Survivors: Book 4 Circles of Light series (62 page)

‘Something killed it,
and its rider.’

‘There is a person
there?’ Maressa asked in horror.

Gan nodded. ‘Half under
the horse. The animal seems to have been turned inside out but the
man was intact. Definitely dead but right way out.’

Ren swallowed, holding
Khosa tight against his chest. ‘Orla?’ he asked.

Gan thought for a
moment. ‘No. I cannot imagine any weapon being able to do such a
thing.’

‘But why?’ Maressa
whispered.

Tika turned away to
remount Farn. ‘Why not? Valesh would have thought it fun; I see no
reason not to think Qwah would have the same sense of
humour.’

When they camped that
night Khosa mind spoke Tika for the first time for several
days.

‘You must assume Grek
is no more,’ she said. ‘I have tried and tried to reach Namolos but
I cannot. I tried when we were by Vorna’s estates, nearer his
island I thought. But I get no response.’ Khosa’s mind tone was
ineffably sad.

Tika propped herself on
her elbow and studied the small orange cat sitting beside
her.

‘Who are you Khosa?’
she asked.

Khosa turned her head,
turquoise eyes glittering even in the darkness. ‘Akomi told you I
was old. Silly old cat. It is true though. I am very old. I have
been Khosa through many generations.’

‘Like Grek, in Hargon’s
bloodline?’ Tika asked carefully.

‘Something like that,
yes.’

‘Who is
Khosa?’

‘Khosa was once upon a
time Lemora.’ Khosa sounded wistful but she turned away without
saying more and picked her way daintily round the dying fire to
curl against Ren.

Namolos’s body lay in
his bed at the top of the airy spacious house on the cliffs.
Students came and went, turning the body, rubbing oils into the
flaccid skin, brushing the white hair. They murmured to each other
occasionally, but their eyes turned constantly to the body of their
Captain. Sea birds screamed, their raucous laughter drifting
through the open windows together with the scent of the flowers
from the gardens below and the strong smell of brine from the
sea.

Several floors below,
the sea swished softly at the mouth of a shallow cave. Two hundred
paces inside the cave lay the Ship, Star Dancer. A woman sat in the
pilot’s chair in the front of the Ship.

‘Abesh, he has been
gone too long.’ Dancer’s melodious voice was filled with
anxiety.

‘I know.’ The woman
spoke soothingly. She knew Dancer understood how worried she was
but it was important to her to try to stay outwardly calm, to
believe Namolos would return safely.

A qualified Captain in
her own right, Abesh had gone on board Star Dancer with her two
tiny daughters the morning of the uprising on their home world. Her
husband had long anticipated such an event and had insisted that
very morning that Abesh take the children to the dock. As always,
the children had been delighted to visit Dancer and Dancer had been
as happy, telling them riddles and nonsense tales when the sirens
began. Namolos arrived in a breathless rush and Dancer surged from
her mooring, racing into the star fields followed by dozens of
other bio Ships. The girls grew while Dancer travelled through both
space and time. When they reached Kel-Harat, they both showed a
strong desire to involve themselves in the troubles besetting this
world.

When Dancer landed
here, crippled in her flight systems beyond hope of repair, she and
the family hoped they had found safety and security. For two
hundred years they established themselves; sharing their lives with
the people on this island, teaching them and learning from them.
When Namolos discovered the extent of the disease that was
insidiously maturing, he had determined to do all he could to fight
it. All four of his family had enhanced mental capabilities: he and
Abesh had early agreed that minds were of greater importance than
technology.

The girls, apprised of
the situation Kel-Harat faced as predicted by their father, took
their own decisions and followed them through. Dancer had spoken of
the girls frequently in these last days when either Abesh or a
senior disciple, Elka, of whom Dancer was especially fond, had sat
with her. Attuned to her Captain as she was, Dancer knew he was
weakening. She could only guess that his mind had been trapped far
away in this world he had come to love so deeply.

Abesh too believed her
husband’s mind was trapped but she had no idea where or by whom. He
had spoken less and less of the things he’d discovered over the
last years, except to say the “disease” was progressing far more
rapidly than he’d hoped. After five days, his students had become
greatly alarmed by Namolos’s continued mind travelling. Abesh had
tried, again and again, to link with the residual thread of his
consciousness in the hope she may be able to strengthen him at
least. She would have preferred to be able to forcibly pull him
back, or follow his mind herself to wherever it was
held.

She found, to her
horror, that he must have foreseen this eventuality, and had barred
all outside access to his mind. Even to her. Abesh continued to
try. She sat with him during the nights while Elka was with Dancer.
She spoke aloud to him. Occasionally she railed at his absenting
himself from her so totally. Then she would dry her tears and talk
sensibly again.

‘It is nineteen days.’
Dancer’s voice brought Abesh out of her thoughts.

‘He is receiving
nutrients by line,’ Abesh told the Ship wearily. ‘He is massaged
and exercised – you know all this Dancer. Why must you make me
repeat it each day?’

Then she sighed,
putting her hand against the Ship’s inner wall. ‘Forgive me Dancer.
But we are doing all we can for him. We just have to wait for him
to come back.’

‘He will,’ said Dancer
quietly. Then more firmly: ‘He will.’

Chapter
Thirty-Five

Tika had studied the
small book which Hezwa had given her, when she was on Farn’s back.
Hezwa had apologised that it was all she could find but if Tika
wished, she would search further. Tika had tucked the book in the
waist of her trousers, behind her sword belt, and half forgotten it
was there. At first she thought it was in another language but
eventually realised it was written by hand; a hand that enjoyed
flourishes and curlicues in a very tiny form.

They flew over unending
and changeless plains for three days, slightly east of north, but
had yet to catch up with Orla’s party. They had found no sign of
Orla’s passage either – no more corpses and no signs of camp fires.
Navan and Sket had walked some distance around the dead horse and
discovered no tracks in any direction. Brin was disturbed by the
bodies of the horse and human.

‘In these sorts of
lands, any animal that dies attracts birds – bigger than Merigs but
like them to look at. They feed on dead things and they travel
leagues when they scent one.’ He rattled his wings, his eyes
whirring in agitation. ‘This animal has been dead more than a day –
why are the dead feeder birds not here?’

When the company
remounted and the three Dragons lifted skyward, Brin wheeled back.
He spat fire down onto the horse and continued to do so until it
was a shrivelled smouldering heap. They camped for the fourth night
under a clear star filled sky, and were woken by a deluge of rain
descending on them. They hadn’t bothered erecting the tents the
Wendlan forces had given them because Maressa checking the sky as
she always did just before they made camp, had said the weather
would remain clear. The men struggled with the tents against a
rising wind and constant hammering rain. Brin tried to shield them
from the worst of the wind with his enormous body. Storm held
Maressa and Khosa under his wing while Farn sheltered Tika and
Akomi.

Jakri suddenly dashed
across to Farn, his eyes wide with surprise. ‘Edo far spoke me! I
have rarely been able to far speak more than a couple of
leagues.’

‘Well what did she
say?’ Tika was rapidly finding she agreed with the cats’ opinion of
wet weather.

‘Earth tremors. Not bad
but noticeable enough to be disturbing.’

‘In the
City?’

‘Yes, but more
importantly perhaps, she reports rain.’

‘Rain in the Valley is
not uncommon I think.’

‘But this rain was in
the desert – north of the Valley.’

‘In our direction you
mean.’ Tika shivered, peering out into what should be the light of
dawn and was most definitely not.

She mind spoke Maressa,
cowering against Storm several paces away. The sound of the wind
and the rain battering against Farn’s scales and leather wings made
it hard to hear Jakri, standing as close to her as he was. Maressa
listened and at once attempted to send her mind up through the
downpour. Jakri dashed back to help with the tents and Tika watched
Maressa, knowing the air mage was struggling to get her mind
aloft.

As suddenly as it had
begun, the rain stopped and the wind dropped to a gentle breeze.
The company stared at each other, the tents just in place. They
looked up: not a cloud to be seen in any direction, just the pearly
rose of dawn. Tika looked down: she was ankle deep in glutinous mud
and her clothes were beginning to steam. She looked at Brin, and
had to smile. He looked magnificent in the light of dawn – each wet
scale sparkling deep crimson, his wings darker yet. He caught her
thought and proudly reared erect, water droplets spraying around
him like diamonds.

Gan squelched away from
the tents and glared. ‘If that was another example of Qwah’s
humour, I did not find it amusing.’

Although Tika knew it
was Qwah’s doing, she found herself giggling helplessly.

‘Brin,’ she finally
managed to gasp. ‘See if you can find meat. We can’t travel on
until we’ve dried out a bit at least.’

They were having
increasing difficulties finding anything to burn on the fires they
liked to kindle night and morning but when Brin returned later with
the large carcass of a wide-horned heavily built grazing animal, he
had better news.

‘About five leagues
west,’ he told them. ‘There is a small hill and it has bushes on
its far side.’

Navan swiftly cut the
haunches from Brin’s kill and gave them to Farn and Storm, cutting
other portions for the company’s supper. Gan took a length of rope
and went with Brin to gather fuel for the fire on which they could
cook their meat. They decided to stay where they were for the whole
day when Maressa, somewhat puzzled, reported that the strangely
distorted air which seemed to indicate Orla’s position, was at the
same distance from them as before.

‘So she’s made camp
somewhere cosy too,’ Sket grunted, chipping mud off his boot
soles.

Ren laughed briefly.
‘It appears Survivor Orla has kept deliberately so near and so far
from us since we left the desert. And the sudden attack of bad
weather today – a very minor inconvenience when you think about it.
Why not lightning and thunderbolts?’

Jakri nodded. ‘Anyone
who can work that much weather would find lightning no
problem.’

Tika rubbed her chin on
the top of Akomi’s head. ‘You think Qwah is observing us – all the
time?’

Jakri pursed his lips.
‘I think in some way he is fully aware of where we are. I’m not
sure that he knows it was us – you – who destroyed his
sister.’

Gan frowned. ‘You could
be right,’ he agreed. ‘If he knew who we were, or Tika at least, we
might have got the thunderbolts.’

Sket scowled at Gan:
he’d thought exactly the same but he’d had the sense not to mention
it aloud.

‘Do you think Qwah
might be smart enough to guess we’d travel by night?’ Navan sounded
thoughtful. ‘The land is getting hillier – not much, but definitely
not as flat as before. Could we get closer during the night and
keep one of the hills between them and us? He might not suspect
we’d move closer.’

There was a long
silence following Navan’s comments until, as always, Tika found
everyone staring at her. She shrugged.

‘We could try. Anything
you can think of will help. All I know is that I have to be close,
unfortunately very close, to be able to unmake these
creatures.’

They waited until full
dark before the Dragons carried them high into the sky. Maressa was
checking ahead with the very weakest tendril of her power and
guiding them slightly obliquely towards Orla’s position. All of
them were growing nervous as the sky lightened fractionally on the
eastern horizon. It was with considerable relief that Brin took
them down in a faster descent than usual to land in the lee of an
extremely small hill: Brin was about the same size.

Nevertheless, they
flattened themselves against the rough grass and Jakri, Ren and
Maressa held their minds in readiness for any change or assault
upon them. Tika leaned back against Farn’s crouched body, her
fingers rubbing Akomi’s slightly furrowed brow and let her mind
drift. They had estimated they were within a league of Orla and her
escort of tribesmen: still not near enough Tika thought. But she
let her mind float, formless as the breath of wind that scarcely
moved the grasses around her.