It is high time we got in touch with Avane, which means venturing among another group of strangers.
I might have spent the last few hours in a state of mild panic about this, but the less said about that the better. Let’s pretend I am a normal person with normal social capabilities and not the type to worry myself into a fever over merely having to face a group of strange people, and without making a fool of myself.
Looking on the bright side… Avane borrowed my favourite book, and I can finally get it back.
Onward.
23 VII
To the Dark, Creepy Place We Go.
The Lower Realm, or Ayrien, has always been disconcerting for me. I am a Daylander, born and raised in Glinnery, and from there I went straight up to Iskyr. I have visited Nimdre, where the natural day and night cycle remains, but I only stayed for a few days. Those night-time hours fascinated me, but they also terrified me. I am so unused to being unable to see where I am going.
At least in Nimdre, the nights ended and gave way to daylight once again. Not so in Ayrien. It is as permanently dark as Iskyr is endlessly lit. As soon as I set foot in that place, the darkness swallows me whole and I feel blinded until I get out again.
This may be why I was happy enough to “forget” about the Lowers.
On the brighter side, there is something else I had forgotten about. As a draykon, it is not necessary to open a fixed Gate to travel Off-World. Which makes it easy as pie.
When we were ready to leave, Pensould took the lead and merely glided seamlessly through the divide. One moment we were in Iskyr, and the next we were deep in Ayrien.
And so, I felt a bit better. I would not be stuck in that choking darkness. If the blindness became overpowering, I could leave in an instant.
Pense, Ori and I set off together for Ayrien, but without Siggy. He hates to be left behind, but I find myself obliged to do so more and more often. It’s harder to carry him about in my draykon shape, and also more dangerous. He is so tiny, compared to shapeshifted me. And I rarely know exactly where I am going or what might await me when I get there. The dangers are too great for my tiny orting. Fortunately, he seems to have taken a shine to Larion.
We slipped through the veil and the blackness descended all at once, as though someone had thrown a bag over my head. I felt a strong impulse to panic, but I refused. Pense was serenely unconcerned, of course, and even Ori was calm. He is a lifelong Daylander like myself, so if he can cope with it sensibly, then so must I.
That makes it sound easier than it was. Have you ever tried to suppress an attack of terror by mere force of will? I clenched my jaw so hard that my teeth creaked, and I was so tense I almost lost my ability to fly. It was like soaring through soup, because I was fool enough to keep straining to see where I was going with my eyes.
Stop that, Minchu, said Pense mildly. Every sense you possess is of more use to you than your eyes at this moment.
Good point. I decided to shut my eyes altogether, which kept them out of the way while I concentrated on listening and scenting and employing some of those other draykon senses which are so hard to describe. We were flying over water. I could hear the soft shush of waves some way below me, and the air was heavy with the scent of saltwater. I could hear birds, or some other winged creatures, soaring through the skies not far away. A flock of them. I sensed their heat, each creature separate and distinct even in their tightly clustered formation. There were seventy-three. I could sense no other living beings nearby, besides Ori and Pense.
Once I had mastered this enough to feel more comfortable, I opened my eyes again — and discovered, to my surprise, that the world was not so impenetrably dark as I had thought. A moon hung in the sky, half-full and casting a soft light over the landscape. Once I adjusted my expectations, I found it sufficient to see a little by. The water shone silver below me, and I could dimly see that it stretched away over the horizon.
Boring, commented Ori with a sniff.
I think I prefer boring, I replied. Under these circumstances, exciting would probably mean danger.
That’s when it gets fun, Ori insisted.
Until somebody gets hurt!
Psh. Ori turned a playful somersault in the air, his draykon wings beating powerfully. We are equal to anything.
I sometimes think Ori and I are opposite sides of the same thing. I shrink from the unknown, but Ori can be reckless in the pursuit of it. That makes a good team of us, I suppose. We balance each other out.
Pense, I said. Do you know where we are going?
Vaguely, he replied. Avane is this way.
Hm. I have no idea how he could tell, except that his perceptions must be of a higher order than mine. No surprise there. He is an ancient, and Ori and I are merely part-breeds. I made a mental note to try to recruit, or wake, a few more ancient draykoni for our colony. They are useful people to have around.
We flew for a while over more and more water, and I began to despair of ever encountering anything else. But then the horizon rippled and shimmered, and I realised a Change was about to happen. That shimmer spread until it engulfed the silvery sea, and a wave of amasku rolled over the landscape. In its wake, the water vanished.
The scent hit me first, a wall of floral fragrance so pungent that it drowned every sense I possess. It was like being smothered under the weight of a mountain of flowers. The landscape continued hilly as far as I could see, and I was aghast, because every inch of it must be covered in flowers to produce such an aroma.
Ori made a disgusted noise and dipped towards the ground. Then he pulsed somehow with energy, and a furrow of altered ground stretched out before him, the flowers fading away and leaving bare earth behind.
You could be at it all day without making a difference, I told him. The sea of blossoms was as broad as the ocean it had replaced, and the little patches of flowerless ground Ori was making were pitiful in the vastness of it.
Then help me!
I made no reply, because I had noticed something else. Somewhere ahead of us, a familiar presence tugged at my senses. Avane! I felt a glow of gladness at the prospect of seeing her again. She was not as close to me as Ori, probably because we have less in common. Avane is more than ten years my senior, a Darklander, and mother to a small boy. But she is a good woman, and a friend and ally. I also felt for her. She and I were sharing the same duties, but I had the advantage of having Ori and Pense at my side. Avane had ventured to the Lowers alone, which frankly makes her far braver than me.
I did a happy tumble in the air and sped up a little. I love tumbling! Ori taught me how to do it and it’s honestly the best fun. I cannot do it in my human shape, or not the same way. The draykon form is well suited to the kind of barrel-roll I mean, though. You flip right over and spin. I can do five turns before I get dizzy and have to come out of it, and Ori can do seven. It’s the best feeling.
But as I went into my fourth turn, I was brought up short by the sound of Ori screaming.
I have never heard him scream before. My first thought was that he must be in some kind of danger, but I quickly realised that it had not been a scream of fear. It was horror. I came out of my tumble so abruptly I wobbled and almost fell.
Ori! I yelled.
He didn’t reply. In tandem, Pense and I wheeled and hurtled Ori’s way. He had wandered farther than I had realised, or probably than he intended, so intent upon his destruction of the stinking flowers had he been. It took us a minute or two to catch up with him.
I saw at once what had horrified him. Ori sat hunched upon the ground, his normally white-and-gold scales looking pallid and wan in the dim moonlight. Bare earth flanked him for a few feet on either side, after which point the ocean of flowers continued. As I drew closer, I noted that the earth, too, looked paler than it had elsewhere. My other senses detected an abrupt cessation of life, as though I had crossed a firm line between the living world and barrelled into a bleak, dead one.
It felt exactly the same as that forlorn circle of destru
ction in Iskyr, only this area was larger. Much, much larger.
It goes on and on, Ori said, and his voice shook, even though he wasn’t speaking aloud.
Ignoring the sick feeling building in my stomach, I turned a slow circle in the air, following the outlines of this new fallow field. It was easily half a mile wide. Most of it was invisible underneath those wretched blossoms, but I could feel it well enough.
Steeling myself, I landed in the middle of the flowers. There should have been the sensation of petals against my feet, stems crushing beneath me as I rested my full weight on top of them. But I felt nothing, just dry earth.
They aren’t real flowers, I reported. Not in this part.
Illusion, Ori agreed.
Pense was still airborne, but he wasn’t flying, precisely. Hovering is not easy for us. Our wings aren’t really made for it. It is a laborious process, but Pense was managing it by dint of determination. I felt his mind sweep over mine, and move on. He was probing, exploring, seeking.
Bones, he said. Far below.
I had been too quick to count our blessings. Finding no sign of a draykon corpse on the surface of the earth, as had been the case in Iskyr, I had felt a swift surge of relief. The ground here may be dead but at least it contained no eerily lifeless draykoni.
I was wrong. I closed my eyes and ignored the floral stench as best I could, focusing on the earth beneath my feet. Down, down and down again… and there they were. Bones.
Many, many bones.
That’s more than one, I said around a growing feeling of terror. More than one? That was an understatement. More than one, or two, or even five.
Eleven, Pense said after a moment. Then he added, twelve.
Twelve more dead draykoni. Or not dead, but… erased. Thirteen in total.
Whoever was responsible for this site had taken more care than they had in Iskyr. The area was ably concealed beneath the featureless seas of water or flowers, and the stench of floral perfume was so strong here that I struggled not to retch. It was a powerful deterrent to anybody inclined to investigate, failing only because of Ori’s odd whims.
Pense spoke calmly, but I sensed his emotional turmoil. For once, he was closer to losing his grip on himself than I was. He has a way of sending a palpable sense of reassurance at me when I am upset, a surge of affection which wraps around me like a warm, comforting blanket. It can always soothe me, no matter what has occurred to distress me. I did the same for him, letting him feel all of the affection I had for him, and love, and my supreme confidence in everything that he is.
Slowly, he calmed. When he was stable, I gradually withdrew.
Thank you, Minchu, he said privately to me, and I felt something like a mental kiss upon my brow.
I turned next to Ori, but he had got over his immediate reaction and was now prowling around, sending swathes of illusory flowers dissipating into nothing with great, powerful pulses of energy. He meant to clear the site, I saw, and I quickly fell to helping him. Pense joined us, and within half an hour or so we had laid bare every inch of the drained earth. It was bleached white, and as lifeless as baked salt.
Pense disappeared. For a moment, I couldn’t understand where he had gone. But then I saw him: small and white-furred, camouflaged against the pale bleakness. The creature he had become was of a type I have never seen before. It had a long, sensitive nose and wide front paws, shaped almost like spades. I saw the reason for that a moment later as Pense began to dig. He sent the earth flying up behind him, and soon burrowed underground and vanished.
Ori and I quickly followed suit. He had the right of it: it was certainly the quickest and easiest way to reach those far-buried corpses down below. Whether we would learn anything new by examining them more closely was doubtful, but the attempt must be made. I adopted the unfamiliar proportions of the little burrowing beast with more than a little clumsiness, but soon I had an alabaster pelt of my own and paws that felt like little shovels attached to my front legs.
We dug.
I won’t waste space here with describing the process of that long descent underground. Suffice it to say that it was far worse than the crossover into the deep darkness of Ayrien, for it was velvet-black, completely untouched by any form of light, and enclosed to boot. I’ve never felt claustrophobic before, but it came upon me then, so powerfully that I spent a full minute frozen with the desire to escape.
I resisted, and dug, and at length we came upon the first of the bones. I had wondered if we would find them all jumbled up together, so closely had they seemed to be packed from our vantage point above. But closer up, I could sense each one, distinct and separate from the next.
I don’t know how long we spent down there among those pitiful remains. Time passed strangely under the earth, with no change of light or atmosphere to indicate its passage. But I know that, with time and focus, and the absence of anything to distract my senses, I began to discern more about these draykoni. They left traces of themselves behind. Not life, for that was irrevocably gone, but something more like a footprint. I discerned whether they were male or female, and some faint whisper of a glimpse into the creatures they had been in life: scarlet-scaled or amber, emerald green or bark-brown.
They’re all ancients, Ori observed. His voice startled me, for none of us had spoken in some time, and the silence had become all-consuming.
He was right, though. I had not yet made the connection myself, but I could see the truth of it. None of the draykoni lying in this miserable mass grave had so much as a trace of human heritage about them. They felt like Pense and Nyden and Eterna: draykon to the core, drenched in amasku, more energy than physical creature. And ancient beyond words.
And that was an interesting point. The one in Iskyr was also an ancient, which made an unbroken chain of ancients lying in these strange white graves. That could be a coincidence. After all, there are not many human-draykoni yet, and we are still far outnumbered by the ancients.
But it might not be. Whoever had done this might be specifically targeting ancients.
Something was troubling Pense. Utilising my shovel-paws as vigorously as I could manage, I made my way over to him through the chalky earth.
Ludino, he said incomprehensibly. Myir.
It took me a moment to realise that these were names. You know these two?
They were acquaintances, once. Pense paused, and I think he was gathering his thoughts about this development. They are far older than me. Of Eterna’s era, I would guess.
True ancients, then, in every sense of the word. That does not bode well, though I cannot say exactly why I feel that way.
I never knew they had awakened, Pense added.
Hm. Perhaps they had, or perhaps not. Had they been killed while they lived, or had their bones been stripped of their residual life while they lay deep in slumber? I could not tell.
What do you know about them? That was Ori, who had reached us by a circuitous route.
But Pense made the mental equivalent of shaking his head. I cannot think. I must… he paused, and I felt him suddenly fighting for air. I must get out of the earth.
He immediately began to burrow upwards with furious, panicked energy. Ori and I went with him, flanking him on either side. It seemed to take forever, despite our speed, as we inched our way slowly upwards and upwards and upwards… would we ever reach the surface? Were we even going up? There was no clear sense of direction down here. Perhaps we were tunnelling sideways, and would never reach fresh air. Perhaps we were even burrowing deeper. That damaged my composure, shaken as it already was by the twelve lifeless skeletons.
Thankfully, before I could embarrass myself by losing my calm entirely, we erupted into air and light. Gentle though it was, the moonlight seemed deliciously bright by contrast with the absolutely blank darkness below, and the three of us lay panting with relief.
That was a little bit vile, said Ori at last, with staggering understatement.
It occurred to me that these lifeless draykoni were
too close to Avane for comfort. I reached for her, but I could no longer sense her. She had moved beyond my range, most likely, but I still felt a flicker of alarm.
Pense, can you find Avane?
He stirred, and sat up. Having shed his furred shape the moment we reached the surface, he was draykon once more, and I hastily followed his example. Heavens, but it was starting to feel like home to take on my scaled and four-legged shape. I am not sure if I am glad of this, or appalled.
There was a pause, so long that I began to feel troubled. We have no idea how long those bodies have been lying there. What if it had been but recently done, and whoever was responsible had run into Avane?
Yes, Pense said at last, and I breathed a sigh of relief. She’s too close to this place, he added, echoing my thoughts. Without another word, he leapt skywards and took off in the direction I had last sensed Avane.
Ori and I heaved ourselves to our feet, groaning a little. When we undertake significant physical efforts in some alternate form, the effects of it don’t wear off once we shapeshift. More’s the pity. After all that digging, my arms — or rather my front legs, as they were at the time — were screaming with pain, and I wanted to rest them for a bit.
But there was no time to lose, and at least I don’t have to use them for flying. I followed Pense into the air right away, Ori right behind me. We flew as fast as we could, and came upon Avane some half an hour later.
Avane was slow to master the Change, and slower still to fully adopt a draykon form. This is not because she is slow in general. She is a bright woman, by no means lacking in intelligence or persistence. But I think she felt more disconcerted by the prospect of the draykoni than the rest of us, because she is a gentle soul. The wicked teeth and sharp claws, the size and bulk, and the undeniable ferocity of the draykoni do not mesh well with her personality.
The war gave her little time to accustom herself, of course, and by the end of it she had been forced into a nearer acquaintance with the draykoni’s more violent capabilities than I imagine she ever wanted. I admire her for her resolve, and her willingness to help, even though the war was focused upon Waeverleyne, a Daylander city with which she has never had anything to do.
Llandry Page 6