by Patty Jansen
He bent over the long neck. “You ready?”
The giant wings flapped and he rose into the air.
Chapter 34
* * *
“THE IDIOT!” Lady Armaine cursed, and Tandor was unsure if she meant him or Isandor, who had become a black speck of ever-diminishing size in the sky. This was something neither of them had considered: the dacon could only be controlled by its Thilleian parent.
He stood a little apart from his mother and her retinue.
The Chevakians were returning to their balloons, ignoring hundreds of bodies in Eagle Knight uniforms. Chevakian commands rang out over the camp. Quick, quick, get to the shelters.
It was futile. Not even the shelters would be enough to weather this storm. The front was already at the next ridge, and whenever the clouds parted, human-like forms made from icefire peeked through.
“So.” His mother spat. “The storm comes. We all hide. Tiverius is destroyed, and everyone who manages to survive is convinced that icefire is the worst thing in the world. No one will want to support us anymore. Our family is ruined. Can you think of a worse outcome?”
Tandor held his silence. As a matter of fact, he could think of a worse outcome, one in which Ruko destroyed all of Chevakia. Even his mother didn’t understand the depth of the boy’s anger.
“Come, let’s get out of the weather.” His mother walked towards her private truck. Tandor followed, for lack of inspiration of what else to do.
Loriane had the Chevakian senator. His children despised him. His mother had never loved him, and both his countries disowned him.
They joined the long column of Chevakians going into the city. The camp inhabitants watched the vehicles roll past. These people would all die, even though they thought they could survive the icefire cloud. They were people like Loriane, most from the Outer City, most innocent, tired, injured and confused by the succession of battles fought in the camp. Tandor couldn’t bear to look at them.
Isandor was flying a zigzag pattern over the city, creating a lacework of icefire in the sky. It was as pretty as it was futile. A stupidly brave boy. Given some training and a few hard life lessons, he and his sister would make a good king and queen. The Knights were defeated. He’d even heard rumours of a rebellion from within. Rider Cornatan killed by the hand of his own son. The younger generation was taking over.
“Why don’t you ever listen to what I’m saying?” his mother said.
She sat opposite him in the lavishly appointed cabin.
Old money. Old values. Corrupt values. After the mistakes he made—and they were his mistakes—the survivors from the City of Glass would never accept him as their ruler. His mother certainly didn’t deserve to get that position. The throne belonged to Jevaithi, or Isandor, or Loriane even, people who cared.
And as his mother talked about hollow victories and corrupt plans, and as the doomed city that was his home slid past outside the window, one thing became clear to him: it was never too late to make a stand. Even if it would be his last.
He knocked on the glass that separated the driver compartment from the rest of the cabin. “Stop the truck.”
The driver did. His mother stopped halfway through her rant. Tandor rose from his seat and opened the door.
“What are you doing?” His mother spoke as if he was a small child.
Tandor didn’t answer. He let himself onto the pavement and slammed the door shut. The truck didn’t move, but he walked away from it. His mother opened the door and shouted, “Tandor, come back!”
But Tandor kept walking. There was one reason that Ruko still sought revenge, and he was that reason. He walked into a side street and shouted at the sky, “Ruko! Come and get me if you dare.”
Chapter 35
* * *
WITH A FEW lazy wingbeats, the dacon turned and flew back over the city. He loved flying on her broad and muscled back. Her movements were majestic and powerful. He had never flown a stronger mount.
The wall of smoke loomed before him, a mass of broiling black clouds. Fires consumed farm land and forest, thick smoke spreading from the fire front. Wind whipped the trees on the ground, throwing up eddies of dust. The air tasted of smoke and grit. And icefire. It streamed through the air, forming ever-strengthening cords that danced over the dacon’s skin. Isandor felt none of it; she drank it all in, like a camel in desperate need for water. With each wingbeat, muscles became more powerful and confident. With each wingbeat, she came closer to the front.
Soon, tendrils of smoke detached from the clouds and reached for her, long strands of wispy substance, whirling with grace that belied the violence within. Isandor’s skin tickled with their power, and these were only offshoots that escaped the dacon’s skin. The cold was biting, and he wasn’t dressed for it.
The dacon swooped back and forth, feeding from the roiling clouds, halting their progress. This was then, how the storm could be beaten, unravelled from the outside like a ball of knitting wool.
Back and forth, back and forth.
But when the outer layer of grey-black peeled off, the inside of the clouds glowed an angry fiery orange. Shapes of blue icefire moved within. By the skylights, something lived inside those clouds, shapes that knitted the outer layer back together. Shapes that picked up entire trees and hurled them at the dacon. She managed to evade their projectiles, but Isandor felt the whooshing of wind of the force with which they were thrown. The burning projectiles fell amongst farms yet unaffected, and started new fires. The fire front roared and billowed outwards. Lightning cracked and thunder shook the ground. The dacon absorbed power, and flew backwards and forwards.
It was not enough.
Not enough to stop the fire, not enough to halt the progression of the front towards Tiverius.
We are going through the clouds, Isandor thought at the creature. If we break apart the storm, it may lose coherence.
He sensed a measure of glee. Finally. Why did you wait so long.
She banked sharply and plunged into the roiling mass. Blackness closed all around him. The air was so cold that his hands became stiff. Wind buffeted him. Icefire grew much stronger here. Blue strands of light zapped through the darkness without notice. They struck the dacon’s back, its head, its wings. She absorbed all the power without flinching.
Angry orange flames lit up, and a human-shaped figure made of flames rose from the fire. It had dark holes for eyes, and gouts of fire for hands and a mouth that blazed with white icefire.
Attack it! he thought at the dacon.
She dived into the fireball. Air crackled around Isandor, protecting him in a cage of sizzling strands. Flames pulled at the cage, but wherever they broke though, the cage knitted back.
The fire-being hefted a burning tree and swung it around as if the dacon were an annoying fly. Sparks flew off the burning wood. The trunk hit Isandor’s protective cage with a juddering crack. Some of the strands broke and re-knitted around the burning tree. Isandor was lifted off the dacon’s back with his protective cage when the fire-being swung the tree in the other direction. Sparks rained down on him, freezing onto his skin and clothing.
He screamed in his mind, Help!
He couldn’t see the dacon anymore.
The fire-being roared triumph. Isandor crawled as far into his cage as possible, but the fire-being wasn’t roaring at him. The dacon had taken hold of its arm with its mouth. It shook its head like an eagle trying to kill a larger animal by shaking it, and sparks of fire rained from the fire-being’s arm.
It dropped the tree. Isandor fell, and fell . . . and was snatched up just before hitting the ground by the dacon, carrying the icefire cage in its mouth.
It flew at crazy speed, dodged and twisted. At least twenty other fire-beings had come to the first fire-bein
g’s aid. It was shouting at the sky, sparks spewing from its mouth and still leaking from its injured arm. Icefire streamed from its damaged form into the dacon.
A second fire-being tried to grab the dacon, but it swung its tail, unleashing another shower of sparks from the fire-being’s side. Isandor understood. The sparks were blood, and once the skin of the fire-being had been broken, it didn’t easily repair.
“Put me down!” he yelled over the roar of fire and wind.
The dacon did, and Isandor climbed onto its back, anchoring the icefire cage to the dacon’s shoulders.
As he did so, he noticed how the skin of the dacon had darkened . . . and wrinkled. As if she sensed his thought, she turned her head. Her eyes, once bright and blue, had clouded. Eyelids sagged, wrinkles surrounded her nose.
She looked . . . old.
He understood. “By the skylights. Taking in icefire makes you age quickly.”
Her eyes were sad. How long did she have?
The lumbering fire-beings were coming for them, and there were a lot more now. The idea was to injure them. Two were already ‘bleeding’, one staggering aimlessly leaking sparks from its side, the other now kneeling on the ground, and much smaller than it had been before.
Isandor unsheathed his dagger and held it to a strand of icefire to imbue the blade with it. Then he threw it at the nearest fire-being. Straight into the chest, and out the other side. It left a gaping hole into the fire-being’s body. It seemed surprised for a heartbeat or so, and then the sparks gushed out, the being howled at the sky and fell flat on the ground. Isandor cheered. He kneed the dacon around. Hauled up his dagger on its thread of icefire borrowed from the dacon.
Threw it at the next construct, which it hit in the shoulder. Turn around, and again. The fire-beings were not very smart, if determined to fight to the death. Several lay on the ground, their lifeblood oozing out of them in the form of sparks, re-absorbed into the dacon’s skin.
Isandor collected the dagger, threw it, retrieved it, threw it. And the fifth one, he missed completely. His arms were getting tired and too cold to aim effectively. By the skylights, how many of these things were there?
Also, he noticed that the fire front had started moving again. There were only two bleeding fire-beings left on the ground. The others had all come back to life again.
A thought went through his mind. You cannot kill a servitor until its master dies.
These were not regular servitors, but what if they had a master? If so, who was this master? How could he find out in the short time he still had?
He became aware of the sound of a voice. Somewhere outside the cloud, a man was calling his name.
No, when he steered the dacon out of the clouds, he heard that the man was calling, “Ruko, Ruko.”
It was Tandor.
He steered the dacon to a glide and landed next to Tandor—his father. He screamed, “Do you command these fire beings? Tell them to stop!”
Tandor shook his head. “Sadly, I do not. But I know who does.” And he raised his voice. “Ruko!”
A huge being detached from the clouds, with shimmering flames for arms and legs. The body was transparent, and the head a construct of delicate flames. Isandor could see the eyes, hollow and dark, the shimmering flames that formed the hair. The figure, a young man, had a broad, square face and a jutting chin.
“Ah, there you are. Come and get me if you dare.” And then to Isandor, “Stand back.”
“But he will kill you!” And somehow, that mattered, because Tandor was his father, and there had to be some good in him.
The fire-being that was Ruko bent down, showing Isandor all the intricate detail of the head. Smooth skin, a flat nose with flaring nostrils, heavy brows. With a chill, Isandor recognised the giant who had locked him and Jevaithi into the butcher’s warehouse.
“Yes, he will kill me. Revenge is the only thing he has ever wanted since losing his girl. If not me, he’ll go after the Knights, or the Chevakians. He’ll find a reason to suit his murders. The only way to stop him is to give him what he wants. I’ll tell you something I’ve learned. Servitors are a bad idea, not because they obey evil people, but because they are evil, and you cannot control them unless you’re more evil than they are. I was never evil enough to do what would have been required to keep them under control. I must pay for that. Look after the City of Glass, son. It is yours.”
The fire-being’s hand touched Tandor, and the world exploded in a flash of white. The wind knitted into strands of power that were sucked into a roaring vortex of icefire. Isandor was flung high into the air. The wind sucked him up as if he was a flurry of snow and dropped him on the ground in a whirlwind of dust and leaves. Thunder rumbled. Huge hail stones pelted down, bouncing all around him. He pressed himself into the mud shielding his head with his arms. Those hailstones hurt.
Furious as the storm was, it didn’t last long. The hail stopped, the torrential rain eased, and Isandor pushed himself up. Somewhere in the struggle, he had lost his wooden leg, and he fumbled in the mud until he found a tree branch to support himself.
The branch had come from a copse of trees next to a ruined farmhouse. Isandor limped to the building. The roof had been blown off and the exposed beams seared by fire. Piles of blacked coal that had once been items of furniture were still smoking. He found no sign of life. Rain drizzled down, and mist and smoke restricted his vision. Where was he?
A soft whimper attracted his attention. On the other side of the farmhouse, he found a duck pen with all the ducks in the hutch, burnt to cinders. The sound came again. The grassy field next to the duckhouse was strewn with burnt wood and splinters, and amongst them, he found an old woman. She lay in the dirt, her back horribly twisted. Her eyes were closed and her lips formed inaudible words.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’ll help you.”
She didn’t react. A tear ran over her cheek. Her breath came shallow, although he couldn’t see any injuries. The skin on her face was pale and thin as paper. White hair was plastered to her head. Curly hair.
Breath caught in his throat. He knelt, clumsily without his wooden leg. “Can you hear me?”
She turned her head towards him and opened her eyes. They were blue.
With trembling hands, Isandor tried to turn her lower body. If only she’d lie straight, she wouldn’t have so much trouble breathing.
But her lower body was limp and he feared that she had broken her spine and he’d be best not to touch her. He took the wrinkled right hand into his. The nails were still sharp, but the skin no longer hot.
“Please, live,” he whispered. “For me.”
She gave his hand a tiny squeeze. Her blue eyes blinked, once, and remained open.
* * *
Isandor didn’t know how long he’d sat there when the sound of an approaching truck made him look over his shoulder.
An unfamiliar vehicle had stopped on the farm road. The passenger door opened and someone climbed out.
A female voice called, “Isandor!”
Jevaithi. He struggled to his feet. She rushed to him, jumping over the debris, and came to a halt when she saw the body.
“It’s all right,” he said.
She didn’t look convinced, but ran into his arms, enveloping him with her familiar scent. He was so happy that he pulled her close and kissed her, until he remembered he shouldn’t do this anymore, because she was his sister and it was not proper. But there was a time for being proper later. He kissed her again, because he loved her so much. She broke the kiss by pushing herself against his chest.
“Hey, silly. We’re not alone, you know.” Her chest heaved with deep breaths. Their hearts beat in unison.
“I love you. I don’t care what anyone says.”
“I love you, too.”
“I was so scared for you. How did you escape the Knights?”
“Someone helped me.” She turned around and behind her stood . . .
“Carro?”
Indeed. It was Carro, but he looked much older than when Isandor had last seen him. He came forward, glancing at the old woman’s body.
He stopped in front of Isandor, and dropped to his knees.
“Your Majesty, could you forgive me? Could you forgive all the Knighthood for the things they have done? Could you accept a new Knighthood of men and women who are honest and obedient for all the right reasons?”
“Get up, you silly,” Isandor said. “We’re friends.”
“Were friends,” Carro said. “I did great wrongs because I believed that I must do those things to please people in power.”
Isandor shrugged, suddenly full of emotion and memories. Him and Carro playing in the snowy alleys of the Outer City, him and Carro leafing through old—and illegal—books. Him and Carro flying in the race for the Queen’s Champion. The strange discipline of the eyrie, with its rules and bullying by older Apprentices. Carro had not been given an easy time.
“Can you forgive me? Your Highness?”
“I accept your apology,” Isandor said. “But please do not call me that again. I am no king and I have no desire to lead a country.”
“But we have to,” Carro said. “There are so few good people left. We have Rider Barton, you and the Queen. That’s it.”
“The Knights of the Council are dead? Rider Cornatan?”
Carro nodded, and looked away. Isandor sensed a story that was too raw yet to be told.
“Come on, silly, you’re embarrassing me. Get up.” He gave his stick to Jevaithi, grasped her shoulder and held out a hand. Carro took it and Isandor heaved him to his feet while holding himself upright on Jevaithi’s shoulder.