by Sam Bowring
‘Found these,’ said M’Meska.
‘What are you doing, Seb?’ said the woman dazedly to the man.
‘I was . . . we have to do something about the bodies. Help me build a pyre?’
‘We should burn this whole place,’ the woman said dully.
‘Kera! You don’t mean that. This is our home.’
‘Home?’ She looked around. ‘What home? Who are you people?’ she demanded suddenly, as if seeing the others for the first time.
As Hiza dealt with explanations, Bel approached Losara with a dark look on his face. ‘What do you think it means?’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Snap out of it, man. What do you think it means that we discover such powerful agents of the shadow this far north at the very same time we happen to be passing through?’
‘Oh!’ said Losara. Lying had never been a strength of his, but he needed something convincing. ‘I . . . well . . .’
Blessedly not waiting for him to finish, Bel looked off towards the woods. ‘After me, no doubt . . . sent by my other. Do they mean to ambush us in the woods? If so, why advertise their presence first? Are they so arrogant they think it easy to best the blue-haired man, and care not if I know they await me?’
‘And,’ said Losara, ‘are you so assured as to think Mireforms represent no threat to you?’
‘Of course not! Do not twist my words.’
‘You put much faith in these patterns of yours. Sometimes too much, I fear.’
‘Would you have us turn back?’ said Bel. ‘Give up?’
For a moment Losara wondered if he could convince Bel to do just that, but doubted Bel was asking the question seriously.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I realise you are worried,’ said Bel, ‘by opponents who are resistant to magic. And I worry,’ he glanced at Jaya, who had stooped down to talk to the little girl, ‘about how well I can protect you all when I’m lost in the dance. I should never have brought her,’ he added to himself. ‘She would not stay behind, but I should have been stronger.’
‘Maybe,’ said Losara, thinking of his own little Lalenda, tucked away safe in Skygrip.
‘There is something else I find troubling,’ said Bel. ‘And I’m going to have to ask you to trust me on this, and not ask the reason why.’
‘All right,’ said Losara.
‘The Shadowdreamer does not want to kill me.’
Clumsy, Bel, thought Losara, staring at him long and hard. Any half-decent mage, given that information, may be able to guess the reason why. It made him uncomfortable enough that Fahren probably knew it, from witnessing his exchange with Bel after the murder of the Throne.
‘I’d be very careful,’ he said, ‘who you share that with.’
‘Of course,’ said Bel. ‘I do not tell you lightly. But you understand my confusion – why would Losara send these creatures after us, if not to destroy me?’ His eyes blazed with realisation. ‘They want the Stone!’
Again Losara was impressed by his counterpart. Straight away he wondered why. Was he surprised because he thought of himself as intelligent, and therefore how could Bel also be intelligent? Perhaps there were different kinds of intelligence – cunning, logic, wisdom, instinct?
‘We must leave at once,’ Bel decided. He turned to the others. ‘Everyone,’ he announced, ‘we need to move fast. Grab your things and let’s get going.’
‘But Bel,’ said Hiza, ‘we can’t just leave these people. At the very least we have to help them build the pyre. Why don’t we stop here for the night?’
‘I wish we could,’ said Bel, failing to make himself sound genuine, ‘but those Mireforms are after the Stone. If we delay, we may never catch up with them.’
Hiza saw the determination in Bel’s eyes, as did they all. There would be no arguing.
Losara was struck by an idea. ‘Bel,’ he said. ‘Remember what you said just now about being lost in the dance?’
‘What of it?’
‘Why don’t we leave some of our group here? Jaya and Hiza could stay and help these poor folk. That might also put them out of harm’s way,’ he added more quietly.
Bel thought about it for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘What if the Mireforms come back?’
That statement sent Seb gibbering all the more, and Kera clutched the little girl tightly.
Hiza shot Bel a look of annoyance. ‘Nice choice of words, hero.’
Bel looked surprised at that, and Losara thought it must be rare that his friend spoke out against him.
‘I am sure the monsters will not return,’ said Losara, though whether he was trying to convince Bel or calm the villagers, he wasn’t sure.
‘How can you know that?’ said Bel.
Because I will tell them not to.
‘Because once they have a prize as important as the Stone, they will flee. Mireforms are not stupid. They won’t do anything that impedes their progress.’ Or so I thought, he added to himself.
‘Well then, if we have to chase them, there’s no guarantee we’ll be coming back this way to pick anyone up. So everybody must go.’
And lo, I am not served by a lie, thought Losara.
•
Jaya was overwhelmingly relieved by Bel’s adamant refusal to stay and help – or to leave her and Hiza as had been suggested. Why had she been lumped into that? Was it assumed that just because she was a woman, she was the one who would be the most caring? Rot to that, she thought.
Looking at the traumatised girl, she knew that the right thing to do was help these people as Hiza wanted, but in truth she would be glad to be away from here. Other people’s problems were not hers – that was the way it had always been, that was the way it would stay.
She had to admit that this place disturbed her. The others seemed to be taking it in stride, the carnage and bodies and ripe funk of death. While she considered herself to be made of stern stuff, and had seen the effects of violence before, the scene here was something outside her experience. It reminded her a little of watching cattle being butchered for the Zyvanix wasps, back when she’d been a farm girl growing up in Cindeka. It was so overt and colourful – whatever the monsters had been, it was plain they’d really enjoyed themselves. For the first time on this journey, she began to feel as if maybe she was in over her head.
She was also unnerved by the part of her that whispered how easy it would be to ransack the houses for anything of value. No one would even care, and maybe that was the problem. It wouldn’t be stealing, it would be looting, exploiting a bad situation. The idea did not sit well, and the usual glint of potential gold in her mind’s eye seemed for once dull and unattractive.
And the little girl, with her tear-stained cheeks and fearful eyes, made some forgotten instinct reach for attention.
She isn’t mine. She isn’t my responsibility.
Jaya glanced at Bel. Would it be different if she had children of her own? If she ever decided she wanted them, that was, and she wasn’t sure she did. She shook her head to rid it of such unhelpful thoughts. That decision was a long way off, and there was plenty standing in the way between now and then.
For a start, a wood full of vicious monsters.
•
For a while it was easy to follow the Mireforms’ trail through the trees, as they had broken branches and trampled undergrowth with reckless abandon. Then, abruptly, all signs of passage disappeared.
‘Must have changed form,’ muttered Bel. ‘Curse them.’
‘Well,’ said Fazel, ‘they were headed towards the lair, so I suggest we keep going in the same direction.’
‘Lead the way,’ said Bel. ‘And not at your regular pace either.’
Fazel nodded and moved ahead, his hollow bones springing lightly over roots and rocks. Losara wondered briefly if he should order Fazel to send them off course, but what did it matter, when they would not catch up to the Mireforms anyway? Bel pushed on fiercely, but they had entered the woods too late in the day, and it wasn’t long befor
e they laboured in growing darkness.
‘Fazel,’ called Bel, ‘can you put up a light spell?’
‘No,’ said Fazel. ‘No mage of the shadow can cast a light spell.’
Losara heard the words and knew he was in trouble. Fazel had chosen them deliberately too, he was sure.
‘Gellan,’ called Bel. ‘We need light!’
‘We should rest,’ said Losara. ‘We will make faster progress in daylight.’
‘No time for resting,’ said Bel. ‘They have almost a day’s lead on us. Light, now!’
I do not know what you hope to achieve by exposing me, Losara sent to Fazel. You should not irk the only one who can set you free.
There’s no way to hold you to such promises, master, came the reply. And I do not, in the face of them, forget where my true loyalty lies.
‘Light, Gellan!’ bellowed Bel, slashing at an overhanging branch.
‘As you wish,’ said Losara, and held out his hands. Hiza, Jaya, Bel and M’Meska all fell suddenly limp, unconscious on their feet. He caught them in his power and steadied them, letting them crumple gently to the ground.
‘See what you drive me to?’ he said to Fazel. He let his power pool around him, clearing the ground of roots and debris, even uprooting a tree to fling it away over the treetops. He smoothed over the soil the eruption had left, the end result being the sort of clearing where they might have chosen to camp. Then he arranged the group as if they had gone to sleep there.
‘A sleep spell?’ asked Fazel. ‘Don’t you think they’ll find it odd that none of them remembers lying down? That the last thing they recall is Bel yelling at you?’
‘You cannot possibly have forgotten the title I hold,’ said Losara with a touch of derision. ‘Do you not think me capable of putting the same dream into their heads?’
He spread the fingers on the hand with four, and shadow threads spun forth – one for each of the sleepers. As the threads connected with their slumbering minds, he closed his eyes and channelled the same vision to them all.
‘There,’ he said, and the threads fell away. ‘When they awake, they will remember Gellan lighting their way long into the night and, after making some excellent progress, even my tenacious counterpart decides he can not go on any longer. So they find a half-decent place to lie down for the couple of hours before dawn . . . and here is where they’ll rise.’
‘I see,’ said Fazel.
‘As for you,’ said Losara, ‘never do anything to expose me again. How was it that you managed to think sideways around the directive to keep my identity secret?’
‘I did not think sideways,’ said Fazel levelly. ‘Nor did I steer Bel to any request he would not have come to by himself. I was simply answering his question. After all, you ordered me to act as if he still has a hold over me. Besides, it is not as if the compulsion to obey him is completely removed. You overpower it, but it is still there, and when it does not directly conflict with your orders, it seeps through.’
Losara realised that perhaps he was being unreasonable, and sighed.
‘Watch over them while I am gone,’ he said. ‘If they wake, tell them that Gellan is scouting ahead.’
With that he dissolved and sped away amongst the trees, trying to sense anything of the shadow. He could not, of course – the very reason he had sent the Mireforms on this mission stopped him from being able to locate them with magic. Instead he relied on sight alone, zigzagging back and forth through the trees, searching for any sign. What form did they travel in, to slip through the woods without leaving a trail? He paused, gathering himself together where he heard bushes rustling . . . but it was only a deer. On he went, until the trees cleared, and he looked up a charred mountainside to the cavernous mouth of the dragon’s lair. Had they already reached it? Carefully, he stole towards the opening and slipped inside. Tiny he made himself, fearful of the dragon’s fire, but forcing himself onwards nonetheless. Shebazaruka was still here, asleep on her mound as he had seen her before, and quickly he retreated. If the Mireforms had not reached her yet, where were they? Back into the trees he went, back and forth, and back to the cavern, and then amongst the trees again . . . until the sky began to lighten, and he knew he had already tarried too long.
He returned to the camp, frustrated. Bel and Jaya were already awake and speaking with Fazel, and M’Meska was sitting up yawning enormously. He came back together behind a tree, settled the illusion spell over himself, and stepped into view.
‘Ah,’ said Bel, ‘there you are. Find anything?’
‘Nothing,’ said Losara truthfully.
‘Strange,’ said Jaya. ‘I feel better rested than I have in days, from only a couple of hours sleep.’
‘Maybe you’re excited.’ Bel smiled, seeming in a strangely good mood. ‘After all, we are on the trail of murderous monsters on the way to a dragon’s lair.’
‘Sound pretty exciting,’ agreed M’Meska. ‘What for breakfast?’
‘We’ll eat on the run,’ said Bel, and nudged Hiza with his foot. Hiza protested so quickly it was hard to believe he had actually been asleep. ‘Come on Hiza, get up – time to move again.’
•
In the woods looking onto the dragon’s lair, a squat and leafless tree stump opened beady white eyes.
‘How much longer?’ it said.
‘Quiet, Ectid,’ replied a tree-shaped Eldew. ‘You know the plan. We wait for one of them to leave, however long it takes. Mighty we may be, but dragons are not to be underestimated.’
‘Look there,’ whispered another tree next to him. ‘It takes no time at all.’
From the mouth of the cavern a dragon emerged. It took off, somewhat shakily.
‘It’s going!’ said Ectid eagerly. ‘It’s gone! Only one in the cave!’
‘Very well,’ said Eldew. ‘Let us go visiting.’
The Dragon’s Lair
The Dragon’s Lair
The Dragon’s Lair
Bel stood at the forest’s edge, considering his next move. Ahead the midday sun shone unhindered upon a rise of ruined earth, streaked with the ash of long-dead trees. Further up, in the side of a cliff, the cave mouth breathed foreboding. It seemed unreal that they were finally here . . . and still Bel had no real plan, beyond reliance on his skills, quick thinking, and a hope that patterns would appear. Surely they would. Just the thought of felling such a foe made little zings shoot through him, turning his body alive with anticipation. He almost wanted to break from the group, tear off up the hill and charge into the lair . . . but he brought himself under control. As much as he liked to believe he could single-handedly best a dragon, Jaya would never forgive him if he got himself burned to a cinder.
‘So,’ said Gellan quietly, ‘what is your plan?’
It wasn’t the first time the mage had asked, and now that they were actually here Bel found the question even more irritating. How was he supposed to know what to do?
‘The plan,’ he said, ‘is that fate made me a warrior then led me here. I assume, therefore, there may be some fighting. That’s the plan.’ He turned to Fazel, who crouched by his side. ‘What do you sense?’
The mage stared blankly up the hill, then shook his skull.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But that does not mean there is nothing.’
‘Maybe,’ said Jaya, ‘I should go and have a look.’
Bel shot her a startled look. ‘What?’
‘Surely you’ve not forgotten my occupation, dear,’ she said. ‘If someone is going to enter a cave undetected, and make off with a pretty piece of jewellery, it’s going to be me.’
‘No,’ said Bel. ‘Not that I doubt your abilities,’ he added quickly, ‘but that cave holds worse than fat merchants sleeping.’
‘Well, you’re not going in there by yourself either,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts.
Bel found he was indeed still considering entering the cave alone. If he were to fight a dragon, he needed to focus on obeying his instincts, and that meant not having anyo
ne else to concern him. Yet what was the point of surrounding himself with companions if he did not intend to make use of them? Gellan and Fazel at least should go with him, and M’Meska’s bow might come in handy. That would mean leaving Hiza and Jaya here, which would make them vulnerable if Mireforms were still in the area.
‘Monsters all around,’ he muttered, and cast his eyes about the group. One by one they took his meaning, and nodded. ‘We go together,’ he said.
Cautiously they left the trees and made their way up the hill. The cave mouth seemed like an eye before which they were totally exposed. Anything could be watching from the darkness.
‘Look,’ said Fazel, a bony finger pointing at the ground. There were footprints in the ash, large and clawed – a number of sets side by side heading into the cave.
‘Mireforms,’ growled Bel. ‘So, they beat us here, of course. But what fate did they meet?’
He considered the cave mouth with even greater uncertainty. If the Mireforms had been successful, that meant the Stone was no longer inside. But what if the dragon had found them and killed them? Or what if they hid in the dark? Could a conflict still be in progress between dragon and Mireform, deep inside the earth? Despite the adrenaline shooting through him, there was still no sense of any path to follow.
‘Stop,’ he commanded suddenly, halfway up the rise. ‘Spread out.’
‘What are you going to do?’ said Jaya.
‘Let us not enter tunnels that could fill with fire at any moment,’ said Bel. ‘Or dodge claws in the dark. We’re better off here, in the open. If something is inside, it can come to us.’
He turned to the cave and shocked everyone by shouting.
‘Dragon!’ he called. ‘Show yourself!’
‘Rash,’ Gellan murmured.
‘Spread out!’ he repeated. ‘We are less of a target when we stand apart!’
They obeyed him, fearfully, knuckles white on weapons or held ready to cast spells. He moved in front of them, hoping to make himself the dragon’s focus if it emerged.