‘So what does Cyrek do?’ asked Rhaki.
‘I regret to say I don’t know. He is a great deal older than me you must understand, not someone I know well at all. He just seemed to drift in and out of the Palace. He was very rarely at the Academy.’
‘And Seola?’
‘She and Cyrek shared an apartment in the east section of the Palace.’ Shivan stopped speaking and his brow furrowed. He met Tika’s eyes, his own suddenly wide.
‘I heard rumours that Seola reported to Chindar. I didn’t pay much attention – it was just gossip – you know. Chindar was disliked by many of my generation. And so were both Cyrek and Seola.’
‘He was? They were? You never told me that.’ Tika was indignant. ‘Do you suppose Corman knows that Seola reported to Chindar?’
‘I hope so.’ Shivan sounded worried now. ‘Both Cyrek and Seola always seemed to have free access to the Palace – my father complained about it quite a lot.’
Farn suddenly mind spoke them. ‘My Tika, Shivan must warn Corman. I am sure what Khosa smelled inside that hole was Cyrek. A gateway leaves a sort of mark in the air to us, and we have spoken of it. Storm is sure a gateway opened here only a short time before we arrived.’
Tika walked across to Farn and Kija, looking between mother and son.
‘You can sense gateways?’
‘Not sense; feel. We could feel the circles – they seem much stronger to us than gateways. The air – tingles.’ Kija gave up trying to describe something so nebulous.
Tika turned towards the fire. ‘Go, Shivan. Tell Corman of our suspicions. We will wait here for your return.’
Shivan got to his feet and moved away. His form shimmered and the man became a Dragon, larger than Kija by far, but seeming almost ephemerally fragile. Great translucent wings extended and Shivan rose, the air wafting around them with the scent of burnt cinnamon. He flew to the south, but within four heartbeats, he had vanished.
Dromi stared at the empty sky. ‘Volk told me that man changed to Dragon form,’ he whispered. ‘I wasn’t sure if he spoke truth. But where did he go?’
Tika sat down. ‘He opened a Dragon gateway. It’s a little different from the more usual gateways.’
She glanced at Kija, but the gold Dragon appeared to be dozing. Dromi finally gave up staring at the sky to stare at Tika instead.
‘The Dark Ones only change to Dragon form. I think.’ She raised a questioning brow at Essa and Onion who both nodded. ‘And in Dragon form, the gateways they make are in some way different.’
As Dromi seemed bereft of speech, Tika decided to go down to the empty town of Merriton and see the strange burial place Kazmat had spoken of. Kija remained where she was, with Khosa asleep on a cushion against Kija’s chest. The cushion was carried in Tika’s pack and was Kija’s only, and deeply cherished, possession. Essa’s mother did fine embroidery work and she had presented this cushion to Kija before they left the Bear tribe’s village.
Kija spent much time looking at this cushion. The silver and gold threads depicted the Bears’ village, high in the mountains on a snowy winter night. The threads sparkled in a manner quite enchanting to Dragon eyes. Only occasionally was Khosa allowed to sit on it. Farn drifted just overhead as most of the company strolled along the track to the town.
Volk had joined them but Dromi remained by the fire, apparently watching Konya sort through her many pouches of herbs. The companions entered the first streets, following Kazmat and Onion. Finding herself beside Volk, Tika glanced up at him.
‘Why was Dromi quite so shocked when Shivan changed?’
‘There are legends, stories – very old stories – of Dragons here. No one believes they could be true.’ He pursed his lips.’ ‘Perhaps Dromi knows more than ordinary folk such as I.’
Tika kept her gaze on Sket’s back. ‘Who is Dromi?’ she asked, as casually as she could.
They walked on some distance before Volk replied. ‘He is a Spider.’
Shea, unnoticed till now, drew level with Tika and peered round her at Volk.
‘General Whilk was a Spider in Kelshan.’
Tika stopped. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I um heard him talking to Jemin one day. He said there were several in the City but they had only one contact to pass their news on to. His contact was Snail, although he never met her in Kelshan.’
Volk had halted a pace or two further on and listened to Shea. He nodded. ‘They pass information.’
Shea nodded back, then frowned. ‘Seola was the one who collected the information.’ Her hazel eyes met Tika’s, worry evident.
‘Does Snail know another Spider then?’
Shea shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Waxin Pule knew Seola, but I’m not sure if he was a Spider.’
‘It worries me, that the very name Spider should be used in your land,’ said Volk, his voice a soft rumble.
Tika snorted and began to walk on again. ‘There seems to be quite a large number of spies around, so I’ve learned. I was told in the Dark Realm that their spies, and they actually named Seola, only watch and listen to make sure their Realm remains undiscovered and unthreatened.’
‘And Dromi would tell you the same.’
‘Do you dislike Dromi, or distrust him?’ Tika asked.
Volk grunted. ‘Old Bloods have always been taught to succour the Spiders; to offer aid and protection whenever it is required or asked for. They keep our histories at Steadfast Rock. They are also known as the Keepers.’
‘Keepers?’
The name was familiar but Tika couldn’t track it down in her memory. They’d caught up with the others now and Tika let it go. She saw they had reached an open area, about the size of a market square. But the space was filled with pillars of white stone, as Kazmat had described. The pillars reached to Tika’s waist and the ground around was flat, covered in white dust. Tika bent to examine the nearest pillar. Marks were incised, deep into the stone, but it was a script strange to her: all straight lines and odd dots.
‘Can you read it?’ She looked up at Volk.
‘No. It is a writing only used by the servants of the Menedula.’
Tika straightened and surveyed the countless identical pillars, row after row of them that filled the area.
‘How did the people know where their loved ones are?’ Geffal asked from behind her. ‘We visit our dead once a year. We have a party where their bodies lay, and tell them all the news.’ He gestured at the dusty white stones. ‘You couldn’t have a party squashed in here.’
‘The priests dealt with the dead,’ Volk explained. ‘They took the body from its home and after a day and a night in Sedka’s House, they brought it here. No family member saw the corpse once it was taken by the priests.’
‘Sedka’s House?’ asked Darrick.
Volk pointed north. ‘The house where the priests, the servants of Sedka and the Menedula, lived, is always furthest from the burial places.’
‘Let’s find Sedka’s House then,’ Darrick suggested, and he and Essa headed down the nearest street.
Sket and Rhaki waited for Tika and Volk before they followed.
‘You didn’t answer my other question Volk.’
‘I neither like nor dislike Dromi personally,’ Volk answered. ‘I have never spent much time in his company. As for trust,’ Volk shrugged. ‘He is a member of the Brotherhood of Keepers. I’ll agree they probably do a good and valuable job, saving the histories of the Old Blood people, but all the ones I’ve ever met give themselves a few too many airs. Dromi is not too bad,’ he amended. ‘But some of them treat ordinary folk like dirt.’
Sket glanced over his shoulder at Tika. ‘Odd name that, Brotherhood of Keepers.’
‘I’m sure I’ve heard of Keepers before,’ Tika agreed.
Sket laughed. ‘Nolli was a Keeper, wasn’t she?’
Tika came to an abrupt halt and Shea bumped into her back. ‘So she was. Of course.’ She started walking again.
‘I suppose it’s quite
a common word – you could be a Keeper of anything really. Just coincidence.’
‘Lorak, Keeper of the Gardens,’ Sket intoned thoughtfully.
Tika thumped his shoulder in an amiable fashion.
‘Volk, do you know anything of the pendant I wear, or like Babach wore?’
Volk’s beard seemed to bristle. ‘That cursed child wore one too, in the Oblaka.’ He spat. ‘No, Lady Tika, they signify nothing particular to me. Has Dromi seen the one you wear?’
Tika frowned. ‘No, I don’t think he has. I’ll show him when we get back to camp.’
She began to pay attention to the streets they passed through, comparing them with other places she’d seen. Merriton seemed less spacious than Kelshan City or Karmazen, the streets much less wide. There had clearly been shops along some of the more central streets but not as many as might have been expected for the size of the town. Occasionally, a faded strip of ragged material blew from a broken upper window, but nothing else moved. There were no bones, no heaped skeletons.
‘If the people here were all killed, why is there no sign of their bodies?’ Shea wondered aloud, voicing the thoughts of the others.
They walked for longer than they’d estimated before reaching another open area. Directly across from them rose a house, much like all the others in the town. Except that it was black. Not made of black stone but painted black, dark and forbidding. A short flight of only a dozen shallow steps led up to double doors. They stared at the Menedula in miniature.
Chapter Sixteen
Essa walked to the steps and waited for everyone else to join her. Her sharp purple teeth gleamed as she grinned down at them. Farn landed and reclined, facing the building.
‘I sense no life within,’ he told them, his eyes whirring pearl and sapphire.
Essa climbed the steps and put her hands flat against the doors. Despite Farn’s comment, swords hissed from scabbards and guards closed up behind the Sergeant. She pushed steadily and the doors swung inwards without a sound. Tika and Rhaki were the only ones without a weapon in their hands when they moved through the guards to arrive on either side of Essa.
‘I doubt you’ll need weapons,’ Tika said quietly.
The doors had opened into a hall, large enough to hold a couple of hundred people, but at present it contained only bones. Shea slid around Tika to stare inside.
‘Why are they all in here? They must have been killed all over the town. Did someone drag them all here? Why?’
Without waiting for an answer, Shea moved slowly into the hall. The sun was almost directly opposite the doors and its light illuminated the piles of bones heaped as high as Sergeant Essa. Sket frowned as he followed Shea. Tika knew what concerned him and what the rest of her party had also noticed. These were not full skeletons haphazardly thrown one on the other. There was no clothing, no rags even, around the bones, and cloth would not have rotted in the few months since these people died.
Given Volk’s description of the harshness of the winter only just past, it seemed just as unlikely that corpses could have been reduced to bare bone in the time. There was no dust beneath the bones, and the more Tika and her friends looked, the more weird the scene became. Bones had been sorted: lower leg bones there, feet stacked neatly several paces away. Ribs formed a bizarre pile of cages next to a stack of shoulder blades. In silence, they moved cautiously further into the hall. They spun in unison when Shea gasped, following the direction of her gaze.
Along the front wall behind the door, skulls were piled, empty sockets staring back at these intruders. Tika swallowed, trying to ignore the nausea beginning to churn in her stomach. Not all of the skulls were of adults: many, many tiny skulls filled in gaps among the larger ones. Tika walked to the other side of the doors. Long leg bones, stacked like firewood, and next to them, uncountable hands stretched in, fingertips all angled towards the centre of the hall.
‘Who could do this?’ Rhaki whispered beside her.
Tika shook her head, unable to reply. A shadow loomed across the floor but it was only Farn, at the doorway, his eyes flashing darker blue as he took in the scene. Then he backed away from the doors and settled to wait for the company to emerge.
‘Do we check the whole house?’ Sergeant Essa spoke neutrally.
Tika realised it was exactly the right tone to steady the shocked and sickened company. She sucked in a deep breath.
‘We check. And we stay together.’
There were several small rooms on the ground floor, all simply furnished, apparently waiting rooms or offices. Volk told them that all towns of a certain size had one of these small Menedula buildings. The priests were consulted by citizens for all matters pertaining to business, taxes, and indeed, nearly every aspect of their daily lives. Volk explained some of these things as the company climbed the stairs to the next floor.
They found a small library, ransacked, books and papers ripped and strewn around the floor. There were more of the smaller rooms, most containing only beds and work tables. Again, these rooms seemed to have been torn apart, the bedcovers shredded to ribbons.
‘I wonder if whoever did this, was looking for something, or was just intent on destruction?’ Tika pondered.
They found neither bodies nor bones. Standing at the foot of another flight of stairs, Essa grinned.
‘Last lot of stairs Sket.’
He growled and, beside Tika, followed the Sergeant upwards. They discovered a large room, uncannily similar, although on a smaller scale, to Cho Petak’s apartment. The bookcases against the wall were untouched, papers still stacked neatly on a long table set at an angle across the further corner. Facing the table was a half circle of five chairs: high, wing backed, wooden armchairs. Three of the chairs had their backs towards the door and it was one of these that drew Tika’s attention.
The back of her neck prickled and there was a definite warmth from the pendant under her shirt. Essa and Sket were on either side, Sket’s sword drawn and Essa holding the long knife she preferred. Tika vaguely heard a low snarl from Essa, then she was moving into the room. She gave the chairs as wide a berth as she could, until she stood behind the table, never taking her eyes from the middle chair.
She saw feet dangling from the too high seat and knew she’d found Mena. For the first time in this land, Tika drew her own sword and moved in front of the chair. The white blonde hair was a shocking contrast to the face beneath it. The whole skull had lengthened, the eyes, violet surrounded by silver had lost their roundness, were oval now and tilted higher on the outer corners. The nose was unaltered and while the jaw also seemed unchanged, the tips of two tusks pushed up over the upper lip.
Mena’s hands rested in her lap, lightly clasped, claws replacing nails. Her skin had thickened, looking leathery and grey, with faint lines patterning it as if it was cracking. Tika’s companions were all staring at the altered child who stared blankly back. Tika leaned closer and the violet eyes flickered and the lips parted.
‘I cannot adjust.’ The voice was a rasping whisper. ‘These bodies are too frail. This air is too foul.’
Light fled from the eyes and Mena’s head slipped slightly, to rest on the wing of the chair, her hands relaxing to lie palms up on her thighs.
There was complete silence in the room, then people moved away from the strangely pathetic corpse. But Rhaki approached and knelt beside the chair. He touched the child’s face gently and then inspected her clawed hands. Tika was distracted from her appalled contemplation of Mena by a soft curse. She looked across the room and saw Onion bent over a half hidden window seat.
A small boy lay curled there, his back to the room. Onion turned the boy carefully and they all saw the gaping incision across his throat, the wide hole in his chest. Volk swore loud and long, and faces turned towards him.
‘His name is Tyen. He brought the girl out of the Menedula. They walked all the way to the Oblaka during the worst of the madness. He did not deserve this end.’
Rhaki joined them. ‘The girl didn’t
kill him,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t explain why I feel this but I do, very strongly. Something killed this boy. And it was that which killed the girl.’
Seeing the puzzled expressions that greeted this statement, Rhaki tried again.
‘There was something left in the girl, some basic emotion or instinct, when her mind and body had been taken over. I believe she saw the boy’s murder and that caused a huge surge of – feeling. You know what I mean.’
He saw the guards nodding.
‘Before a fight,’ Kazmat muttered. ‘You feel both scared and that you could beat anything.’
‘Exactly. I think the girl felt some similar surge. The boy was about her own age, they had undertaken a journey fraught with danger together. I would guess they felt protective of each other.’
Volk nodded. ‘Until just before you arrived at the Oblaka, Tyen was always at her side, or watching her. If she was shut away with Finn Rah, Tyen sat outside the door.’
‘As I thought. It is possible that the girl experienced this visceral feeling of anger, outrage, horror, when she saw what was done to the boy. Those strong feelings could well have been utterly beyond the experience or understanding of whatever was using her, disrupting its possession and causing it to flee.’
‘And leaving her finally dying,’ Tika murmured.
Rhaki rested a hand on Tika’s shoulder. ‘Mena died well, in the end.’
Fedran coughed politely. ‘What should we do with these two?’ he asked.
Tika looked at Volk. His small dark eyes studied the boy, then he went back to look at the girl in the chair.
‘I would lay them together,’ he said at last.
Tika nodded, accepting Volk’s choice without question. She watched him lift the boy carefully, tousled dark hair falling over Volk’s brown shirt sleeve. She was not surprised to see Rhaki lift Mena, equally carefully, and carry her after Volk. She saw Onion watching her, anger in his eyes.
Perilous Shadows: Book 6 Circles of Light Page 20