I glanced over my shoulder. “Did you see that, Wiggea?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, Maam?”
“Something below. I think we’re being tracked. Keep an eye out.”
“Affirmative.” He leaned forwards, took the rifle off his back, and begun to scan the ground through the sights.
Behind him, Faso was also watching the ground. Ratter rested on his lap, crouched down as if ready to pounce.
“Pontopa,” Faso called. “Get lower. Ratter wants to investigate something.”
“You saw it too?” I shouted.
“Not sure,” Faso said. “Get lower…”
I nodded then pushed up on Velos’ steering fin to lower him towards the ground. I had to be careful. Visibility wasn’t great here and so we could be closer to the canopy than we thought. As we descended, I felt something tugging on the hairs on my arms. Either static in the clouds from an incoming storm or something supernatural that we didn’t quite understand. I was ready for both.
I glanced over my shoulder again just as Ratter leapt off Faso’s lap and onto a passing branch. The mechanical ferret scurried along with us for a while at a surprising pace, before disappearing beneath the broad-leafed canopy.
Suddenly, there came a cackle from the air, causing me to jump in my seat. If it wasn’t for the harness there, I might have leapt right off Velos. From nowhere, out boomed a robotic, monotone voice. Not one of a human, but one you might hear from a modified voice box.
“So, Pontopa Wells, the last dragonseer. You finally came. And you brought your dragon with you too. With ample weaponry, I see.”
I looked around to try and identify the source of the voice. But I still, could only make out the grey murk and the leaves below.
“What do you want, Colas?” I shouted out as loud as I could.
“Now, I can see there’s three of you,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “And no sign of any forces on the ground. No airships to accompany you. Oh my, Dragonseer, I wasn’t expecting you to be so obedient. But why, I ask you, didn’t you go to the port like I expected you too? I had a loyal escort waiting for you there and he was so eager to meet you. Ah well, I guess, you still have some lessons you need to learn.”
That red light flashed in my eyes. I saw it run across my chest then, and then pass over Wiggea’s shoulder towards Faso’s lap.
I turned to Wiggea. “Any sign of what’s down there?”
“Nothing, Maam. Whatever it is, it’s good at staying concealed.”
“It isn’t hard in this weather,” I said. And I gritted my teeth and pushed Velos even closer to the canopy. Any chance we had to see what was going on, I wanted to take advantage of. We brushed against a few branches and something scratched against my bare calf. So I decided I’d probably got a bit too close and pulled Velos up a little.
A boom of thunder came from the sky. Then, another crackling static sound came from no determinate direction. And that weirdly freakish robotic voice once again filled the air. “Mr Gordoni, I found your mechanical ferret. I remember you developing it when I met you all those years ago. And how rude you were to me back then, when I was just simply teaching your girlfriend how to meditate. Well, I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones. Oh, and I’ve disabled your automaton. Can’t have that thing sniffing around my operations.”
I looked back at Faso to see an expression of scorn so heavy that he looked like he wanted to kill the man. Really, I wasn’t surprised.
“But, now that armour I can see on your dragon,” the voice continued. “It’s quite remarkable, I must say. I see you learned a lot while working for the king, Mr Gordoni. I have to admit, when I saw you in the magazines, I often thought to myself, this man will never make a truly great scientist. You simply didn’t seem to have the patience.
“Now, I’m afraid, I can’t let anything like that dragon with its armour near my base, for obvious reasons. Besides, my good friends, I think a hike will do you good. Maybe you’ll even meet some good friendly tribesmen on the way up.”
“Dragonheats, what’s that man planning,” I said under my breath. Beneath us, came a rustling from the canopy and I saw that red light once more. But this time, it didn’t flash, but instead pinpointed one of Velos’ Gatling cannons, tracking it as he moved. The dot didn’t seem to waver an inch, which I found ever so slightly disconcerting.
Next thing I knew, I was looking into some blue ball of light growing in a clearing beneath the tree line. It was attached to something brass, an automaton, but the light cast such a glow that I couldn’t make out exactly what was creating it. It looked like one of those glass balls you found in science classrooms to demonstrate the principle of static electricity. Although this thing seemed to have nothing but air walling its outer perimeter.
“What the wellies is that?” I shouted.
“Dragonheats,” Faso called. “It’s impossible.”
“What?”
“Electromagnetic pulse technology. No, I’ve seen prototypes, but it can’t work like this. The laws of physics cannot allow it.”
“Worry about that later,” I said.
I swerved Velos hard to the right, hoping that Wiggea and Faso had kept their harnesses fastened. Velos responded to my hard push on his steering fin by entering into a barrel roll. Then I pulled up, to enter him into a loop the loop. If there’s one thing that I’d learned fighting automatons is that you could confuse them through unpredictable aerobatics. But not this time. Just as Velos began to reach the apex of his climb, I noticed the red pinpoint spot focused on exactly the same spot of his Gatling gun, not having budged one bit.
“Blunders and dragonheats,” I said under my breath. Then, instead of admonishing myself for picking up General Sako’s vernacular, I pushed down on Velos’ steering fin to break him out of the loop the loop manoeuvre and banked him sharply to the left.
But still, the red light remained fixed on its point.
“It’s using laser light to target us,” Faso said. “Dragonheats, how can the energy ball remain aerial. It’s moving so slowly.”
“There’s no time to think about that now,” I said. “Can you do anything?”
“I don’t even know what it is!”
The orb was edging even closer now. It pulled at the hairs of my skin. From the sky, a few drops of water splashed on my arms. I pushed down on Velos, sending him into a stall to try and shake off this brilliant ball of energy, and the lightning that danced within it. But no matter how I hard I tried, the thing just crept closer and closer.
Sparks lashed across Velos’ armour. One jumped off it and shocked me on the thigh, causing me to recoil. Velos let out a loud roar into the sky, and out of his mouth burst a torrent of green fire. This licked out at the jungle canopy, and a few trees burst into flame.
“My my,” the voice came again. “I never predicted that side effect. Lucky it’s about to rain, otherwise we might have a jungle fire.”
And in reply, another boom of thunder called out from the sky.
I looked again at the sphere that now looked like a huge ball of bolt lightning, larger than a house. Yet it kept pushing forward, rather than just dissipating into nothingness, as lightning should.
The static from it was pulling my hair towards it now, and it hurt so much I thought the hair would tear out of my scalp. I cried out in pain, and heard Faso shouting too, although Wiggea remained stoically silent, so much I wondered if he’d been knocked out.
But I didn’t turn around to check. I simply kept my eyes set on the massive globe of light as it passed over us. It caused me to shake and shudder in my seat. I couldn’t move a muscle or say anything. I could only hear thunder and Colas’ final words.
“I hope you have a safe landing,” he said. “Enjoy the climb but take some time to recover first and enjoy the scenery. There’s absolutely no rush.”
And Velos roared out again, letting out another torrent of flame, before his body went limp. But his wings remained outstretched, fortunately,
and so we entered into a glide.
We first hit the canopy, and bounced off it, the branches springboarding us back into the air. We dived again, and this time crashed through the canopy. Thorns and branches tore at my skin as we fell, but I was still feeling numb from the electric shock that it didn’t hurt much at all. And we continued to hurtle downwards, as I kept my teeth bared and watched the ground accelerate towards us, helpless.
We hit the earth with a thud sending up a plume of volcanic ash. I jerked forward in my seat, so hard that the harness got torn out of the socket, causing a lancing pain in my shoulder. Then, I hit my head on Velos’ steering fin and blacked out.
Part V
Faso
“A scientist’s skill isn’t measured in gizmos and gadgets, but in how much his discoveries contribute to the advancement of science.”
Faso Gordoni
13
I woke up, not in a river or on the jungle floor, as I would have expected, but in an unfamiliar bed. It felt kind of hard – even harder than the beds in fortress Gerhaun. The first thing I noticed was sunlight streaming through a low, narrow window. My vision was blurry for a while, and I could only make out I was in some kind of hut with some kind of smoke coming from somewhere, with a scent not too much unlike coriander.
As my vision got better, I had a chance to look around the room. There was a set of rickety shelves across one wall, containing an assortment of dried meats, fish, and mushrooms in jars. The lower shelves contained tall bottles full of various concoctions I didn’t recognise. I took a sniff of a few of them to confirm that they contained alcohol. Some smelled like they would melt metal and others, I have to admit, not so bad.
On the other side of the room stretched a long dugout canoe with space enough for three men. It was made of a kind of rough tropical wood, and it had with elaborate carvings of creatures carved into it, including one of a panther-like beast with a long dragon flying out of its mouth. Not much like Velos, but instead the kind of dragon you see in books about mythologies from faraway places, where the dragon has no legs, the body of a snake, and flies through the air without wings, as if powered by magic.
I rubbed my head. That was twice I’d hit it in the last twenty-four hours and who knows how many brain cells I must have killed. But, strangely, I didn’t feel too much of a headache this time. Either I’d been asleep for a very long time, or whoever had put me here had given me medicine to alleviate the pain. Just next to the bed, I noticed that the smokiness was emanating from a stone burner, a latticework brazier with coals mixed with blackened branches of some kind of plant burning inside.
I decided to step outside and find out whether I was a friend or prisoner here. I’d lost my clothes, and my daggers, pistol, rifle and secicao flask were also missing. Instead I wore wooden soled shoes and what could only be described as a poncho, made from a rough hemp-like fibre. The robe had the same strange creature as I’d seen on the canoe, woven onto its front – the panther with the dragon flying out of its mouth. This time, the panther was black and the dragon, was a pale blue colour.
I turned towards the door to see that same beast looking at me again on a tapestry hanging over the entranceway in place of a door. This time, it was depicted in a different art style, but still quite recognisable. Whatever this creature was, it clearly had some standing in the natives’ mythology. I walked over to the tapestry, pushed it away, and stepped outside.
The air smelled musty, as if the sky had just rained out a heavy storm. The ground had a turgid muddiness to it. Brown rivulets ran in patterns along channels in the ground towards a lake. A waterfall plunged into this from up high and a rainbow rose overhead. The sun shone from even higher above. But despite it, the broad leaves of the canopy covered me in shade.
Above the waterfall, and to one side of it, towered the Pinnatu volcano, resplendent and majestic with another cover of white cloud haloed around it.
“Ah, Pontopa, you’re awake.” The voice came from behind me, and I turned around to see Faso limping towards me, supporting himself on a thick tree branch as he walked.
“Faso,” I said. “Where’s Wiggea?”
He laughed. “Honestly, I thought the trained soldier would be up before you. He’s sleeping in his cabin,” Faso motioned with his makeshift cane, “over there.”
I nodded. “I should go check on him. What about Velos, have you seen any sign of him?” How could I have thought about Wiggea before Velos? My handsome and most trusted dragonelite guard before my oldest friend? Part of me wanted to thump myself.
“Not yet,” Faso said. “Although I’m sure he can’t have gone far. He’ll be hard to miss when we go searching for him. Ratter, on the other hand, I have no idea what happened to him.”
A couple of years ago, I would have admonished him for putting technology over the life of a dragon, but I knew how Ratter was like a pet to Faso. Plus, in all honesty, I just didn’t have the energy for getting snarky with the inventor.
“Dragonseer Wells…” I turned around to see Wiggea leaning against the doorway of his hut. “Am I really the last one up? What happened to us.” He began to stumble towards us, but he also walked with a little bit of a limp.
“Haven’t a clue,” Faso said. “Have any of you seen our captors yet?”
I listened out for some sign of life here, but all I could hear was the roar of the waterfall, the howling of monkeys, and the cawing of exotic birds. “Faso, Wiggea and I have only just awoken,” I said. “I was kind of hoping that you’d enlighten us.”
“Not a whisper from anyone yet,” Faso said. “And I’ve been awake for hours.”
I remembered then how I’d encountered Charth in the collective unconscious before. I considered mentioning this fact to Faso and Wiggea, but I thought it would probably be better to keep it quiet. Yet if I could reach out to him, maybe he could let us know what was going on and tell me where Velos had got to.
“Charth,” I prompted in the collective unconscious. Nothing. “Charth, are you there?” Still nothing. And I wanted to know where the wellies that dragonman had gone and what he was up to.
“Hoooooiiiiieeeehoooeee,” a call interrupted us from behind. It was high pitched and came from a clearing in the jungle, just where it met the lake several hundred yards away. At first, I thought it had come from a monkey, but when I turned around, I saw a figure in a ceremonial mask, his skin dark, and his hands raised high above his head. The mask seemed to represent some kind of animal, but from this distance I couldn’t see what.
“Hoooooiiiieeehooooeeeeandalay.” The call came again, and around me rustling sounds came out of the canopy. Heads emerged from up in the trees, in all directions. They belonged to more tribespeople, all of them wearing a similar looking mask.
“I guess we have met our captors,” Faso said.
“I’m not sure we’re even prisoners,” I said. I mean, they hadn’t locked us up in cells or anything. “Lieutenant, do we have any weapons?”
“Negative, Maam.”
I shook my head. “Just don’t do anything to provoke them. Not until we learn whether they’re friend or foe.”
I waited as I watched the men and women come down from their place in the branches. They had this remarkable way of climbing, not seeming to need to use branches for purchase, but instead hugging the tree with their arms and bare feet and scurrying down like super-fast sloths. Their leader, or at least the man who had called them down from their perches, waited on the ground, smoking some kind of bong with green smoke rising from it.
“Secicao,” I thought. “How the dragonheats did they get access to it here.”
The tribe had now surrounded us in a circle and started to close in on us. Wiggea, Faso and I backed up against each other. Our only chance of escape would be to fight head on. Meanwhile, the tribespeople shuffled forwards, chanting all the while, and the ring closed around us.
“Hoooieee, hoooieee, hoooieee,” they screamed out in high pitched shrill voices. Then they paused and
the birds from the canopy cawed a response, as if both the tribe and nature were in some kind of communion.
Both the men and women of the tribe had bare chests and feathered underpants, and none of them had an ounce of fat on them. Their wooden masks represented the same creature, I’d encountered depicted in the hut I’d woken up in. A panther with a blue dragon poking out of its mouth. But on each mask but one, the panther behind the dragon was painted in colourful patterns that seemed to swirl around as the tribespeople moved. The man I presumed to be the tribal chief had a colourless panther on his mask, painted in complete black.
When the tribespeople had reached about an arm’s breadth from us, the ring stopped closing in. But the chief continued forwards and only stopped when he was right in front of me.
“Dragonseer,” he said. His pronunciation was terrible, yet somehow, he seemed to know the word. “Welcome…”
“How the dragonheats does he know our language?” Faso said.
I shrugged not wanting to say anything yet. Instead I studied the movements of the tribal chief, trying to determine whether he wanted to attack us or aid us. I noticed Wiggea out of the corner of my eye doing the same. And we both had our arms slightly raised, ready to counter an attack if it came.
“Speak dragonseer,” the chief said again. And he cupped his hand over his ear, cocked his head to the side, and waited.
Faso nudged me in the ribcage, and I turned around to scowl at him.
“Dragonseer, speak…” the man said again.
I sighed. “Ummm, hello,” I said.
“Hoooieee,” the chief called out again, raising his head to the sky like a wolf. The whole congregation around him echoed his call with an ear-splitting shrillness. Meanwhile the tribal chief backflipped backwards twice, then stepped forwards once again.
“Dragonseer speaks,” he said. “It good.”
I shrugged. “Thank you.”
Dragonseers and Airships Page 42
