by John Kerry
She bent over, hands on knees, and closed her eyes. Everything seemed futile. Lying down seemed to be the best course of action. She could rest while she waited to die.
She missed Mehrak. And then the realisation dawned. Mehrak would never quit on her. It took a surprising amount of effort but she straightened up, stood tall and opened her eyes. Mehrak wouldn’t quit. Right now he’d be on his way to the snow base to shut down the portal. It needed to be done and he’d do it. Sammy knew this categorically. He’d never let her down. And she wasn’t about to do that to him, either.
Sammy approached White Lightning. She put her hands together and began channelling her energy.
Hami leant on the stable door. Empty. Same as the last two places. The townsfolk had been quick. They’d taken their families, their food and horses, and cleared out.
That ridiculous girl! Why did she never listen to him?
She frustrated him greatly, but he was already dreading losing her.
He couldn’t explain why he wanted her so badly. She wasn’t interested in him and he was still grieving for Jamileh. Could it be that he just wanted a friend? While it was true he was lonely, that wasn’t all it was. There was something about her.
No. He had no choice but to send her away through the portal. Not just for Perseopia’s sake, but for his too. He didn’t want her to go, but he couldn’t cope being around her, to be tempted, all while she was indifferent to him and favouring Mehrak.
The name was bitter on his tongue. He should’ve sent Mehrak on his way after the battle and taken Sammy himself.
Hami left the empty stable and ran off to find another.
Sammy wasn’t a possession to be won. He couldn’t force her to be with him, but the notion that he had no control over the situation drove him crazy. He wanted to slap her for her ridiculous flights of fancy and her lack of accountability, yet at the same time he wanted to hold her into him and not let go.
He reached a dimly lit cross roads.
As he contemplated which direction to turn, a flash of white streaked over his head.
There you are!
Sammy?
Sammy came back, slowing the rook and hovering above his head.
“Time to fly, Principal Hootan,” she called down. “We have a portal to shut down, and I can’t land Lightning on his bad leg again.”
She was a vision, sat erect in her saddle, White Lightning’s wing beats whipping up her hair. She had complete mastery over the beast, and of him too.
A powerful downbeat sent the rook off again. It raced away across the houses.
Sammy was bringing it round.
Hami waited as she flew out and began banking, then he ran across the road, leapt onto a gate post, using it as a stepping stone to propel him higher and onto a low awning. He ran up onto the roof and along the spine.
Sammy came in from the side and he leapt.
Hami caught the rook’s saddle straps, yanking his arm hard but he held on. And they were away, striking out from the town and towards the mountains.
–FORTY-NINE–
BASE CAMP
Hami clung to the back of her, almost like an embrace. Sammy tried to absorb some of his warmth and enjoy the sensation, but she was distracted. It was taking significant concentration on her part to numb the pain in Lightning’s leg. She’d been doing it since they’d left the town, and that had been a while ago now, days it seemed like, but it had scarcely been one. She was drained and needed to rest.
They saw no other villages. A relief that there would be no further fatalities, but simultaneously a problem. Without their light to guide them, it was difficult to gauge how high they were. Yet Perseopia wasn’t completely black, despite the dark cloud cover above. A faint aura edged the mountains ahead like there was a dim light far away over the horizon. An ambient light, enough to pick out silhouettes, although not much else.
“We’ve reached the foothills of the Atrabiliars,” Hami said after a time. “If we want to get another day out of your rook, we should find somewhere to make camp.”
Sammy hadn’t told Hami she’d been blocking the animal’s pain receptors, feeding him energy to keep him going. Yet even with her help, Lightning was struggling. His breaths were coming out in ragged gasps and he was attempting to glide between wing beats to reduce effort. When the time came for them to stop, they wouldn’t be taking off again.
“Are you sure I’m allowed to take him down this time?” Sammy called back.
“I think he’s likely to fall out of the sky soon if we don’t.”
Relief flooded Sammy. “Can I bring him down now?”
“Not yet. We’ve only reached the foothills. If we can reach a reasonable altitude, we’ll be able to make camp and acclimatise while we sleep. In the morning we can carry on to Dev’s Peak.”
They flew higher as the foothills grew, working their way up the slope of the mountain range, and it wasn’t long before the air became thin and cold. Sammy buried her fingers in Lightning’s neck feathers to keep them warm.
They dipped then and Sammy had to release more energy to keep Lightning steady. His muscles were seizing, becoming shaky. He couldn’t go on much longer on such thin air.
“I think we’ve pushed it far enough,” Hami said. “Let’s find somewhere to land.”
Sammy slowed Lightning and took him in at a glide.
Hami lit his staff and indicated a flat area under a tall cliff face. “Over there.”
They landed awkwardly. Sammy untied her leg straps, rolled off, and dropped to the floor where she sprawled out in the dark. For a moment she couldn’t break the connection to Lightning. He wasn’t letting go. And then he did, and relief filled her body.
Lightning cried out as he inherited the pain Sammy had been blocking from him. He whimpered once, then fell quiet as he shivered against the chill.
It was black and cold in the lee of the cliff face. Sammy was fortunate to have been wearing substantial clothing when she left Eggie. Thick trousers, boots, a light, fur-lined leather coat, but it wasn’t enough to keep her warm so high in the mountains.
Sammy squinted up into Hami’s staff light as he came around Lightning’s slumped body. She staggered to her feet and brushed the rust-red dirt she’d been laying in off her clothes. She swayed light-headed a moment and went back down to one knee.
“You numbed his pain, didn’t you?” Hami asked.
Sammy nodded. She didn’t look up.
“You mustn’t do that again, okay?” Hami didn’t sound angry. Just concerned. “It’s dangerous. Magi have died letting others feed off their energy.”
“Really?” She was uncommonly weary, but she found it hard to believe she’d die of tiredness.
“If you feed the wrong type of creature, they can become dependent on you. And if the connection is strong enough they’ll drain you of life.”
That wouldn’t happen to Sammy. She was too powerful, probably. Still, she wasn’t going to test her limits.
White Lightning was in bad shape. He remained where he’d landed, chest heaving, body shivering. His eyes stayed closed when Sammy approached and he didn’t respond to being stroked.
Hami went around to the other side. “His leg is ruined,” he called over.
Sammy followed the light to where Hami was crouched and recoiled when she saw Lightning’s bone protruding through his leg.
She looked away. They’d flown all the way from the white column without treating the poor animal. Sammy had forced him to land on his bad leg back at the town and had only covered up his pain to keep him going. Now that he was no longer useful, she’d saddled him with the full payload of pain. If she was a better person she’d keep helping him, but selfishly she didn’t want to, couldn’t bear to be drained any further. She was barely coping with the bone-deep weariness as it was.
Surely saving that town full of people had redeemed her somewhat? Lightning’s life for all of theirs?
; An easy trade to make when it wasn’t your life on the line.
“We should make camp,” Hami said as he stood up. He stretched. “Your rook’s done well. We’re way beyond where we would’ve been if we’d taken horses. Maybe further than we would’ve been if we’d stuck with your friend Mehrak.” He gazed out into the darkness.
Sammy didn’t like the way he’d said ‘your friend Mehrak’, but the notion Mehrak and Louis might be on their way towards them at that very moment was enough to cheer her up.
“What about Lightning’s leg?”
“I’ll see what I can do once we’ve made camp.”
“How do we make camp?” she asked. “We haven’t got any stuff.”
Hami scanned the area with his staff light, then set off along the base of the cliff.
Sammy followed.
A little way along, Hami stopped near a boulder. It was about the size of a large old-style TV, the sort of square, deep-backed old relic her granny still watched Antiques Roadshow on.
He fired his staff at it. Sammy stepped back as Hami applied a constant stream of pure energy directly into the boulder and kept it going as steam rose off it.
When it became red, they both had to take several paces back, such was the immense heat being given off. By the time the stone glowed orange they were standing several metres away and Sammy could still feel the warmth as if she were next to a campfire.
Hami stopped as the boulder neared yellow. “I’d keep well back,” he said. “The rock’s close to melting. If you get too close at this temperature, your hair and clothes may catch light.”
Sammy had been freezing a moment ago. Now the whole area was so hot there was steam coming off the stones around her. She stood with Hami in the dim orange glow of the boulder, both of them holding their hands out to absorb heat.
After a time, Hami announced that they should probably eat and sleep to give them the energy necessary to carry on up the mountain in the morning. And he departed.
He returned sometime later with two large tail-less rodents with short noses and strange toes that looked like fingers. He skinned them, placed them on a flat, plate-shaped rock and used his magi powers to float the rock over to the heated boulder, where he placed it on the ground just short of it.
The tiny bodies looked disgusting and cadaverous, but in moments the sweet fatty smell of barbequed meat filled the air and they began to look more appealing.
The rodents cooked quickly and Hami brought them back through the air and over to a low boulder between them.
They tasted amazing. Sammy was almost ashamed of how mercilessly she devoured Bugs Bunny’s short-eared cousin. The meat was dark, fatty, rich and salty, and she stripped the bones clean, flicking them into the darkness when she’d done with them. When the food had gone, she licked her greasy fingers, lay back in the dirt and closed her eyes.
She wondered how Mehrak and Louis we getting on, and where they were now, but it wasn’t long before exhaustion overwhelmed her and she fell asleep.
She woke once to the sound of Hami re-heating the boulder with roaring energy.
White Lightning’s screams woke her the second time.
–FIFTY–
ON FOOT
Sammy leapt up. Everywhere was dark.
She wheeled around blind. Stopped.
Floating in the black nothingness ahead of her, two golden eyes burned.
A deep growl reverberated beneath them, then Hami’s staff orb lit up beside her, flooding their camp with light.
The light dazzled Sammy, but not enough that she missed the giant red beast drop behind White Lightning and disappear.
I must’ve overslept, Hami said.
What was it?
A tusked manticore. Like the one we saw in the Fungi Forest.
It had been two years but Sammy would never forget the beast Hami had fought the last time she was here. A giant red tiger with sabre teeth growing up from its bottom jaw.
The manticore was circling them. An indistinct silhouette stalking the shadows just outside Hami’s staff light.
Sammy closed her eyes and reached out to the animal. She could feel its tension. It was gearing up to pounce.
“It’s going to attack!”
I’m ready, Hami replied.
Sammy tried to calm the creature but it pounced before she had time.
The beast seemed to appear before them in mid-air, jaws wide, claws extended. It arrived headfirst into a burning column of Hami’s staff lightning, then its motionless body dropped at their feet.
Sammy watched the creature’s chest rise and fall.
“Just like before,” she said. “But you finished this one quicker.”
“I was showing off last time. There was no need for that fight to last as long as it did. I was putting on a demonstration of my powers for Mehrak. In any fight you should strive for a quick, clean finish. You’re risking injury when you don’t put your opponent down quickly. Now, step back. I need to finish off our would-be assassin.”
“What do you mean finish off?”
“Kill. What do you think I mean?”
“Can’t we leave him alive like the one in the Fungi Forest?”
“This one killed your rook.”
“So you’re getting even?” Sammy looked across to the motionless body of White Lightning.
“No. What I mean is that we’ve lost our transport, so our progress is going to be slow. This isn’t like it was in the Fungi Forest where we had Louis to carry us away. We’re on foot and climbing a mountain. We won’t get far before this big cat wakes up again and comes after us. Next time it will be one of us killed in our sleep instead of Lightning.”
Hami had a good point. “But it’s a living creature.”
“Like those hyraxes we ate last night?”
Somehow a large majestic beast like the manticore seemed above the rodents and small creatures they’d murdered for food. Which made no sense, really. A life was a life.
Sammy turned away and moved towards Lightning.
A burst of light cast her shadow over the cliff face in stark relief, before their temporary campsite returned to the dim steady glow of Hami’s staff light. She felt the life essence leave the manticore, but didn’t stop walking until she reached her deceased rook.
She placed a hand on Lightning’s chest. He was still warm but entirely still.
The animal had served his purpose and now he was dead.
Sammy couldn’t muster up an emotion fitting for the end of Lightning’s life. Sadness would be appropriate, but too much had happened since the start of her journey, and she wasn’t able to spare any.
They left their temporary camp once they’d gathered their supplies.
Hami had the manticore pelt over his shoulder. He reasoned that it would be getting colder as they ascended the mountain and that they’d need it to keep warm. On the other shoulder he had one of Lightning’s saddle bags filled with chunks of manticore meat. It looked like the spoils of a slasher movie antagonist. Disgusting. Blood dripped through the fabric as they walked. Probably attracting more manticores, but Hami didn’t seem overly concerned.
Sammy carried the staff and Lightning’s other saddle bag, even though it contained very little. A small flask of water, a light blanket, some fingerless leather flying gloves and matching leather riding cap.
Sammy put on the gloves and cap and wrapped the blanket over her shoulders. She must’ve looked ridiculous, but she didn’t care. Anything to reduce the biting cold that cut through her clothes and chilled her bones.
It was half a day before they reached snow.
Sammy’s head ached from the relentless icy wind striking her forehead. The water flask had long since been emptied and her lips were getting chapped.
She scooped up a handful of snow and melted it in her mouth.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Hami said. “It cools down your core temperature.”
Sammy
shrugged. Her legs ached and she was hungry and thirsty so she took another mouthful of snow, and received the mother of all brain freezes. She sat on a boulder and hunched over to wait out the pounding headache.
Hami brought over a rock with a concave face. He took the lightning staff off her, melted some snow into the shallow recess using a narrow beam of staff energy and handed it back. The water was hot, but two sips and it had gone.
Hami repeated the process several times, until Sammy could feel the warmth of the liquid spreading throughout her body and her headache receding. Then he placed the manticore pelt over her shoulders and set about melting snow in the area around them. He exposed a large rock, not far from where Sammy sat, and concentrated a stream of lightning on it until it began to warm up.
Hami hadn’t taken any water yet. He’d provided for her, but not himself. Whatever reason he’d come up with to take her to the portal and send her through, it wasn’t because he didn’t care.
“We’ll warm up for a little while,” he said. “I’ll cook some of the manticore meat, then we’ll carry on, okay?”
“Okay.”
Hami didn’t look at her when he spoke. He’d barely looked at her since they’d left the citadel. It was almost like he was nervous around her. The muscular, hardened warrior that killed animals and spoke with authority to regents and air marshals had become timid in her presence.
When had that happened? It could only have been recent. The battle at the column, maybe. Was her new found badassery turning him on? She’d rescued him like a knight on her noble White Lightning, swooping in to pluck him from the tower like he was a damsel in distress. She’d rescued him from the pterodactyl too, the metaphorical red dragon. And it wasn’t only Hami that she’d saved, she’d saved everyone in the town they’d landed in. She’d even gotten White Lightning air bound again when all had seemed lost. She’d more than proven herself to him. She’d been vindicated.