Voyages of the Flying Dragon: Beast Child

by Ben Chandler

  ‘You’re no god.’

  Missy screeched and jumped hastily to her feet. Heidi had come around the corner. Missy could see her silhouetted against Lucis’s light.

  ‘Miss Clemens?’ the captain called out to her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Missy replied, though she wasn’t sure it was. Heidi was glaring at her. The girl was squeezing her sides and shaking slightly. Missy didn’t need her brother’s empathic gifts to know the Heiliglander was furious. ‘What do you want?’ She tried to put force into her words but failed.

  ‘You’re no god,’ Heidi repeated in a harsh whisper.

  Missy stood taller. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Gods don’t pee.’ Heidi leaned closer.

  Missy took a step backwards, feeling like a fool. She’d led the girl to believe that she was the god Magni so that she would help her find Lenis, but she hadn’t bothered to put any effort into her ruse. She was suddenly aware of how dependent they all were on the girl. Heidi had been the one to lead them here. If she decided to abandon them, they’d be lost in the tunnels under the mountain. Missy tried to remember the way back to the mineshaft, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t been paying attention, relying instead on the others to guide her. Another thought occurred to her – how did Heidi even know her way around down here? She claimed the miners had sealed the tunnel once they realised where it led. Had they had a chance to explore first? Missy needed to focus, but her mind didn’t seem to want to work properly.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, playing for time. Should she call the others for help? How would Heidi react to that?

  ‘I saw you,’ Heidi hissed. ‘You follow the foreigners around like a child. You grow tired like a mortal. You piss like a mortal!’ Missy wished she’d stop bringing that up. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want with me?’

  Missy hesitated. She had to convince the girl they meant no harm, that they could help each other. Bluffing hadn’t worked. Could she make Heidi believe she was a god, like she had compelled everyone in the square to answer her? No! She recoiled from the thought. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t do that. That only left one option. The truth.

  ‘No,’ she said, looking down at her feet, ‘I’m not a god. I’m not Magni.’

  ‘I knew it!’ Heidi grabbed Missy’s shoulders in a crushing grip. ‘You are a fraud! Why? Why did you do it?’

  Missy tried to twist away from Heidi’s grip, but the girl didn’t let go. Missy suppressed the urge to call for help. It was her fault Heidi was here. It had been her decision to use the Heiliglander to guide them to the temple. It was up to her to make it right.

  Heidi was gripping Missy so tightly she could feel the girl’s worn-down fingernails digging through her shirt and into her skin. Missy forced herself to look into her eyes. Their intensity frightened her. Without even meaning to, she reached into Heidi’s mind and was bombarded by memory fragments. The town square. Karasu. The fires. The people of Fronge. The burning. The dying. Missy pulled her awareness away. Heidi’s chin was thrust forwards. Strands of blonde hair had escaped their braid and were stuck to her face by sweat, dirt, and ash. This close, even in the shadowed corridor and through the grime, Missy could see the spattering of freckles that covered Heidi’s cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Missy began, choking on her own words. She tried again, ‘I’m so sorry. The man in the square – Karasu – he took my brother. I just want to get him back.’

  Heidi suddenly released her shoulders. ‘Your brother?’

  Missy nodded. ‘His name is Lenis. We were sneaking on board Karasu’s airship when it took off. I escaped. Lenis didn’t.’

  ‘You were sneaking onto his airship?’ Heidi was peering at her through the gloom. ‘Why?’

  Missy sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’ Heidi didn’t move or say anything. The silence stretched on until Missy felt compelled to continue. ‘He has something we need. We’ve been searching for him. It was only luck we were passing by this way when we saw the smoke …’

  Heidi sniffed loudly and rubbed a grimy hand across her nose. When she pulled her hand away, Missy saw tears clinging to her eyelashes. ‘You have been hunting this man, Karasu?’ Missy’s throat tightened. She nodded. ‘And when you find him, what will you do?’

  ‘Get back my brother, somehow, and the stones. They’re the things he has that we need.’

  ‘Will you kill him?’

  The words were uttered so calmly it took Missy a moment to react. ‘What? I … I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought that far.’ Her response sounded lame, even to her. What had she expected would happen when they confronted the mercenary? He wasn’t likely to just hand over the stones. Missy shivered and brought her arms around herself. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you have power!’ Heidi grabbed her again, though this time not as hard. ‘I have seen it. At your bidding, we all obeyed. The Vaettir do as you command.’ Missy instinctively picked the meaning of the unfamiliar word out of the girl’s mind. Bestia. ‘You can destroy the man who … the man who …’ Heidi sagged to the ground, still clinging to Missy’s shirtsleeves. Great sobs wracked her frame, and Missy felt tears of her own coming. ‘You … can … avenge … them …’

  Missy gasped. ‘I … I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Heidi pulled back. Tears had tracked their progress through the dirt on her face. ‘Why can’t you?’

  Missy thought of the Quillblade she had given over to the captain’s keeping. What Heidi said was true. She did have power. Power to read people’s minds, to compel them to do as she wished. With the Quillblade she could harness some of the Thunder Bird’s power, could even summon him if she had Lenis’s help. The thought of her brother pulled her up short. She remembered the look in his eyes when he had first seen her holding the Quillblade. The Hiryū had been under attack. There was fighting on the decks and she was going to join in. The shintai had somehow reacted to her emotions and the anticipation of battle, but Lenis had regarded her with his sad eyes and had brought her back to herself.

  Looking down into Heidi’s face, though, it was neither the lust for battle nor the disgust at violence she felt. Instead, she knew a great desire to help the girl Karasu had wronged, and she felt an equally powerful sense of frustration that there was nothing she could ever do that would undo what had been done.

  ‘All right, I’ll help you,’ Missy said and then glanced aside. ‘I don’t know how. I don’t know what I can do for you, but if I can help you I will.’ She disentangled herself from Heidi’s grip and helped the girl to her feet. ‘I’m not promising to kill anyone for you, though. Not even Karasu.’

  The Heiliglander wiped at her face with an already soiled sleeve. ‘If I have my way, godling, I’ll kill him before you ever have the chance to make that decision.’

  Missy nodded, troubled by the sudden stillness in the girl. Something was happening inside Heidi’s mind. Missy could tell by her abrupt changes in mood as much as by using her telepathic gifts. Heidi was building a wall inside her and trying to force the bad memories behind it. She was clutching at her anger, fuelling her will with it to block out the burning and the dying and the suffering. Missy had witnessed such intentional suppression far too often. New slaves did it all the time, cutting their old lives out of them in the hope they wouldn’t haunt them in their new ones. It seldom worked perfectly. Such barriers were dangerous. They could give way at any moment, shattering the minds of those unprepared for the fallout, and they affected people in odd and unpredictable ways, too, sometimes warping their personalities.

  Missy didn’t know Heidi at all, but she knew she didn’t want the girl to lose herself because of what Karasu had done to her home, her friends and family.

  They rejoined the others in silence. When Captain Shishi and Yami saw them come around the corner, both of them raised inquiring eyebrows. Missy just shrugged. What could she tell them? Heidi had born
e witness to something so horrible that Missy shied away from even imagining it, and they had tricked her into guiding them on to a confrontation with the very man who had been the cause of it all. Already, it was having an effect on her, and Missy didn’t think it was a good one.

  Without a word they continued on their way, following Heidi around whichever turning she seemed to think appropriate. Yami and the captain, Missy knew, didn’t mind silence. She had noticed that Shinzōn people in general tended to avoid needless conversations. Except for Jinsei Hiroshi, the Hiryū’s cook. He liked to talk so much that Missy suspected he did so whether or not there was anyone there to hear him. For Missy’s part, she was happy to shamble along quietly. Her sleep-starved mind settled into a stupor, which she was reluctant to disturb by further conversation with Heidi.

  After about an hour of walking, though, Heidi blurted, ‘Tell me about Karasu.’

  Missy stifled a sigh. The girl had a right to know who her tormentor was, or at least as much as Missy knew about him, which was precious little. It was the only thing Missy could actually offer her. So she told Heidi about the orbs of ebb and flow, and about Seisui and Raikō, which required an explanation of Totem and Demons, which in turn led to a recounting of what had happened in Ost. There was no structure to Missy’s story. She was barely able to follow it herself. At one moment she was telling Heidi about Gesshoku and the next she was talking about Namei. By the time she was finished, she had told the Heiliglander all about the voyages of the Hiryū, from the time she and Lenis had snuck up onto the deck the night before they left Itsū, right up until they had seen the smoke rising from Fronge.

  Missy spoke in a dull monotone, too tired to put any emotion into the retelling, so tired it was an effort to keep her mouth moving. For her part, Heidi listened without interruption. She didn’t ask any questions and, when Missy had finished, her throat so dry it ached, Heidi simply nodded. If Missy’s story had made any impact on her, had done anything other than break up their silent journey, Heidi gave no sign. She had wrapped her stillness so closely around herself that Missy wondered how deep the mental barrier she had erected went, and how thick she had made it.

  Some time later, exactly how long Missy had no way of knowing, Heidi held up a hand. Everyone stopped. The Heiliglander leant so close to Missy’s ear she actually brushed it with her lips. ‘We are about to enter the temple proper. Ahead there is a sacred chamber.’ Missy was shocked by the girl’s sudden business-like manner. All signs of her earlier distress had been erased. She might have been telling Missy they were about to enter a public bathroom. Missy glanced at her thoughts, confirming her fears. Heidi was only thinking about the task at hand. All traces of the horrific images Missy had seen in her mind earlier were gone. Heidi had locked them away somewhere deep inside her. Perhaps, if Missy had the time, she could help her come to terms with –

  ‘Njord rests within.’

  ‘What?’ Missy drew back into herself.

  ‘Shh!’ Heidi rebuked her. ‘Njord slumbers within, deep in the ice.’

  Missy pushed Heidi’s problems to one side to worry about later while she translated for the others in a low voice.

  The captain listened and then said, ‘If this is indeed Njord’s temple, it is possible the sea god is within.’

  ‘Do you think he could be a Demon?’ Missy asked. She was far too tired to deal with Demons.

  ‘I do not think so,’ Yami replied. ‘Gawayn does not stir.’

  Missy still wasn’t thinking very clearly. ‘But aren’t all of the Totem and Jinn corrupted?’

  ‘Silili has not yet fallen,’ the captain pointed out. ‘He helped Lenis and the Bestia back in Neti’s temple.’

  Missy had all but forgotten about that. Her brother had told her that a Totem had reached out to him and healed his and the Bestia’s wounds. That meant Apsilla wasn’t the last Totem to fall. Apsilla …

  ‘Wait.’ Missy grabbed Heidi’s arm as the girl made to move around the corner. She turned to the captain. ‘The sea god is Apsilla’s father, right?’

  ‘We believe so,’ the captain replied, ‘though there is as yet no proof of that.’

  ‘But if he is,’ Missy pressed on, ‘that means he’s not a Totem or a Jinn at all, but something older, something more powerful.’ Missy suddenly felt a moment of clarity powerful enough to banish the fog that had settled over her exhausted mind. ‘It means he’s a god, a real god, like Ishullanu. What did he call himself? A Caelestia?’

  The captain drew his eyebrows together. ‘It could be as you say, Miss Clemens. Lord Tenjin will have a better idea of how these beings are related.’

  ‘But he’s not here.’ Missy’s mind was still eerily clear. She didn’t need Tenjin to tell her she was right. She knew it. She felt it. Something settled into place. ‘That’s why Karasu’s here. He wanted the dragon egg. He went to the trouble of finding the stones of ebb and flow, but we beat him to the real prize so he came looking for something even more powerful. Suiteki’s grandfather – the sea god.’

  The captain remained silent for a moment, considering her words. ‘You may be correct.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ Yami asked.

  The captain looked at each of them in turn. ‘I think we should get some sleep.’

  Missy shook her head. ‘I’m not tired.’ She didn’t want to sleep now. Her weariness had dropped away from her and she didn’t want to risk losing the clarity that had taken its place. She could see things so plainly now. Karasu had come for the god’s power. She still didn’t know why, or how he planned to do it, but she was confident she could figure it out if the captain would just let her –

  ‘You may not be tired, Miss Clemens,’ the captain said, ‘but the rest of us are. We are certainly too weary to face whatever is in that chamber. We will set a watch in case Karasu arrives. Until then we should get what rest we can.’

  Missy was about to protest, but the preternatural clarity was already starting to slip away. Her fatigue returned. It started in her feet and quickly rose within her. When it reached her head, she yawned. Perhaps she could use some sleep after all. She had just enough time to ask Lucis to dim her light, and then she was falling down into slumber.

  Move. Move. Move. Move. Move.

  Lenis repeated the word in his mind as the wind threw the half-frozen rain into his side. The gangplank beneath his hands was now slippery. The wood had soaked up so much water it could take no more. Atrum was plastered to Lenis’s back, but Lenis was so cold he could no longer feel the Bestia’s claws digging into him.

  Move. Move. Move. Move.

  If Lenis didn’t budge soon he knew he was going to freeze to death. Small tremors were already running through his body, causing his teeth to clash together. He gritted them so tightly his jaw ached. Ever so cautiously he pushed one trembling hand forwards a few inches.

  Move. Move. Move.

  The other followed, and then Lenis was crawling, slowly at first, but he managed to go faster once he was sure the wind wasn’t going to push him over the edge. He realised then that his eyes were screwed shut and forced them open. It made no difference. The night was black around him. If the moon or stars were shining, they were doing so behind the storm clouds. The torches had long since gone out.

  Lenis increased his pace, pushing his hands further and further along the gangplank, ignoring the fragments of wood that dug into his palms. He didn’t know how far he had come or how far he had left to go. All he knew was that he had to keep going.

  In his haste he suddenly overreached, and his hand slipped out into nothingness. Lenis cried out, a small, shrill whine that ended abruptly as his nose connected painfully with the gangplank in front of him. He recoiled. Atrum’s claws tensed in his back and this time Lenis felt them deep inside his shoulder muscles and down near his kidneys.

  Panic surged through him, carried along by another great shudder. What if Atrum pierced one of his organs? Ridiculous. The Bestia’s claws couldn’t possibly be that long. But when w
as the last time Lenis had trimmed them? Lenis focused on this thought. The part of him that was a born engineer, that churned through problems with a calm indifference to external stimuli, wandered back through his mind, searching for the time Lenis last sat on the deck of the Hiryū with Atrum in his lap as he snipped the Bestia’s nails, one by one. Lenis felt a particle of calm as he eased himself into the mental task of remembering. Then, when he was confident his mind was steady, he gripped onto that calm and wrapped it around himself and Atrum until he felt the Bestia’s claws retract, just a fraction.

  Move. Move. Move.

  Lenis started again, once more going slowly. The next time his hand slipped he brought it back to the gangplank and continued on. Eventually he reached the end of the wood and his fingers connected with stone. The shelf! He forced himself the final couple of feet onto the rocky surface. Relief raged through him unchecked, shattering the cocoon of calm that had carried him over the final stretch. It didn’t matter. They had made it. Atrum let go of him just as Lenis rolled onto his back. A moment later the Bestia was curled up on his stomach, shivering. Lenis gasped in the air, ignoring the icy missiles that rained down on his face.

  His celebration didn’t last long. He might have reached the other side, but he was no warmer and what little heat his now constant shiver generated was leached away by either the cold rock beneath him or the storm above. Lenis knew there was a way off the rock shelf. Where else had Karasu gone? But finding it in the dark was going to be an ordeal in itself.