the villagers living in the Simien Mountains, let alone the Kingdom of West Sheba.

Kalcha separated her two captives, holding them one in each hand. “Start talking, Princess, or your friend gets burned.” She held Azurelle toward the flames.

“Seven doors, Kalcha,” said Shioni. “I can tell you the story if you’d–”

“I know the legend,” she said. “There was a keeper of the cave. What was his name? Where can I find him?”

“Uh–only Shioni knows.” Shioni bit her lip, hating to have to lie–even to Kalcha. But if it saved the old man’s life and the lives of the villagers, wasn’t it the right thing to do?

“I’ll have a name,” Kalcha smiled. Fire jumped over to Azurelle’s foot. The Fiuri screamed.

“Getachew!” shouted Shioni.

The witch pulled Azurelle away from the cage. “Better. Carry on.”

“It was the second village north of the Mesheha River trail, after you leave the valley and cross the pass,” said Shioni, not needing to act out the trembling in her voice. “They had stopped to help after a landslide. Shioni said that the
shemagele
of the village told them the legend of Belshalar. His riches are supposed to have been immense.”

Kalcha’s eyes gleamed. “Riches which will be all mine when I find that old man and take his key. But then I’d only have three keys of the seven. Tell me, where are the other keys hidden?”

“I don’t know,” Shioni said, honestly. “Are you trying to release Belshalar?”

“Are you trying to spy out my plans, Princess?”

“Shioni’s going to come for me,” said Shioni, hoping that was what Annakiya might say.

“Then she’ll meet my hyena-warriors,” said Kalcha. But she scratched the bridge of her nose. “If only I could get the spell to work properly. They’re just too weak to survive the magic. Never mind. Enough chatter. You’re off to Fiuriel so that I can get my Fiuri battery filled with powerful little butterfly-people. Then I’ll have all the power I need.”

Both Shioni and Azurelle breathed a little easier when Kalcha put them back into the bottle. She returned to the room where they had first seen her. The witch seemed to have many preparations to make. She bustled about, opening bottles and pouring out powders and adjusting a strange apparatus that looked like the tusks of an elephant set upright in a black, obsidian stone base, but it seemed to have an endless number of levers to tweak and knobs to twiddle. She filled a bowl with coals from a brass brazier and sprinkled chunks of frankincense into it to slowly char, producing a thick, aromatic white smoke.

Quietly, Azurelle said, “You remember what I told you about Tazaka before, don’t you? He was always ambitious to the point of madness. But he’s only a Green. Something awful must have happened on Fiuriel if he has the power to exile our people.”

“She said Tazaka has an empire now, Zi. Kalcha must be helping him. What did you do to upset him? Steal his power?””

Azurelle shifted uncomfortably. Gazing at her tiny toes, she said, “I was a bad, bad Fiuri, Shioni. I think I was just too greedy and mean for my own good. Tazaka thought I was going to take over from him, so he betrayed me.”

“But you’re so nice, Zi,” Shioni protested.

“You’re sweet.” Azurelle hugged her knees with a gloomy air. “I can think of only two reasons he might want me back. One, to torture and kill me. Two, to put me in a cage and make an example of me, before the torturing and killing bit.”

“Can he even do that to a Blue Fiuri? I thought you said–”

“That the Blues are the most powerful?” Zi nodded. “But if Tazaka has become so mighty … who knows what he can do? He was always power-mad, Shioni. Nothing was ever enough for him. Nothing.”

Shioni shivered. She would hate to meet Tazaka. He sounded as nasty and murderous as Kalcha herself.

Kalcha’s efforts had produced a shining, mirror-like surface between the two upright tusks. Although it looked like a mirror, the strange, slightly rippling surface did not reflect anything. The friends heard a sweet chime ringing from somewhere unseen.

“It’s time to enter the portal,” Kalcha announced.

She pulled Zi out of the bottle by her wings, ignoring the Fiuri’s cries of pain. Without warning, she flung Azurelle through the air!

“Zi!” squeaked Shioni. Her friend struck the silvery surface and vanished as if she were a tilapia fish plopping into a river.

However, the witch’s throwing motion had tipped up the open bottle. In a trice, Shioni wriggled her way up to the top. She leaped from the rim and tried to fly to freedom–only, she had never flown before. Her wings buzzed mightily. Her flight jerked roughly this way and that, changing direction like a dragonfly skating over a pond. Kalcha tried to swat her, but missed. Shioni struck the floor of the tent and rolled. Suddenly, she found a rhythm. She rose into the air, flying!

And then a huge cloth thumped her sideways. Shioni fell hard. A terrible pain stabbed into her right arm. Heavy hands trapped her beneath the cloth. She struggled and kicked, but every movement made the pain flare anew. It was unbearable. The fingers seized her legs and pulled her out to face a panting, purple-faced witch. Kalcha gripped her in both hands.

“No escape for you, Princess!” she gloated.

Shioni groaned, “Can’t … breathe.”

“Have fun in Fiuriel,” said Kalcha, striding across the tent.

Like Azurelle, the witch flung her overarm through the air. Shioni fluttered her wings as best she could. Something horribly cold and sticky smacked her in the cheek and side. She expected everything to go dark.

Instead, there was only light. Glorious light.