The Sylph Hunter

by L. J. McDonald

  She couldn’t read, Zalia thought. She’d never had the need, even if her status hadn’t been too low for it to be allowed. “And now you’re her ambassador.”

  “Yeah.” He looked sheepish. “Not that I’m doing that good a job of it so far.”

  Zalia smiled at him, not looking down this time when he met her gaze and smiled back. “We’ll find the queen,” she told him and was happy at her use of the word we when his smile widened.

  If they couldn’t find someone to take them to the queen where they were going, she thought, then she could ask One-Eleven to take them instead. Her smile faltered a moment later at the image of One-Eleven meeting Devon, as well as the consideration of just what the battler would want in return for his help, as well as how, deep inside, the very thought was as exciting as it was terrifying.

  Exhausted from all of her efforts, Airi hugged her master’s neck. She’d drunk some of his energy, but she didn’t want to drain him until he was also tired, not in this heat, so was now sipping despite her need, and trying her best to keep the back of his neck a little bit cooler than the rest of him.

  She did listen to his conversation with Zalia. She was asexual herself, with no interest in her own physical pleasure, but she liked to see her master happy and more, Zalia matched him. The thought of them getting together and having children that might be her masters in the next generation excited her. Zalia made Devon’s pattern sing and that translated to her as the most beautiful music she could imagine.

  Zalia, she knew, felt the same link to Devon. There was no way she couldn’t, and that only excited Airi more. She pressed against her master’s neck, wanting to encourage him, but not wanting to frighten him again. Devon hadn’t had many relationships in his life and certainly none had ever had the potential of this one. To Airi, this felt so much more important than foreign queens and Hunters and she pressed close, watching them link hands with all the happiness her kind could feel.

  The favorite meeting spot of the battle sylphs was in the ruins of the arena where they’d once fought for the amusement of the emperor. It was a bit ironic for them to meet there, but it was a familiar place to most of them. All of them knew where the ruins were and they were central in the city. It made sense to go there.

  They did so when they wanted to rest and commune with their own kind, floating together above the rubble as a massive black cloud filled with lightning. They also met there to exchange news and to start guard shifts, taking turns so that each of them would have time for their women.

  The middle of the day was one of their shift changes, when the humans were sluggish from the heat and less likely to cause trouble. An hour after Devon and his companions passed by, they descended, some shifting to human form, most staying clouds, and a few even changing back to the mouthless, green, backward-legged creatures they’d been while slaves of the emperor.

  “I’ve found her!”

  His hands clasped behind his back, Tooie stood atop a shattered piece of wall and looked down at one of his hive mates. “You have?”

  One-Eleven grinned at him happily, three times Tooie’s age but as excitable as a juvenile. “I have. She’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve never seen anyone like her, not even in the harem.” His smile faded. “But she hasn’t slept with me yet. I know she wants to, but she keeps stopping me. It’s frustrating.”

  Tooie’s smile widened. It was almost funny to think of himself as the voice of experience. “Of course she wants to sleep with you. You could make a half-dead rat want to sleep with you.”

  One-Eleven blinked and looked a little nauseous at the thought.

  Tooie reached down and tapped the battler’s nose, making him start. “If you want something real and lasting, you need to do more than just make her want to sleep with you,” he told him seriously. He’d known One-Eleven since his own enslavement started and he knew the older sylph was one of the worst of them when it came to single-mindedness. “Remember Ap?”

  One-Eleven’s eyes darkened. All of them remembered Ap. She’d been the most popular concubine in the harem and all of them had had her many times. She’d been addicted to sex, wanton and hot. When Eapha gave them all their freedom though, Ap had been the first to leave, setting sail on the first ship that would take her. When one battle sylph asked her why she’d want to leave, her answer had been that she wanted more.

  Tooie saw what might have been the faint look of comprehension in One-Eleven’s eyes and nodded. “I didn’t sleep with my Eapha the first time I met her. Most concubines I did, but with her, I became her friend first and she’s still with me.”

  One-Eleven frowned. “So what do I do? I really want her.”

  “Get to know her. Try talking to her. Human women aren’t like queens.”

  One-Eleven looked dubious, but Tooie didn’t have time to wonder if he’d actually listen instead of giving in to his instincts and just taking the woman. She’d surely enjoy it, but it was harder for them to form a real bond that way, especially with these desert women who were all so afraid of their own bodies and what they could feel. Yahe swept down, yelling for Tooie’s attention even as he shifted to human and stormed toward him, his fists clenched at his sides. Tooie didn’t need to be an empath to tell how furious the other battler was. One-Eleven took one look at him and retreated to think about his woman.

  “Tooie!” Yahe bellowed. “You better do something! Bift has skipped out on his shift twice! I’ve been walking back and forth in that stupid marketplace and circling this damn city for more than a day! Kiala is going to kill me!”

  That was unusual, even for Bift. Tooie frowned as the other battlers close by looked on, whispering amongst themselves. Yahe ignored them all, glaring up at the lead battler in absolute fury. Tooie didn’t blame him. He’d heard Kiala cursing about her battler standing her up not long ago. “Did you try and call him?” he asked.

  “Yes! The bastard is ignoring me!”

  Bift should have at least answered. He certainly should have showed up for his shift and Tooie would be talking to him about that. In fact, he’d take a few other battlers and slam the lazy creature around a few times as a reminder about duty. It was unnatural for a battle sylph to ignore the urge to guard, but it did happen from time to time.

  Tooie closed his eyes. As lead battler and lover of the queen, his senses had actually grown more sensitive and he reached out to Bift, searching for the battler’s unique pattern among the thousands in the city.

  He didn’t find it.

  Tooie’s eyes snapped open. “Do you know where he went?” he asked, staring over Yahe’s head at the distant hills of sand beyond the city. They were as wide as the ocean and in their own way just as deadly.

  “He was going to the gate,” Yahe sulked. “I wanted to take Kiala to see it.”

  Tooie looked over his shoulder at the other battlers of the Circle, the secret group that hid their monogamous affairs in the harem by pretending to sleep with each other’s women. When Eapha became queen with Tooie as her lead battler, they’d become his closest confidants. Yahe was one of them, if one of the more temperamental, but the others looked back at him with the same sudden concern.

  Raanan, Laik, Kadin, Ogden, Xenos, Baback, Banner, Edom, and Gaetan. All of them handsome beyond human limitations for their women’s sake. All of them with names given by those women, now that they didn’t have to be designated solely by numbers. They’d worked together to protect their women from the handlers who would have taken them away, even though they were from different hives and hated each other. They got over that hate because they’d needed to and learned to communicate when they were forbidden to speak, whether aloud or mind to mind. Turning to them instead of any of the others felt natural, especially given how their new shared hive pattern made them brothers, even beyond their shared history.

  He should have answered me, Tooie signed, making the gestures with his hands that they’
d all learned years ago, taught by Baback’s lover Ulani, who’d come to the harem knowing how to sign thanks to a deaf brother. It had become their lifeline to each other and to the women they loved. Other battlers looked at them curiously, but most turned back to their own conversations while the eleven of them gathered around, even Yahe spotting the hand gestures and widening his eyes with sudden surprise.

  He wouldn’t have left Meridal, Laik signed.

  Banner nodded in agreement. Definitely not. His master would never let him, even if he thought of it. Taini would never want to leave. None of the women who were masters to battlers would, not when it was a death sentence everywhere else. A woman in control of a battle sylph was considered an abomination in most of the world. Besides, outside Meridal, women were little better than property at the best of times. In Meridal, they were loved as dearly as the queen.

  Come, Tooie decided and changed shape, lifting off the ground as a cloud of black and lightning. The other ten members of the Circle rose with him, all of them abandoning their human forms so they could take to the sky.

  It wasn’t a long trip. They arced over the city, scanning the ground for danger from pure instinct as they headed to the same small building that held the stairs Devon and his friends had used. They didn’t take the stairs to the corridor that led one way to the harem and the other to the feeder holding cells. Instead, they swept into vents in the building’s roof, bypassing the harem and the feeder chambers entirely as they flashed straight down a shaft that led deep underground, and emptied out in the corridor to the summoning chamber itself.

  Tooie saw the damage immediately, the chunks taken out of the walls and floor and the destruction in the chamber itself, along with the dried pools of blood.

  The eleven battle sylphs spread out, their energy patterns high and their hate spreading. To others it would cause fear, undermine courage. To them, it was reassuring as well as a warning to their enemy.

  Delicately, Kadin reached down with a length of smoke to touch one of the blood pools. This is human, he said silently to them.

  Tooie floated over to join him, as did the others. Only humans left traces of their death. When sylphs died, there was nothing but drifting sparkles and the stench of ozone, then nothing at all.

  What can do this? Edom asked.

  Tooie looked toward the altar where the gate would have opened. It had been kept open for a long time, he thought. There would have been a lot of sylphs and humans here to celebrate it. Bift wouldn’t have been the only battle sylph in attendance either.

  I know of only one thing that can kill a battler before he can send out a warning, he said in grim understanding.

  The Hunter woke to the sudden roaring of battle sylphs through the city. Its tentacles were tucked up underneath its body, except for the one it used to secure itself to one of the buildings, and it stretched and sighed, peaceful after its sleep.

  Through the city, it could hear the battle sylphs shouting out the warning, calling out its presence to every sylph there, as well as the growing panic of the smaller sylphs. Anchored, it listened to their conversations, careful for any sign of a real threat to itself, not that there ever was. The creatures were as helpless against it here as they were in the old world. It could continue to eat with impunity, it seemed. It tucked its tentacles closer to itself. Once it had finished sleeping, at any rate.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The neighborhoods of the city grew progressively wealthier the farther the group progressed, the streets wider and cleaner. They started to pass more opulent homes, all of them surrounded by courtyards and tall stone walls that hid most of the buildings and anyone who might be using them. The garbage that had been strewn all over the rest of the city was less as well and there were even a few desert trees on the sidewalks, still alive in the blistering heat. They didn’t see any people, which, given the temperature, didn’t surprise Devon.

  Zalia looked up as he panted and swallowed with a parched throat, and she smiled, patting his hand with her own.

  “I must look like a roasted tomato,” he told her.

  “You’re cute,” she disagreed and blushed, looking down.

  Devon grinned at her, squeezing her hand despite the heat and his general, sweaty misery. She made him not care how his body felt in this place. She made him not think about the horrible things they were going to have to deal with. With Zalia at his side, it seemed, he could do anything.

  Ahead of him, he heard Xehm exclaim. Devon looked forward again to see the road curved. As he and Zalia came around the corner, he spotted Xehm and Gel standing with Shasha before a huge wall that crossed the road and vanished between buildings to either side. He could tell it was sylph-made. It stood nearly as high as the buildings, and though it was made of stone, it was all one piece and had an organic flow to it that reminded him with a sudden pang of the sylph buildings back home. Sylphs had built almost all of Sylph Valley and the entire town had that same organic feel.

  “It’s beautiful,” Zalia said.

  “They always are.” Devon looked up at the top, nearly thirty feet or more above their heads. It wasn’t entirely consistent in height. There was no gate either. Devon was just wondering how far they’d have to walk to get to one when Shasha stepped forward and pressed her hand against the wall.

  The stone rippled, wavering like a pool of water through which someone had swept an oar. From Shasha’s hand outward, the wall swept away, the stone bulging into a frozen wave that left an opening both wide and tall enough for all of them to pass.

  “That’s amazing,” Zalia gasped.

  It was, but Devon could see how tired it made Shasha. The earth sylph swayed slightly for a moment before she stomped forward, leading the way with Xehm right behind her, the old man still more than half carrying Gel.

  Devon and Zalia followed, walking through the arch in the wall and looking around curiously. Shasha waited just inside, and the moment they passed, she closed the wall again, rippling the stone back down into place. That done, she looked up at the sky and the top of the wall that cut off the sky above them.

  “What is it?” Zalia asked her.

  The earth sylph turned those eerily beautiful ruby eyes on her. “The wall isn’t enough,” she said. “A dome would be better.” She looked upward again. “Yes. A hundred feet high and ten feet thick.” She sighed. “I like the sun though and my master is afraid of being closed in again.” She turned those eyes on them again. “I never should have taken him to the gate. I just wanted to see it and he didn’t want to be alone.”

  Her voice sounded like gravel rolling in a wooden barrel. Devon frowned, feeling Airi press against his neck again. “A dome. Against the Hunter?”

  “Yes. A proper hive. I’ll still miss the sun though.”

  Devon and Zalia looked at each other as Shasha walked heavily away, moving after her master. What would life be like in a stone dome, he wondered, and saw the same question on Zalia’s face. Neither of them spoke it aloud and they continued after the others, still holding hands.

  It was radically different on this side of the wall. The architecture didn’t change much, though it did become richer the farther they went, obviously being a neighborhood for the wealthy who hadn’t lived on the floating island the sylphs destroyed. What was different was the number of people around, as well as the number of sylphs.

  They were everywhere. Even standing by the wall, Devon could see sylphs of every type and in every shape imaginable, scattered everywhere and doing, he supposed, what sylphs do. No wonder he hadn’t seen any of them anywhere else in the city. More, there were humans as well, in even greater numbers than the sylphs, though there was something wrong with many of them. Devon’s skin actually crawled as he saw how many of them were just sitting on the road or wandering aimlessly, most of them with a blank look on their faces. A few looked insane. More looked terrified.

  “What’s
wrong with them?” he whispered. Zalia shook her head in mute confusion, nervously pressing against his side until he put his arm around her shoulder and held her to him. Even with the heat, it felt right. She smelled good, like some kind of desert flower.

  They’re feeders, Airi told him. A lot of them are really messed up in the head.

  Devon swore softly, Zalia looking up at him in confusion. “Feeders,” he explained. They were the men and women who’d been less than slaves in Meridal when the emperor ruled. They’d been the ones living in the cages he’d seen, closed-in places so small there was barely room to stand and turn around, all of them with their tongues cut out so that there was no risk of them giving their sylphs orders. He looked ahead at Gel, who was mostly walking on his own now, though Xehm kept a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The man shuddered occasionally, though there was no way for Devon to know if that was from the horror his life had been in the cages or this latest trauma.

  Zalia looked around in amazement and a bit of fear at the people they passed. Many of them stared at the newcomers, though no one approached and no one spoke. They didn’t seem to interact with each other either, or with the sylphs who moved among them. The sylphs were just as silent, though with their ability to speak mind to mind amongst themselves, there could be thousands of conversations going on and Devon would never know it. It was eerie, and terribly sad. These people were wounded in a way he couldn’t comprehend, hurt down to the core of their very souls. Kadmiel had at least been functional and mostly normal, though quiet, and Gel had been interested enough to go with Shasha to the gate. These had to be the most broken of the feeders. Devon really hoped that they were in the minority, since he didn’t want to think that there could be thousands of them wandering around in here with dead eyes.

  “I didn’t know they’d stayed,” Zalia whispered. “I never saw any on the streets, so I just thought they’d left, like so many others had.”