‘Thought we would never speak again, hey?’
‘But what… how… how are you doing this?’
‘With difficulty. Hurts a lot, me and him both. Cannot do it for long. What do you want to talk about?’
I took a deep breath, and swallowed my horror. ‘You’ve been killing our Elders! Why!’
‘Helping them,’ corrected Galy-as-Nyden. ‘Helping me. You suck the energy out of them, see? Like this.’
I have no idea what he did then, but Nyden roared and convulsed again, and his hide burned under my hands. Then he collapsed, shivering.
‘Stop it!’ Ori shouted. ‘Demonstrations are not required.’
‘Sorry,’ said Galy, in that small voice I had heard so many times.
‘What are you using it for?’ Ori said, more calmly.
‘I showed you all this.’ Galy sounded irritated.
‘Sorry, but your cocktail of visions was hard to interpret.’
‘I thought you would help me.’
‘Help you kill our Elders?’ Ori gaped, too flabbergasted to say any more.
‘Help me to — to—’ Nyden’s jaws opened wide in a kind of soundless scream, and nothing more emerged. He shuddered and writhed, and his evident agony cut me to the core.
‘Quickly, Galy,’ I gasped. ‘Help you to what?’
No more words emerged. Instead, the castle rocked around us, the stones rumbled and shook, and a whirlpool of amasku rose up to engulf us. My senses drowned in a flood of chaos and it hurt, the pressure of it beating upon me in wave after wave and I couldn’t breathe or see or hear anything save the roar of stonework splitting apart and I felt nothing but the tremors of the ground beneath my feet and then everything exploded and I exploded with it, bursting apart into a rain of blessed nothingness. And I felt… relief. Peace. Calm.
I opened my streaming eyes and blinked, surprised to find the castle still intact around me. Just a vision.
I tried to speak but my words emerged as a thin croak. My throat was parched, my lips felt wooden.
‘Galy,’ I managed in a hoarse whisper. ‘Are you trying to destroy the old girl?’
‘YES!’ Poor Nyden shouted the word and choked, coughing and retching.
Pense ran to us and fell to his knees beside Nyden, bracing him. ‘Why the Elders?’ he demanded.
‘They are replete with the energy I need, and they are broken anyway. MAD like me, mad like we are. Only one way to make it go away, hey?’
‘What do you even mean!?’ Frustration overwhelmed me. Galy’s riddles and half-spoken truths, his omissions and his garbled revelations… at this rate he would drive me insane, too.
Galy ignored me, and went on with his rambling. ‘Design flaw. Sends ‘em round the twist, like a flick of a switch. See? Show you.’
‘NO!’ roared Pense and Ori and I as one. We grabbed for Nyden, as though physically holding onto him would somehow protect him from Galy.
‘No. Look.’ The stone hall melted away and we were back in the labs of old, watching again as that maddened female drayk rampaged through the Library. ‘Never could find the problem,’ Galy-as-Nyden said. ‘Hoped it would breed out. Seems to. But the first batch are a mess. Found one of them loose on my island, mad as you like. Poor fool. Did the only thing I could think of.’
‘You turned the entire Library into an energy collector,’ I guessed.
‘Not a bad idea of Maeval’s,’ Galy mused. ‘Oddly circular, of course. Takes a drayk to catch a drayk.’ Draykon bone glittered all around us, pulsing with amasku, and then faded away. ‘Works though.’
Another of Galy’s visions flashed through my mind: one of Krays’s energy collectors, exploding to bits. ‘So if you overload the old girl with enough amasku, you think she will burst. And you with her.’
Ori shook his head. ‘Galywis, this is the wrong way to go. You cannot destroy our Elders just in case they go mad! And you propose to destroy your Library and yourself, the same! No! It has to stop. There must be something else we can do.’
The lab vanished around us, but nothing replaced it. There was only light and heat and a wave of frustrated rage from Galywis that smothered the breath out of me. ‘Do you think it is fun to be mad?’ he roared. ‘Do I make an amusing figure to you? Does she?’ Colour flickered briefly across my vision, outlining the maddened draykon once again, her body contorted in agony. ‘Like to try it yourself, hey? You’d soon see.’
Ori held up his hands, visibly frightened. ‘No, Galywis,’ he said firmly enough, though his voice shook a little as he spoke. ‘But perhaps they will not go mad. Perhaps they can be cured, mended. Perhaps the Library can be mended. Perhaps you—’
Nyden shook his head furiously. ‘Too late, too late. For her, for me. I am dead, but there is no release, no end—’ He broke off, and a terrible silence fell. No comfortable silence, this; it felt like a brief lull in a raging tempest, and a heavy tension hung in the air. Then Nyden’s labouring lungs swelled with a mighty indrawn breath and Galy-as-Nyden roared: ‘I would wish this on NO ONE!’
Blood leaked from Nyden’s nose and his eyes met mine. I saw the real Nyden in there, somewhere beneath Galywis’s all-consuming possession, and he was terrified.
I’d never seen Nyden anything but laid back before.
‘Galy, you have to let Nyden go!’ I ran my hands over Ny’s dark scales, trying to soothe him the only way I could. ‘You’re killing him. Stop.’
Another wordless burst of anger seared my senses, and then Nyden collapsed, boneless and exhausted, onto a floor turned to cold stone once again.
‘Ny?’ I bent over him, trying to see into his face, but his eyes were tight shut and he did not respond. I shook him. ‘Ny!’
One eye cracked open and focused blearily upon me. A drop of blood leaked from the corner. I award the experience a two out of ten, Ny said faintly. Would not recommend.
I was so relieved I could have cried. Two? As many as that?
I am not dead. It could be worse.
He got hugged a bit then. I will not say how much, that would be embarrassing.
But Galy’s anger and frustration had by no means abated. The walls rattled and the ground heaved beneath our feet, sending us staggering. Ori laid his hands against the nearest wall, striving to calm Galywis, and I saw him talking in a stream of words I could not hear over the rumbling of the stones. He shook his head, frustrated, and I thought I saw the glitter of tears on his cheeks.
Tears streamed from my own eyes, unheeded. I think Ori and I both knew we had lost Galy; despair had carried him far from us, and we could no longer reach him.
It was Pense who realised the danger. When the first stone fell from the roof overhead, he looked up sharply and stood in one swift movement. ‘We need to go,’ he barked. ‘Now.’
‘Go where?’ I looked around wildly, but the castle was as enclosed as ever.
‘We make a door. Like we did before.’ He strode over to Ori and forcibly dragged him away from the wall, just as a cluster of rocks rained down and struck the spot he had been standing in with a loud crash. Galy was shaking himself to pieces and he would crush us if we didn’t find a way out.
‘Ori!’ shouted Pense, and pointed at a clear spot upon on an as-yet-intact wall. ‘Door. There. All of us.’
It was hard, almost too hard. We had wrought a door in the Library of Orlind before, upon our first visit; we knew we could do it, if Galy permitted it. And it was not that he opposed us, directly. But he was so deep in rage and madness that he could only impede our efforts, whether he meant to or not. Even with all three of us focused upon the task — and that was no simple matter, what with the building collapsing around us — we struggled. It was like trying to fight through endless layers of gauze; all we could do was tear away layer after layer, hoping to find clarity somewhere on the other side.
The faint outlines of a door appeared, a tracery of cracks in the stone.
Pense wasted no time. ‘Go!’ he barked at Ori. ‘Get everybody away
from the castle. He’s going to draw on anybody within range, do you understand?’
Ori turned white as snow, and the objections I saw in his face went unvoiced. He ran for the shaky door and shoved his way through. I saw him Change on the other side, and he disappeared in a blur of golden scales.
‘Minchu. Nyden.’
I had already run to Ny, but my efforts to lever him up were futile. He was too big, too heavy, and too much hurt. He tried to stand, but his shaking legs gave out beneath him and he toppled to the ground with a ringing thud.
Go without me, he said, and for once there was no trace of fun in his words.
‘Not a chance,’ I snapped. ‘Ny, I know you object to shapeshifting but now’s the time to lighten up a little. Change, now. Something small.’
He gave me the eye, and snapped his teeth together in irritation. The things I do for you, he muttered.
‘Just do it.’
It hurt him, I could see that. His whole body shuddered with the effort, and he whimpered with pain, despite a clenched jaw and tightly gritted teeth. He shrank, slowly — too slowly.
‘Now, Nyden!’ I yelled. Our makeshift door was rapidly vanishing and I could hardly keep my feet upon the rippling floor.
Nyden groaned, and Changed all in a rush. I barely noticed what form he had taken — something small and fat and furred and above all, portable. I scooped him up as I ran for the door, Pense two steps behind me.
The door resisted. We pushed harder, to no avail. The stones sealed up, leaving no trace of our erstwhile exit route.
Pense pounded uselessly upon the stone, and bellowed something incomprehensible. A massive block of stone fell directly behind him, missing him by inches; the floor shook anew with the impact.
I took a deep breath.
‘GALY! If you were ever truly our friend, prove it now and let us go!’
Pense gathered me close and shoved me beneath him, putting his own body in between me and the falling masonry. I did the same for Ny, holding him protectively against my chest and trying to ignore the seeping blood that stickied my hands.
Minchu, said Pense. You are a queen among draykoni and I love you.
Those words brought fresh tears to my eyes. Pense is never effusive.
A sudden rush of fresh, cold air cut off any response I might have made. A door didn’t so much open as the entire wall fell away, and collapsed in a heap upon the earth.
Go. Pense pushed me before him and we tore out of the Library, gulping in clear air as we ran. It rained beyond the walls and we were soaked within minutes. The water hung heavy upon my wings as I flexed them and took to the air, striving to put as much distance between me and Ny and the Library as quickly as possible.
Ori was ahead of us, a frantic presence in the skies as he desperately tried to herd draykoni back from the castle. He was succeeding poorly. They were not listening to him, and if anything they saw his attempts to repel them as an attack. He strove doggedly on, defending himself as best he could from the teeth and claws of those he sought to protect.
And there were many, still. Some of those who had fallen earlier were approaching the castle on foot, trying to swarm inside from the ground. Many others were still airborne, closing fast upon the fortress now that Galy had ceased to fire his missiles. Eterna was among them.
Pense took one look at this and Changed, turning draykon in a single breath. His scales glittered, piercingly blue in the rain, as he took one swooping circuit of the castle.
Nuwelin! he roared. Anshalin! FALL BACK!
Some of our people were trying to help Ori. I saw Meri and Larion heading for him, with Sophronia and Damosel not far behind. But Pense’s shout cut through everything. I have never known him to muster such raw power as he did then, nor to wield it with such devastating effect. Our friends wheeled about and were winging away before they even had time to process what he had said, and to my relief I saw Avane and Loret also in retreat. Even some of Eterna’s colony bowed to the pressure and withdrew.
I went for Ori. I could not shift without dropping Nyden, who still crouched, shivering, in my arms, and in my human shape I was too frustratingly slow.
‘Ori!’ I yelled, as soon as I was close enough for him to hear me. ‘Move. We have to go.’
I can’t yet. They will not listen!
‘It’s too late! GO!’
He cast one last, desperate look at those too furious, too vengeful, too deranged or too stubborn to hear him, and I felt his anguish at leaving them. It echoed my own. If only we had been able to reach them in time. If only we had been able to reach Galy, found the right words to say to ease his despair, dissuade him from this terrible course of action.
It was too late for if only. Ori and I dived beneath the doomed draykoni, tucking our wings and rolling to evade raking claws and teeth. A flash of white caught my eye: Gio, staring up at us in dismay and far too close to the castle. Did his stolen draykoni magics put him in danger?
Ori swerved, grabbed Gio in his claws and shot skywards once more, his wings pumping desperately.
We managed to put perhaps another hundred feet in between us and the fortress before the end began.
It was as though the Library inhaled, and with each mighty indrawn breath it devoured wave after wave of energy. Distant as I was by then, I felt it still: life and vibrancy and will left me in a rush, leaving me wearied almost to the point of exhaustion. My pace faltered, slowed, and I almost fell, my legs suddenly too weak to hold me. Pense and I collapsed against one another and dragged each other onwards. I tried not to look at him, for the ashen hue of his face frightened me, and I knew that my own visage was as drawn and deathly as his.
I could only hope, desperately, that Nyden was sheltered still, for in his weakened state he could scarcely bear to lose more…
But the silence that fell then frightened me more than anything else. All the clamour of rage and war died out almost at once, and I dared not look behind me for fear of what I might see. Galy had not stopped. He drew in more energy, and more still, not just from those living draykoni around him but from the land as well. I could feel it streaming away from us, the sudden flux turning its nauseating chaos into a maelstrom of disorder. Sick, weak and dizzy, I fell at last and lay inert, unable to tell the sky from the ground or the air from the earth.
Nyden twitched beneath me and lay still.
The terrible hush stretched. Then the ground began to shake, the threatening rumble of an approaching earthquake. Intense pressure built, lying heavy upon me like a physical weight and choking the air from my lungs. I curled around Nyden and Pense curled around me and we lay, hunched and shaking, waiting.
When the explosion came, it rocked the island in a terrific blast of energy. The ground bucked and shuddered and rolled, and debris rained down upon us in a deadly hail of stone and glass and metal. The noise was unbearable. I thought the tumult would go on forever but at last the noise lessened, the ground stopped shaking and the sickening, pulsing waves of expelled energy slowed and finally ceased altogether.
Pense and I sat up slowly. We were both shaking uncontrollably. My teeth chattered with the convulsions of my poor tormented body, and my ears rang in the wake of the explosion. I steeled my nerves and looked around.
Part of the island had dipped and sunk into the sea. It looked lopsided now, and the glittering waters were fast rushing in to claim more of the tortured land. No trace of the castle remained, save for the litter of debris which lay scattered over every surviving inch of ground.
Not a single draykoni was on the wing. All had fallen. They lay, toppled like freshly scythed grass, some sluggishly moving but more lifelessly inert. Those who had been nearest to the fortress would never move again; naught remained of them but bare bones. I counted at least eleven stark carcasses spread over the earth, their pale bones glinting mournfully in the wan sunlight.
Ori lay some way ahead of us, twined protectively around Gio. They moved as I watched, pained and aching, drained as we wer
e, but alive. Relief washed over me, and if anything I trembled more in the wake of it.
Nyden stirred in my arms and groaned. How do we get mixed up in these things? he whimpered. I vote we start a book club instead.
Seconded. I wanted to move, but I could not. I felt like I might never move again. It seemed impossibly difficult even to keep myself in a seated posture, let alone to get to my feet. Every part of my body ached and shook with pain and weariness, and I could barely think.
One distant impression finally seeped through to my awareness, however. The island felt… different. The muddlesome whirl of broken amasku had not dissipated altogether, but it was much lessened, ebbing like an outgoing tide.
A fear I had scarcely been aware of eased, and I took a deep, shaky breath.
Some few of the hardier, or perhaps just luckier, draykoni had stumbled to their feet and were moving around, testing their weakened bodies and checking on their fellows. I saw Avane heading for us, which prompted another rush of relief, for I had long since lost track of her in the chaos.
And my poor Sigwide, too, who hung limply in Avane’s shaking hands like a broken little doll. My heart raced again with swift panic laced with crippling remorse. Where had he been, when the Library exploded? Was he dead? I forgot my weakness and staggered to my feet. I could not quite muster a run, but I hastened towards Avane as fast as I could.
She, at least, seemed hale enough, her pallor and bruise-mottled skin notwithstanding. She was squinting against the sun, her Darklands eyes streaming with tears, and I realised she had maintained her weaker human form purely in order to deliver Siggy to me.
‘He is all right,’ she said quickly, and held out the sad little shape. ‘He fainted, I think, but he breathes.’
‘I will trade you,’ I said, thrusting Nyden’s furred little form into her hands as I took Siggy. He didn’t move, but I could sense his heartbeat pulsing faintly on, and he was uninjured.
Avane accepted the bundle of fur that was Nyden with a doubtful frown, though being Avane she instantly sensed his fragility and handled him with the utmost care. It was only then that I realised what a mess Ny had made of his shapeshifting. He had the tail and ears of an orting with the body of a wole, albeit larger than was typical. I could not guess where he had drawn the contours of his compact muzzle and delicate paws from, or the purplish colour of his fur, but he had made a fine patchwork of himself.
Llandry Page 28