by Nhys Glover
One thing she didn’t seem worried about was the idea that he was not who he claimed to be. Her trust in him was implicit. And that only made my own doubts multiply.
But I couldn’t leave her feeling so insecure. After all, she had told me I was beautiful when I was feeling unsure of my appeal. The least I could do was offer her that same kindness. And I wouldn’t be lying.
Shardra had an ethereal beauty that defied physical conventions. Aye, she was still too thin, but her face was lovely, and her elegant shoulders and neck, highlighted so well by her short-cropped hair, only accentuated her beauty. Her long, fine-boned limbs covered by flawless dusky skin, were just as elegant. There wasn’t an ungainly or displeasing aspect to her.
“Don’t worry. He’ll love you the moment he sees you. You’re beautiful,” I told her, taking her elbow in mine and leaning into her as she studied the coastline.
“Thank you. You are kind. I will always be grateful I was able to earn your friendship.”
I was about to argue that she hadn’t had to earn my friendship. I gave it freely. But I realised that might take something away from her. She needed to feel that she had purpose and was valued. Didn’t we all?
By the time the anchor was dropped and the rowboats lowered, we were all in a state of high excitement. My men kept coming over to me and wrapping an arm around me before rushing off to do busy work, mostly getting in the way of the crew. I watched Zem and Laric working together on one of the pulleys, helping to lower a boat. Laric instructed, Zem followed his instructions with studied concentration. Zem had taken to the life of a sailor far better than I would have expected for an earth mage.
My excitement boiled over. Suddenly, I couldn’t stand the waiting anymore. I ran down the deck to where Spot sat on his perch. I coaxed him down onto the deck, and he sat there happily enough when he saw what I wanted. Because he wanted it too.
In the next instant, I was mounted and we were in the air, soaring up away from the ship and the men there, up into the sky where the wind blew against my face in a completely different way to how it blew on the ship.
Spot flew us along the white fringed coastline and then into the densely forested hinterland, which was such a verdant green it looked artificial. Finally we climbed up toward the distant mountain top where smoke rose in a long thin stream.
Exhilarated and free, I cried out my joy as I lifted my arms and threw back my head. Spot caught my joy and pulsed with it too. We had faced the challenge of an unknown ocean and had conquered it, just as we had conquered all the hurdles in our path so far. We could do this! We could do this!
When the other four airlings came to join us, we made wild circles in the sky, diving and playing on the thermal currents like childlings in the waves.
By the time we started to return to the ship, I was content and at peace for the first time in a quarter turn. This was what I had needed. This freedom of air and flight.
While the crew and passengers made their slow way ashore in the row boats I looked on, waving madly at them, pleased when everyone waved back with wide grins on their faces. Even Redin gave me a grin. Probably more from relief than anything else. He needed ground beneath his feet again so his stomach would settle. Little did he know he would find the ground shifting beneath him for some time to come.
Gods, I was happy!
Chapter Twenty-Three
There was still several turns before the sun set and we were anxious to be about the next stage of our search. So while the crew made camp, my men, Shardra and I took off for the mountain to see if her senses could lead her to her daemon.
She was getting better at flight, this being her third time on an airling. While she would never enjoy it the way I did, she seemed pleased to be free of the ground.
“Which way?” I asked her as Spot took off from the beach with us on his back.
She closed her eyes, frowned, and then smiled. When she opened her eyes again she pointed off to the right side of the mountain. And so we did her bidding, while my men followed behind.
It took us about a turn before Shardra finally seemed satisfied. With an emphatic gesture down, she pointed at a ledge half way up the side of a sheer cliff face. It looked just wide enough for one airling at a time to land.
This would be tricky. I wasn’t about to face this daemon alone, so I’d have to wait until everyone had landed before venturing further. But once we were down we couldn’t leave in a hurry if things became dangerous. We were facing a flying daemon who had been imprisoned in the side of a mountain for an eon. He was bound to be testy. And we couldn’t run away and escape to the air in a hurry.
But I kept all these concerns to myself and brought Spot in for a landing. While we went to study the rock face, the others arrived to join us, one at a time.
The trouble was, the sheer rock-face boasted no cave entrance, not even an indentation. We spread out as best we could and studied the sandstone closely. But there was no hint of a cave where a daemon might be hiding.
But our seer didn’t seem fazed in the least. She wandered around as if out for a godsday picnic. Just when I was ready to give up and tell her she got it wrong, Shardra pointed over my head and said, “There!”
I moved back so I could look up at what she was pointing to. All I saw was a narrow ledge, about twice my height above me, where a boulder the size of an airling was sitting. One must have broken free from further up the cliff face and landed there. I had seen many like it as we flew around the mountain.
“There what? All I see is a big rock,” I said grumpily.
“Behind the rock,” she announced excitedly.
I looked at my men, who were all shrugging. When had Landor learned to shrug?
“I’ll go up and see,” Zem offered, already looking for hand holds.
I wasn’t sure about this. If he fell, he might not stop here on this narrow ledge but carry on hundreds of strides to the ground far below.
But I watched without comment as Laric offered Zem a hand up, and my warrior husband took his offer without hesitation, letting him lift him upward until he could find hand and feet holds further up.
Just over a stride separated him from the ledge above. Not a great distance. But it was when every hand and foot had to find purchase on some crevice or other before moving on.
“We should have put a rope around him. Why didn’t we think to bring a rope with us?” I said to no one in particular.
But no one was listening, all eyes were on Zem’s shaky climb, one inching step at a time; one cramped handhold at a time.
On several occasions during the interminable journey, he sent avalanches of small stones down on us, and we coughed and spat out what got in our mouths, while blinking the dust from our eyes. But no one thought to stop watching. It was as if we were helping him climb with our focused thoughts.
Shardra seemed supremely confident... no impatient. She was impatient that this was taking too long! I felt like hitting her. My man was risking his life to free her daemon, and she was impatient? What if he rushed it and fell, just to suit her?
But, after an age, Zem finally shimmied up onto the narrow ledge. It allowed him no more than the width and length of his body in space, and this was lying parallel to the edge. The rest of the ledge was taken up by the rock.
We couldn’t see him well once he was up there, so we had to rely on what Zem yelled down to us as he inched himself to his feet, his back pressed against the huge rounded rock.
“Looks like the stone is wedged into the side of the mountain.”
Silence.
“All right, I’ve moved in with my back against the rock face.”
Silence. Small avalanche of stones.
“Going to try to roll the rock to the side away from you. From what I can see it’s a straight drop from that side of the ledge.”
Silence.
More silence.
I glanced at Landor and then at Laric. I didn’t know what to say.
Prior looped an arm
over my shoulder. “He’s the strongest man I’ve ever come across. If it can be done, he’ll do it. If it can’t, we can come back with rop– ”
The thunderous crash had us all jumping. Shardra screamed and threw herself to the ground. I crushed Prior to me and against the cliff face.
There was the deafening sound of something big bouncing down the side of the cliff until it hit the trees below. Even after it had finished its fall I seemed to continue hearing it, and the vibrations it had sent through the rock beneath my feet.
When the silence was complete, we looked up expectantly.
Had Zem fallen with the rock? Why didn’t he say something if he was still up there? If he was still all right?
Then I heard him, the hollow ring to his voice telling me he was now some distance away from the ledge. “This is incredible!”
My heart returned to its place in my chest from where it had lodged itself in my throat. Zem was alive and excited.
“Is it a cave?” I yelled up.
“Aye. A deep one. I think you all need to come up here.”
Which became an interesting exercise.
Zem leaned over the side of the tiny ledge, which without the rock was wide enough for him to lie at right angles to the edge, and held out his hand. Laric bent and gave Landor a leg up. Landor then climbed up onto his shoulders, something Zem hadn’t thought to do. Or hadn’t wanted to do.
When Laric stood up, back against the cliff, Landor found he was high enough to comfortably wrap a hand around Zem’s wrist. All Zem then had to do was pull him the rest of the way up. Once there, my pale husband manoeuvred himself into the cave opening to get out of the way of the next person coming up.
Zem and Laric did this for each of us until only Laric remained on the ledge. But I’d been considering this problem from the moment I realised he’d be left at the bottom. I’d been collecting tunics from the others and tying them to each other while I waited.
We really should have had the foresight to bring a rope! Had we expected to just land and walk into a hidden cave the daemon had called home for eons? Or hadn’t we actually expected to find the cave on this first foray? Whatever the justification, Zem was usually better than this, even if the rest of us weren’t! Excitement and anticipation could make even the most organised person go off unprepared at times, I supposed. Or that was the conclusion I came to as I seethed over my impromptu rope-making.
By the time I was finished knotting the fabric pieces together, I had a lot of gorgeous male torsos on display and a length of makeshift rope that Zem could dangle over the edge to Laric.
“It reaches,” Zem announced over his naked shoulder to the rest of us huddled just inside the cave entrance.
In the next short while, Laric was clambering over the edge and across Zem’s back to the cave where we waited impatiently for him.
Before we had a chance to congratulate ourselves, I noticed something.
Gods! Shardra was missing.
Where had she gone?
Landor was furthest into the cave, and he started moving into the darkness with the unerring confidence that only came from years spent without light.
Prior lit the torch he’d brought with him specifically for this purpose—we hadn’t come totally unprepared—and the rest of us headed into the cave, following the pale, almost wraithlike form of my white husband ahead of us.
When Landor gasped loudly, I dug my nails into Prior’s hand. Without a word, we sped up. At the end of the tunnel we came to an abrupt halt beside Landor. No wonder he’d gasped!
Looking around, we found ourselves standing at the entrance to a huge cavern. It was lit well enough to see, but not by sunlight. No, this space was lit by glowing rocks and a trillion pinpoints of light across the cavern ceiling high above us.
“Glow worms,” Landor announced. “I have read about them. Their light attracts their mates.”
“Those rocks... I have never seen the like,” Laric said in awe, reaching out to the closest so his hand looked like a black shadow against its eerie greenish-blue light.
“Where’s Shardra?” I demanded, looking around what seemed to be a big empty space the size of a temple to the old gods.
Landor pointed over to one side where I could just make out the shadowed outline of the tall, thin woman. Her back was to us, and she appeared to be looking down at something.
Prior extinguished his torch. It would be easier to see in the strange cavern without it.
Once our eyes adjusted to the light of the worms and glowing stones, we edged our way over to our seer.
We came to stand beside the perfectly still Shardra, who was looking down at something lying on the ground. It looked like a body of a large featherling. Had one flown in here and died? Yet I had never seen a featherling quite this large before.
Shardra kneeled down and placed a gentle hand on a feathered wing.
“Careful. It might bite if you startle it,” Zem warned.
“No, he won’t.” Her confidence seemed unwarranted.
The featherling moved. It was such a sudden movement that we all stepped back in shock. All but Shardra. She stayed just where she was.
“Wake up. It is time for you to wake up,” she said.
A hand came out from beneath the feathers and closed over her wrist. Huge. It was bigger even than Landor’s hand, which was the biggest I’d come across. But where Landor’s was made up mostly of long fingers, this hand was mostly all palm. And it came from the featherling!
I should have realised. We knew what we had come for. Why hadn’t I realised what I was looking at?
But before I could voice my knowledge, Shardra disappeared beneath the wings. The hand had hauled her off her knees and under the wings.
“Help her!” I cried, trying to reach down and pull her out.
Hands grabbed me. I turned to find Landor and Zem holding me back. I couldn’t understand why they were stopping me from helping our seer. Anything could be happening to her under there. She was so eerily quiet.
“Shardra, are you all right?” Zem called.
“Yes,” came the breathy reply a moment later. “Of course. Of course, I am all right.”
I relaxed.
For a long time we stayed like that, staring down at what looked like the wings of a dead featherling. Then, faster than my eye could track, the featherling/daemon was pushing past us and running down the tunnel towards the cave entrance, Shardra in his arms.
He’d knocked Prior and Laric over as he pushed past them, and Zem and Landor hastily helped them to their feet. As one, we turned to race after the escaping daemon.
Was Shardra safe? Was she being abducted? Who knew what a daemon locked away for so long would do to a human woman. They raped other elementals, didn’t they? A human woman would be even less capable of defending herself. He had seemed huge as he flashed past us. What if his cock tore her apart as Laric’s sister had been torn apart by that over-sized general?
My thought must have communicated itself to the others because we suddenly started moving faster, even though the tunnel was pitch black once we left the glowing cavern.
But it wasn’t long before light appeared in the distance. I knew it would be there. I knew how short the distance had been when we walked it with the torch. But somehow running in the dark made the distance seem longer and the ridiculous doubt that we’d ever see daylight again had managed to take root.
At the outer cave the sunlight pouring in was painful but precious, and it took valuable moments for my eyes to adjust. Then a little longer to realise neither the daemon nor Shardra was there.
They’d gone out? Gods, what if his wings couldn’t hold him after all this time unused? What if he toppled and fell, taking Shardra with him?
But as soon as I reached the cave entrance and looked at the deep-blue, late-afternoon sky, I saw I was wrong. Overhead, an incredibly beautiful creature flew on wide, silvery wings, a small, dark woman held in his arms like a babe.
As I had
done on Spot not long ago, the daemon was flying in soaring circles, joyous and exuberant. All the while, a huge smile split his silver face, revealing perfect white teeth. And a pair of impossibly long fangs.
I looked away from those terrifying teeth to Shardra’s face. She was looking up at the daemon in wonder, perfectly at ease in his arms. But something must have reminded her she hadn’t been alone when she discovered him, because she looked back at us and waved.
“Meet you at the beach!” she called, before the daemon turned toward the sun and began to soar upward with a speed not even an airling could manage.
Our airlings had been circling nearby, and when Spot started heading for our tiny ledge, I cried out a warning. Zem, seeing what Spot was preparing to do, pushed me back into the cave. In the kind of move airlings were known for—having been born and bred in the mountains around Highairshan—Spot landed delicately on the ledge and sat down, claiming most of the cave entrance with his bulky rear.
I pushed past him out of the cave and climbed onto his back. In the next instant, we were in the sky. I didn’t look back to see if the others were following me. I knew they would. My full focus was on getting to the beach. I wanted to make sure the innocent Shardra was indeed in the hands of a creature that meant her no harm.
Chapter Twenty-Four
By the time I reached the beach, I was exhausted by inner turmoil. One voice in my head kept saying the woman I’d come to like and admire in the last quarter moon was in danger, and I had to find a way to save her. The other voice kept saying Shardra was exactly where she needed to be, in the arms of her comforter—the creature, the halfling daemon—who had waited an eon for her birth and was now celebrating finding her. Both voices were equally loud and assured, and I couldn’t make one win out over the other. So the battle waged on.
As we finally reached the sandy crescent of the cove, I saw our camp at one end and the large, silver-winged daemon walking the sand, hand-in-hand with Shardra, at the other.