Voyages of the Flying Dragon (9 page)

‘Njord rests within.'

‘
What?
' Missy drew back into herself.

‘Shh!' Heidi rebuked her. ‘Njord slumbers within, deep in the ice.'

Missy pushed Heidi's problems to one side to worry about later while she translated for the others in a low voice.

The captain listened and then said, ‘If this is indeed Njord's temple, it
is
possible the sea god is within.'

‘Do you think he could be a Demon?' Missy asked. She was far too tired to deal with Demons.

‘I do not think so,' Yami replied. ‘Gawayn does not stir.'

Missy still wasn't thinking very clearly. ‘But aren't all of the Totem and Jinn corrupted?'

‘Silili has not yet fallen,' the captain pointed out. ‘He helped Lenis and the Bestia back in Neti's temple.'

Missy had all but forgotten about that. Her brother had told her that a Totem had reached out to him and healed his and the Bestia's wounds. That meant Apsilla wasn't the last Totem to fall. Apsilla …

‘Wait.' Missy grabbed Heidi's arm as the girl made to move around the corner. She turned to the captain. ‘The sea god is Apsilla's father, right?'

‘We believe so,' the captain replied, ‘though there is as yet no proof of that.'

‘But if he
is
,' Missy pressed on, ‘that means he's not a Totem or a Jinn at all, but something older, something more powerful.' Missy suddenly felt a moment of clarity powerful enough to banish the fog that had settled over her exhausted mind. ‘It means he's a god, a
real
god, like Ishullanu. What did he call himself? A Caelestia?'

The captain drew his eyebrows together. ‘It could be as you say, Miss Clemens. Lord Tenjin will have a better idea of how these beings are related.'

‘But he's not here.' Missy's mind was still eerily clear. She didn't need Tenjin to tell her she was right. She knew it. She
felt
it. Something settled into place. ‘That's why Karasu's here. He wanted the dragon egg. He went to the trouble of finding the stones of ebb and flow, but we beat him to the real prize so he came looking for something even more powerful. Suiteki's grandfather – the sea god.'

The captain remained silent for a moment, considering her words. ‘You may be correct.'

‘What shall we do?' Yami asked.

The captain looked at each of them in turn. ‘I think we should get some sleep.'

Missy shook her head. ‘I'm not tired.' She didn't want to sleep now. Her weariness had dropped away from her and she didn't want to risk losing the clarity that had taken its place. She could see things so plainly now. Karasu had come for the
god's power. She still didn't know why, or how he planned to do it, but she was confident she could figure it out if the captain would just let her –

‘You may not be tired, Miss Clemens,' the captain said, ‘but the rest of us are. We are certainly too weary to face whatever is in that chamber. We will set a watch in case Karasu arrives. Until then we should get what rest we can.'

Missy was about to protest, but the preternatural clarity was already starting to slip away. Her fatigue returned. It started in her feet and quickly rose within her. When it reached her head, she yawned. Perhaps she could use some sleep after all. She had just enough time to ask Lucis to dim her light, and then she was falling down into slumber.

M
ove. Move. Move. Move. Move.

Lenis repeated the word in his mind as the wind threw the half-frozen rain into his side. The gangplank beneath his hands was now slippery. The wood had soaked up so much water it could take no more. Atrum was plastered to Lenis's back, but Lenis was so cold he could no longer feel the Bestia's claws digging into him.

Move. Move. Move. Move.

If Lenis didn't budge soon he knew he was going to freeze to death. Small tremors were already running through his body, causing his teeth to clash together. He gritted them so tightly his jaw ached. Ever so cautiously he pushed one trembling hand forwards a few inches.

Move. Move. Move.

The other followed, and then Lenis was crawling, slowly at first, but he managed to go faster once he was sure the wind
wasn't going to push him over the edge. He realised then that his eyes were screwed shut and forced them open. It made no difference. The night was black around him. If the moon or stars were shining, they were doing so behind the storm clouds. The torches had long since gone out.

Lenis increased his pace, pushing his hands further and further along the gangplank, ignoring the fragments of wood that dug into his palms. He didn't know how far he had come or how far he had left to go. All he knew was that he had to keep going.

In his haste he suddenly overreached, and his hand slipped out into nothingness. Lenis cried out, a small, shrill whine that ended abruptly as his nose connected painfully with the gangplank in front of him. He recoiled. Atrum's claws tensed in his back and this time Lenis felt them deep inside his shoulder muscles and down near his kidneys.

Panic surged through him, carried along by another great shudder. What if Atrum pierced one of his organs? Ridiculous. The Bestia's claws couldn't possibly be
that
long. But when was the last time Lenis had trimmed them? Lenis focused on this thought. The part of him that was a born engineer, that churned through problems with a calm indifference to external stimuli, wandered back through his mind, searching for the time Lenis last sat on the deck of the
Hiryū
with Atrum in his lap as he snipped the Bestia's nails, one by one. Lenis felt a particle of calm as he eased himself into the mental task of remembering. Then, when he was confident
his mind was steady, he gripped onto that calm and wrapped it around himself and Atrum until he felt the Bestia's claws retract, just a fraction.

Move. Move. Move.

Lenis started again, once more going slowly. The next time his hand slipped he brought it back to the gangplank and continued on. Eventually he reached the end of the wood and his fingers connected with stone.
The shelf!
He forced himself the final couple of feet onto the rocky surface. Relief raged through him unchecked, shattering the cocoon of calm that had carried him over the final stretch. It didn't matter. They had made it. Atrum let go of him just as Lenis rolled onto his back. A moment later the Bestia was curled up on his stomach, shivering. Lenis gasped in the air, ignoring the icy missiles that rained down on his face.

His celebration didn't last long. He might have reached the other side, but he was no warmer and what little heat his now constant shiver generated was leached away by either the cold rock beneath him or the storm above. Lenis knew there was a way off the rock shelf. Where else had Karasu gone? But finding it in the dark was going to be an ordeal in itself.

Lenis sat up, holding Atrum to him so the Bestia didn't startle and jump over the edge. His feet were still pointing towards Karasu's airship, assuming the orange circles glowing in the darkness were the portholes of the vessel, as Lenis suspected. From what he remembered before the storm had
blown out all the torches, the exit to the rock shelf would be behind him to his left. He shuffled backwards before standing up, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the edge as possible. The whole time he kept his eyes focused on the small lights of the airship, his only means of orienting himself.

Atrum was miserable. He pressed up against Lenis's chest as hard as he could; his tail curled around Lenis's body twice. His head was up under Lenis's chin, wrapped in the coils of his tail, but he was completely waterlogged and had probably taken ill already. Lenis opened his robe and pulled its folds around the Bestia. He was in no better shape than Atrum, but hopefully between the two of them they could make enough warmth to keep themselves going.

Lenis resolutely turned his back on the lights coming from the airship. Then he took a nervous step forwards. Then another. At any moment he expected to smash into the rear wall of the shelf. He couldn't assess the damage he'd done to his nose back on the gangplank, but it was throbbing dully. He suspected the cold was numbing the worst of it. Smacking his nose into the mountainside would hardly do it any good.

When he did bump into the wall it startled more than injured him. Leaning against the stone, Lenis rotated until his left shoulder was resting against it. Then he started walking, making sure his shoulder remained in contact with the wall. He stumbled on something in the dark but managed to regain his balance. If anything, he moved slower than he had back on
the gangplank. He wasn't sure what lay beyond the edge of the shelf. It could be a doorway, or even a sudden drop. Falling was very prominent in Lenis's mind. The shelf wasn't all that large. On at least one side, there was nothing but open air.

The rain stopped abruptly, causing Lenis to pause. He cocked his head to one side. No, it hadn't stopped. It had just stopped falling on him. He must have walked under an overhanging in the rock and entered some sort of tunnel. The wind still blew at his back but at least the constant icy shower had ceased.

A moment later Lenis glimpsed a sliver of orange light ahead, like that shed by a torch. He approached cautiously, remembering that he should also be worried about running into Karasu's warriors. As long as he and Atrum remained in the darkness, they were fine, but the Bestia was in no condition to make them invisible if they had to walk through torchlight.

As Lenis edged nearer to the light he noticed it was coming from around a corner. He tried to blot out the noise of the storm so that he could hear if anyone was waiting just around it, but he had no way of knowing if he was successful. Either the downpour was loud enough to drown out whoever was there or the passage beyond was empty. There was only one way to find out.

Steeling himself, Lenis peeked around the edge of the wall. Beyond was a giant hall with a line of torches lighting a pathway through its centre. He could only guess
at its size, for though the torches burned brightly they couldn't cast their flames high or far enough to reach the walls or ceiling. Lenis imagined the parts that remained in shadows to be full of Karasu's men. The Shinzōn mercenary couldn't know that Lenis had stowed aboard but would not have forgotten the
Hiryū
. Surely Karasu would expect the vessel to be in close pursuit. He was bound to have left guards behind.

Atrum mewed softly, or had been doing so for a while, and Lenis was only just becoming aware of it now that the sound of the rain quietened.

‘Shh, boy,' Lenis whispered, still straining to hear something – a rustle of clothing, a jangle of a weapon's harness – anything that would tell him there was somebody there. ‘You'll be okay.'

Lenis wasn't so sure. His own shaking had lessened since they had gotten out of the rain, but Atrum's had not. It seemed no matter what he did, no matter how good his intentions were, Lenis always put his Bestia in danger. Guilt washed through him. He knew he had no right to demand so much of them. It wasn't that he
wanted
to, but somehow what he intended didn't seem to count for much these days.

Taking a deep breath, Lenis rushed around the corner and made a dash for the darkness beyond the corridor of torchlight. No outcry came. Lenis remained hidden in the shadows, pressed against the wall. All he could hear was the pumping of his own blood. He let out his pent-up breath
slowly, but to his ear it was still impossibly loud. Suddenly, the adrenaline that had been powering him since he was in Karasu's cabin fled his body, and he felt every hour he had been awake and without food. Atrum wasn't the only one in bad shape. Lenis slid down the wall, just outside of the torches' reach, and pulled his knees up to wrap as much of himself around Atrum as he could.

He knew he shouldn't sleep. He knew that, at any moment, Karasu or some of his warriors might find him, but he was so tired. His stomach and nose hurt. Atrum's misery was pushing against his resolve. And then, without meaning to and against his better judgement, Lenis fell asleep.

Missy woke a heartbeat before Yami touched her shoulder. She looked up at the kneeling swordsman and nodded. She had also heard the voices echoing along the passageway. Without Lucis's light, it took Missy several moments to orient herself. Someone had carried her further down the hallway, back the way they had come. About twenty paces ahead, Missy could see a reddish glow indicating the entrance to the chamber in which Njord slept. The voices were coming from around the corner. They were low but Missy could just make them out.

‘… him?'

Missy couldn't recognise the voice, but it spoke Shinzōn. Unable to reign in her curiosity, she sent her awareness out ahead of her.

The chamber was smaller than she would have imagined a god's bedroom to be. It was circular, about twenty-five feet in diameter, and twice that high. It had four separate openings leading into it, each set evenly along the outer wall. The walls themselves seemed to be made of ice, though it was hard to tell by the wavering light of a near-dead torch being held by a stooped man with white-streaked hair and heavy glasses. From what the captain had told her, that would be Chūritsu. He stood near a pillar of ice in the centre of the chamber. Another man was with him, carrying a large sword strapped to his back. Karasu. The two men were alone.

Missy nearly returned to her body to get the others. Surely Yami and the captain would be a match for Karasu. The man with the permanent hunch to his shoulders didn't look like much of a fighter. Her curiosity gave her pause, though. If she held off for just a little while, she might learn why the mercenary had come here.

Chūritsu continued his silent inspection until Karasu snapped, ‘Is it him?'

‘Hmmm?' Chūritsu looked at the mercenary over the rim of his glasses. ‘It is hard to say. There is
something
in there. Whether or not that something is Rinjin remains to be seen.'

Missy moved closer to the central pillar. The flames from Chūritsu's torch revealed a smooth, slightly opaque surface that looked a lot like ice, but just at the edge of that light, where it gave way to shadows, she saw a dim blotch within the pillar. At first she thought it was some sort of
imperfection within the structure, but the more she concentrated on it the firmer her conviction grew. There
was
something inside it.

It looked small to be a god. It was too indistinct for her to be sure of its true size and shape, but it looked no bigger than a child with its legs pulled up close to its chest. As soon as the image flashed into her mind, Missy knew that was exactly what it was. For a moment she doubted herself, but then she understood the picture hadn't come from her own imagination. It had been an image-message, sent to her by whatever or whoever was in the ice.
Trapped
there.

Missy had been so caught up in examining the ice column that she had all but forgotten Karasu and Chūritsu. The Shinzōn scientist had pulled a pick out of the bag at his feet and was about to smash it into the pillar. Missy panicked. She forgot what state she was in and tried to grab his arm. Her incorporeal form did nothing to stop the pick as it fell against the ice. From around the corner, Missy felt a sharp pain in her temples. She threw her spirit-self back into her body but couldn't stop the gasp that escaped her lips.

‘Captain!' she croaked. ‘Karasu … Chrūritsu … Stop them!'

The pain came again, worse now that she was inside her body to feel it. It was as if Chūritsu was slamming the pick into her brain. Somewhere, Missy was aware that Captain Shishi and Yami had left and that Heidi was shaking her arm, or perhaps she was just holding onto her. The blows
to Missy's head sent a ringing noise through her mind. She couldn't focus on anything.

As quickly as the pain had come, it was gone. Missy pushed herself upright. Her vision wavered and her head spun, but Heidi had a hold of her and she didn't fall. She had to get around the corner to see what was happening. She dragged Heidi along with her, or perhaps Heidi was dragging her. The pain was gone but Missy's thoughts were still fuzzy. All she knew was that she had to make sure the pillar was intact.

It wasn't until she stepped around the corner that she noticed Chūritsu's torch had finally died. The pure white light that greeted her was coming from Lucis. The captain and Yami stood in front of her, facing Chūritsu and Karasu. The pillar was between them. Missy heard a low growling, so unfamiliar it took her a moment to realise it was the Bestia. She had never heard them make such a noise before. It was low and deep, and they all seemed to be making the same sound so that it came out as a single, rolling snarl. They, too, were arrayed against their enemies. Ignis and Terra on one side of the column, Aqua and Aeris on the other. Lucis was high above them, actually standing on top of the pillar of ice.