Perilous Shadows: Book 6 Circles of Light

by E. M. Sinclair

  Tika waited but clearly the shadow wanted time to think. The two settled comfortably again.

  ‘The pendant hasn’t got warm for a while,’ Essa remarked.

  ‘No,’ Tika agreed. ‘But this tingles a lot.’ She waved her thumb at Essa.

  ‘Cyrek, do you think?’

  ‘It might well be. Darallax has released the shield hiding this island so it is visible again. Cyrek could easily find us now. It’s plain to me that he destroyed that poor messenger in the gateway. I’ve been trying to decide which is the most urgent one to deal with.’

  Essa watched Tika, thinking back to when she had first met her in the Karmazen Palace and had held her while she cried and cried. That young woman was still there, but to any who hadn’t seen that, and her determined recovery, her insistence on repaying a debt to the First Daughter, Tika would seem an unlikely warrior. A mistake Serida would not make again.

  ‘I’m worried that we haven’t seen Hag.’ Tika broke into Essa’s reverie. ‘I thought she would come here as soon as Darallax lifted the shield.’

  Booted feet approached and Rhaki came round the column which was covered in trumpet vines. He lifted one browned and withered bloom and stared at it, frowning. He caught Essa’s tiny head shake and let the flower drop.

  ‘I sensed something,’ he began. ‘It was you, talking to Ferag, wasn’t it?’

  Tika grinned. ‘No. I called Serida and then I called Simert.’

  Rhaki sat beside her. ‘They don’t use gateways, do they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think Shivan has the right idea. He’s spoken to me of some of his experiments with time, as well as with using mind power very differently from his people. Did you know he was expelled from that Academy of theirs?’

  ‘No!’ Tika was shocked. Shivan had a very intelligent mind, from her own observations, but he had told her that his teachers and his fellow students mocked him for his ideas.

  ‘His tutors are the fools in my view,’ Rhaki continued. ‘But the boy suggests those like Ferag slip from one plane to another through time. It’s far more complicated than that and I’m only just beginning to grasp his meanings. Planes of Existence would be a far more accurate name for them too.’

  ‘Wait.’ Tika sat up straight. ‘Star Singer told us some of his past. He, and the other Ships here, were fleeing enemy Ships. He said,’ she scowled in concentration. ‘He said that they tore the fabric of time, and slipped through. Then the fabric closed behind them so their enemies couldn’t work out where they’d gone.’

  She got up and paced in excitement. ‘They did it by knowing where certain stars were and then -’ Tika threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘I didn’t understand then and now I can’t remember.’

  Rhaki had caught her enthusiasm. ‘But that’s it. Somehow, time can be – sliced, cut, interfered with, and someone, something, can step through.’

  ‘Did you send the scrolls?’

  Rhaki grinned, seeming years younger. ‘Well, I put them on the centre stone, said the words, and the scroll vanished. Whether it gets to where I hope it will – ah – who knows? I came to find Essa to get a view of her father’s house to send a scroll there.’

  They had been brought food at midday, although the three guards and Dromi hadn’t put in an appearance. Dog had helped herself to some of the parchment and was scribbling away accompanied by a lot of muttering. Looking round, Tika saw Onion lying back in an armchair, his hand clamped over his eye patch. His face was nearly as grey as one of the Shadow people. Tika went to lean over his chair. She put a hand on his arm and his remaining eye opened, saw her and closed again.

  She let her mind slide into his and drew a sharp breath. The sort of web which she had found covered most people’s minds, was sparking and flashing. Tika felt his thunderous headache and sent a healing thread to reduce then dismiss it. But even then, his mind still flickered and whirled. She moved round and knelt in front of him.

  ‘Onion what happens?’

  His eye opened again and the greyness faded from his cheeks. ‘There’s like a bang inside my eye, or where my eye was, then colours, such bright colours, lady. Then the itching. Then another bang. It’s been all right this morning, but it hasn’t stopped since we had our food.’

  Dog and Sket had joined them and Tika glanced up at Sket.

  ‘Find Konya for me, would you?’

  Sket’s eyebrows rose until they nearly reached his hairline. Lady Tika, wanting an ordinary healer’s help? He hurried away, suddenly more worried about the engineer than he wanted to be.

  ‘Tika! Tika!’ Shea came skidding into the room, waving a scroll case.

  ‘That was quick.’ Rhaki took the case and studied the seal. ‘From Emla.’

  ‘Read it to us,’ Tika requested, keeping most of her attention on Onion.

  Breaking the seal, Rhaki withdrew the scroll and scanned it rapidly.

  ‘Emla is well, there are no problems in Gaharn. But Lallia – who is Lallia? – No tell me later – Lallia reports strange fires and the ground shaking.’

  ‘She is from Far, south of Lord Hargon’s lands,’ Tika told him. ‘You remember being there, before you joined Cho Petak in Drogoya?’

  ‘I remember,’ Rhaki said heavily.

  Navan had arrived and heard most of what Emla’s scroll contained. He took it from Rhaki and read it again.

  ‘The lands south of Far are prone to earthquakes every few years, but never around Far itself.’

  ‘Oh where is Konya?’ Tika demanded.

  They turned and saw Tika working on Onion. ‘He’s sliding into unconsciousness and I can’t see why.’

  She flinched back, feeling the flash of colours as Onion experienced another attack. The tingling in her left thumb grew intense. ‘Can you help him, shadow?’ she thought.

  Onion’s body relaxed and his eye opened once more.

  ‘Sorry my lady, what did you say?’

  Before she could reply, the stone floor beneath her feet pushed up and twisted. A low rumbling growl filled the air and they heard cries and screams coming from elsewhere in the house. Essa pushed Tika aside and lifted Onion as if he was a baby.

  ‘Out,’ she ordered. ‘Onto the grass beyond the house.’

  Even as Tika grabbed Shea and they began to run through the corridors, she sent a thought to the Dragons. All four were flying, much to her relief, and she raced on, surrounded by her company, to hurtle out the front doors. Essa brought them to a halt midway across the grass which separated the two big houses from the town, and lowered a protesting Onion to the ground. She kept him there with one huge hand spread over his chest.

  Tika saw that Dog, Sket and Rhaki had the wit to grab up their packs. Shivan and Navan carried others.

  ‘Shivan,’ she called. ‘Is this a natural quake?’

  ‘No,’ he began, but Darallax ran to join them from the throng of people still pouring from the houses.

  ‘There have never been quakes here,’ he told Tika. ‘I must see to the safety of my people.’

  He hurried on to help a young man support a woman from the colonnade. Tika saw Konya and Subaken on either side of Rueshen, helping her through the doors, blood streaming down the consort’s face. Dromi came from the direction of the river, the three guards at his heels, as the ground heaved once again. None of them could keep on their feet. Then a grating noise rose over the groans of the earth and they saw grey tiles cascading from the roofs as the houses swayed ever more strongly from side to side.

  The company huddled close around Onion and watched the long colonnade linking the two big houses buckle and crunch into fragments. They saw people crushed as large blocks began to fall from the houses themselves. Tika’s mind was swamped by the cries of anguish, made worse by the fact that the majority were mental cries. The Shadow people used mind speech as naturally as Sapphreans chattered aloud, but that meant the Shadow screams were magnified a thousand times to Tika. She scrunched her eyes shut, forcing a shield around her own mind to ke
ep the calls of distress at a distance.

  ‘Kingdom.’

  The word was clear inside her head. She was kneeling by Onion’s hip and now she felt his calloused hand tighten on her wrist.

  ‘The lights, lady. The lights say go with the shadow.’

  She opened her eyes to stare at Onion. He managed a nod and she looked at Essa across Onion’s body.

  ‘I must go, Essa. Can you hold my mind thread?’

  The light blue eyes widened but Essa shrugged. ‘I don’t know how, but tie it to me somehow. I won’t let you go.’

  ‘Shadow take me, let me see and hear.’

  Through the gauzy veil which was all the vision the shadow would allow, she saw she was in a castle room. For an instant it made no sense, then she saw the furniture. Much of it was smashed but a few pieces remained intact. But they were wrong, twisted, unbalanced. Tika knew at once that the creature Yartay had created this, room and furniture both, in an attempt to mimic something he had seen on this world. But the room was empty. No. Shadows rippled from the corners, racing towards her. She felt nothing when they reached her, but the shadow spoke in her head.

  ‘Left behind.’

  ‘Where is Yartay?’

  ‘We find.’

  She decided it was preferable not to see when travelling with shadows and closed her eyes before her stomach rebelled.

  ‘There.’

  Cautiously, she looked through the shadow, and felt a jolt of recognition. This room bore a great similarity to one of the rooms she had seen in a Dome in the desert. A room where Kertiss had shown them many marvels he had called technology. There was also a resemblance to the inside of Star Flower. Small lights blinked and flashed all over the walls and the great shapeless mass that was Yartay lay around those walls. Things like rudimentary arms and fingers protruded all along the huge form, poking and prodding at buttons and lights. Then one end of the thing lifted, forming a round ball. Features appeared: a mouth, an eye, and it stared directly at Tika. She felt the shadows tighten around her.

  ‘You could have helped me. Should have.’ The voice was a mixture of an insane anger and a petulant whine. ‘Now this world will die. Nasty place, nasty animals with no minds.’

  An arm extruded from the jelly stuff directly beneath the head, but, quick as it was to lift towards her, Tika and the dark shadows were faster. While Yartay had been speaking, Tika had drawn power to fill her, power she could barely contain. As the creature’s arm rose, so Tika released all that power from within her, in the form of fire. Somehow, she was aware of the shadows focusing the flame that spewed from her outstretched hands, and at the same time shielding her from the vast heat of the conflagration in front of her.

  She felt the skin on her hands scorching, but was also fleetingly conscious that her pendant hung cold against her chest. Tika saw the edge of the creature begin to char, while a thunderous power pressed against her shielding. But still her fire streamed over the creature’s length towards its head. Behind it, the lights were all bright red, and flashing in a rhythmical sequence. Tika felt an almost total exhaustion begin to envelope her, and she knew she had no reserves to get herself out of here.

  Fire suddenly leapt along the central mass of the creature and there was a blinding glare of white light. Tika’s mind formed one word: Farn.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Cyrek’s silvery transparent wings barely moved as he drifted high above the island that had so suddenly appeared a few days ago. He saw the four who called themselves Great Dragons and dismissed them as of no consequence. He sensed that the young woman was no longer there. A laugh rumbled through his enormous Dragon shape. The First Daughter, Corman, all those other fools, held her in such high regard, but he had seen inside her mind. Her powers were pathetically primitive. Nothing to match his.

  He wondered briefly where she might be: she was not with those Dragons. Cyrek had been considering visiting the slug, Yartay, but the Splintered Kingdom had moved, as it did periodically. Losing interest in the chaos he had set in motion far below, he drifted on the wind currents westward, to Drogoya. The Splintered Kingdom was always somewhere around that particular land mass, but Cyrek found it a little difficult to locate it: the power tendrils emanating from the Kingdom were very different to any others Cyrek had experience of.

  His time was close now, and Cyrek exulted already in the thought of his dominance over all this world. His sister would be beside him as his consort – that had been the way of it in ancient times, and Cyrek planned to reinstate many of the old customs. Chindar had been such a fool. Cyrek had been afraid his own hand had been revealed when Chindar made his premature play for control of the Dark Realm.

  First Daughter Lerran would never recover from her ridiculous descent into the Dark, to rescue one of those so called Dragons. Dabray was gone, and there was no one of that Lord’s power left alive. Cyrek would like to have met Dabray – before Dabray went mad of course. Cyrek rather fancied he could have bested Lord Dabray in any contest, of either intelligence or power.

  Cyrek followed the sun and eventually saw the land of Drogoya ahead of him. He was just crossing the coast when something caught his eye. He wheeled in an easy glide, staring down. Even with enhanced vision, details were hard to make out. The sea seemed to be crawling away from the land, looking like a wrinkled blanket instead of a smooth blue sheet. Cyrek felt a twinge of unease just as a large piece of coast gaped open, releasing a painfully bright glare. It was gone in an instant but Cyrek still saw the afterimage glowing behind his eye lids.

  By the time his sight was clear again, the sea was moving towards the land once more, pouring into the dark hole. Cyrek circled for some time, probing the area for indications of the presence of the Splintered Kingdom, before it occurred to him that what he’d just witnessed might have been its destruction. How could that be? He knew, from his interception of messages from Corman, that the woman Tika, intended to try and destroy Yartay, if not the Splintered Kingdom too.

  Air suddenly buffeted against his belly, forcing him to concentrate on his flight. When he had steadied himself, he considered what he’d seen. He had devised an amazingly simple system to alert him should gateways be opened, anywhere. Yet none had opened on that island since he’d destroyed Corman’s messenger attempting to return to the Dark Realm. That had been meant as a warning and it had seemed to work: no gateways had opened since then.

  If that woman had destroyed the Splintered Kingdom she would have needed to be either there, or very close by. Cyrek felt a surge of alarm. How could she have moved from the island to Drogoya without his knowing?

  The ground had become still but the destruction was severe. Tika’s company looked out from the open grass where they sat to see the town, on both sides of the river crumpled like children’s toys. The two houses behind them had three walls still standing between them, and grey dust rose to hang overhead, slowly turning the sunny day dark. There was a sharp resinous smell mixed with the dust – the trees beyond the houses were flattened and uprooted. The Dragons had landed only moments after the last quake, and Farn was badly distressed.

  ‘She called me,’ he kept saying. ‘She called me.’

  Onion and Essa had reversed positions – Essa now lay on her back and Onion sat with her head in his lap.

  ‘Kija, Tika asked Essa to hold her mind, but I don’t think Essa’s ever done that before.’ Rhaki touched the gold Dragon’s cheek as she lowered her head to study Essa. ‘I have made no attempt to reach Essa, I’m afraid of making a mistake.’

  Kija’s eyes whirred, a deep buttery gold. ‘I will see what I can find.’

  Kija probed gently towards Essa, as carefully as she would probe her eggs just before they hatched. She found utter calmness, and also, she saw a thread of Tika’s mind firmly entwined around Essa’s. Kija withdrew and settled herself around Onion and Essa.

  ‘Farn, be still. Tika holds to Essa. Wherever she is, she is safe.’

  Onion glanced at Sket. ‘There’
ll be no more quakes,’ he said with quiet conviction. ‘Should we start helping these people?’

  Sket stood and studied the devastated town, then looked back at Darallax’s house – or what remained of it. He was frantically worried about his Lady Tika but refused to let it show. He nodded at Kazmat.

  ‘You come with me. Fedran and Geffal, you work together. We’ll see what help we can give in this house, but I don’t want you risking your lives doing something stupid. Yes, I am sorry for these poor people, but we are Lady Tika’s men. Service to her comes first. Keep checking back here to see if the Lady has come back or if we’re needed.’

  Navan got to his feet, Dromi beside him.

  ‘We’ll help too,’ he said. ‘Though I think if people didn’t get out of there fast, we’re only going to be recovering bodies.’

  Shea too got to her feet.

  ‘No.’ Dog pulled the girl back down.

  ‘I’ve seen plenty of bodies before,’ Shea argued.

  Khosa moved from Konya’s lap to Shea’s. ‘I would prefer you stayed to carry me if more danger arises.’

  Shea regarded the cat with suspicion. ‘Why?’

  ‘You can run fastest.’ Khosa closed her eyes and began to purr.

  Brin rose from the grass and started to climb higher into the sky, Storm at his tail.

  ‘We will see what damage has been done through this land.’

  Brin’s voice rang through their minds. Kija huffed, watching the crimson and grey Dragons dwindling in the distance as they flew up river. Konya busied herself making a small fire and Rhaki went to find water. The tiny streamlet running under the colonnade was dry so he had to look further. Shadow people worked in silence, bringing body after body out of the rubble. The quiet was broken by the settling of stones or the slithering rush of another fall of bricks. Rhaki found a fountain where water still burbled from a copper pipe, but the basin into which it should have pooled was smashed beyond hope of repair.

  He filled the two kettles he carried and hurried back to the others. It was unnerving, how quiet these people were. He handed one kettle to Konya and put the second on the grass beside her. He had just turned back to Onion and Essa when there was a loud groan. Tika appeared, sprawled beside Farn, her limbs twitching sluggishly. Farn’s face brushed against hers, his eyes flashing with anxiety. Then Essa groaned and raised a hand to her head. Dog and Shivan reached Tika at the same time, rolling her onto her back.