by CK Dawn
The roar seemed to be behind them now.
Below them, she could see the darker grey she took for the top of the trees. And the speed with which it was moving surprised her. From the feel of the wind—and rain—on her face she had assumed they were travelling quite slowly, but the ground was rushing past.
“Too far!”
That’s what Yenteel’s new shout sound like. Too far? What did that mean?
She looked over her shoulder at him. He was making a big gesture with his good arm, as if he wanted her to turn round. She would have to find somewhere to land so they could talk. Had he seen such a place back there?
Pulling back on the reins again, she tried to slow Sheesha even more but he did not respond. Instead he just descended.
The tops of the trees looked wrong as they grew closer. They did not resolve into leaves and branches. The grey was a moving mass of water. The sea! And barely a ziri’s wingspan below them. Fear gripped her again. The Isle of Esternes bordered a sea that was so huge they might travel for days across it before encountering an island or any other land.
Yenteel had known. The sound she had heard must have been waves crashing onto the shore. The good news was that it meant they had not travelled far beyond the coastline, but she could see nothing. How could she be sure they were heading in the right direction?
The waves—more correctly, the swell—were running in towards the land. That was why she thought their speed was higher than it was. Sheesha had refused to go any slower because he would have fallen out of the sky if he had. But that meant they could follow the swell back to land. It might not be the most direct line but it should work.
She pulled Sheesha up until they were at a more comfortable height and started the turn. Not too abrupt, because the others had to follow. Yenteel had ceased to shout at her which was a relief. Once Sheesha was moving with the swell beneath, she let him have his head and he made strong strokes for the shore.
The rain continued to pour down and it was still impossible to see anything ahead. Yenteel had said the whole coastline was cliffs, which meant they would either have to climb fast or land on the beach. As long as she was prepared, that would be fine.
It wasn’t long before she heard the booming of the waves. She reined Sheesha in once more. What would they land on—a sandy beach, or rocks?
A dark shape loomed out of the greyness ahead below them. She peered down, expecting to see a rock in the water but its lines were smooth curves. A sharp end curved round to the other where it was cut off. A boat!
Another, bigger, dark shape emerged.
Kantees gasped and kicked Sheesha into a climb though he was already doing it. They scraped over the top of a mast. Then boats were everywhere, there was barely an open stretch of water. They crossed a spit of land against which the sea beat its endless drum.
The rain thinned and they burst through into light under a grey sky.
Boats lined the quay, and on the stone streets people went to and fro, hundreds of them, thousands even. Houses stacked up in a great curve from left to right. Streets went up the cliffs behind in zig-zags where houses had been placed on every precarious point.
All their earlier planning on what they would do when they reached Kurvin Port evaporated like rain on a hot stone. The people of Kurvin Port turned and stared at the four massive ziri and their riders, who had arrived out of the mists.
Twenty-One
They would never be able to enter the town in secret now. She turned round as far as she could so she could see Yenteel and Daybian. She was willing to take any idea now that she had messed up again. Three times in two days she could have got them killed.
Yenteel looked to be at a loss. Daybian was scanning the tops of the cliffs, and after a moment he pointed up and to the right. She looked and saw an enormous building, constructed from a reddish stone, dominating the entirety of Kurvin Port.
He could not be serious. She shook her head.
“Yes!” he shouted. “Only choice!”
She didn’t want to trust him. He was one of the masters and he wanted to put them straight into the palm of the Hamalain. Without a doubt, that place was their home. The centre of their trading empire.
But he was right, they had little choice. The ziri were tired, and Jintan certainly could not fly much longer. If they made an attempt to go inland or along the coast, they would easily be caught. She understood what Daybian was thinking: make it look as if this was their intention, to be bold.
It was not a plan she liked, but it was the only option if they wanted a chance at finding out the truth about the raiders.
In the time it had taken her to come to this conclusion, they had passed across the coast and were climbing the steep slope. Two rivers descended from the top and bridges curved across their waters everywhere they intersected with the roadways.
It was a tremendous demonstration of engineering skill—no doubt used by the Hamalain to prove to their people they were both powerful and magnanimous. The people who lived here, perhaps even the slaves, would feel they were blessed.
She shook her head as more people came out into the thoroughfares and looked up at them as they climbed. The numbers were overwhelming. It was like a mountain of faces.
Kantees urged Sheesha to make the turn as they continued to mount the slope. Soon they reached the ridge and she could see that the town had spread into the next bay as well as extending back across lower hills with more houses of the rich.
She focused on the Hamalain house. There were gardens which they could land in but the Hamalain had a Ziri Tower, made of a different and darker stone to the rest. She could see faces looking out from the eyries. And some ziri. Screeches went up from the tower to be answered by those from the four they rode. She could feel Sheesha’s voice through her knees. It resonated with power and she smiled at the apparent subservience of the responses from the tower.
She would have liked to land in the tower but there was no way of knowing which eyries were unoccupied. If they landed in the gardens they would have little time to get their story straight. The top of the tower at Jakalain was a landing place, so if the design here was the same as there, they could use it.
They were already over the grounds of the Hamalain estate, so she set Sheesha to climb and began a slow spiral up and around the tower.
As she had hoped, the top was flat. Gratefully, she brought the ziri in to land.
Daybian was unbuckled and off Jintan as fast as he could move.
“Kantees, listen, you must defer to me. If you don’t, they’ll have us all strung up.”
“I realise that.”
“Oh,” he said. “You do?”
“I am not an idiot.”
He frowned at her implication. “And you cannot say things like that in the presence of anyone here. Word will get back.”
She nodded.
“Silence is probably the best option,” he said and turned to the others. “Gally, you’ll look after the ziri like you always do, and do what Kantees says.”
“Gally always does what Kantees says.”
“Yenteel, you had better be my secretary.”
“And what story will explain why we are here?” said Kantees. “With almost nothing but the clothes we stand up in.”
They all stood silent as the sound of shouting drifted up from below.
“Shipwreck in a storm,” said Yenteel. “We escaped on the ziri and only just made it to land.”
“I have never heard of ziri being taken on a boat,” said Kantees. “We travel by patterners’ path.”
“An island without a big ley-circle,” said Yenteel. “But a new source of zirichasa. We were coming back.”
A trapdoor in the floor rattled.
“Will Gally say the wrong things?” said Daybian.
Kantees gave him a look of disgust. “He is simple-minded, sire, it doesn’t matter what he says. We can simply deny it.”
Armsmen flowed from below. Kantees gathered the reins of
Sheesha and Looesa and pulled them back towards the edge. Gally had the other two.
Daybian strode forward with an air of entitlement that made the armsmen falter. Yenteel followed with a similar confidence, but a few steps behind.
“I am Lord Daybian of Jakalain. If this is the estate of the Lords Hamalain I request that I be brought into their presence so that I may apologise for taking advantage of their hospitality in this unorthodox manner.”
There was only problem with this plan, thought Kantees. One of the brothers in the house of Hamalain wanted to attack Jakalain. Daybian’s announcing himself like this was a sure way to get him—and the rest of them—captured or murdered.
However, the armsmen treated him with more respect and he was allowed to descend with Yenteel, leaving Kantees and Gally on the roof with the ziri.
And then it started raining again. She was not entirely sure the day could get much worse.
Kantees was quietly pleased when the day improved. Having established that neither she nor Gally was armed, nor did either of them carry any weapons among their meagre supplies, the guards allowed her to talk to a Kadralin man called Ferel. He was officious and clearly unwilling to consider even the slightest possibility that her charges were of any quality—although she saw the way his eyes lingered on Sheesha.
However, they did have two empty eyries so she was able to bring Sheesha into one and the other three into the other. This arrangement was apparently the way things were done here.
“The dominant male always has his own eyrie,” Ferel said. Kantees absorbed that information. Romain had never mentioned anything about dominant males. Perhaps she could learn things here. Did the people here know the zirichasa possessed the power of the ley-circles in abundance?
Somehow she doubted it since she herself had only discovered it by accident.
She had met slaves like Ferel before. He was the kind that liked to think they were special in some way and therefore above the others. Romain, for all his many faults, knew where he stood in the relationship between the masters and the slaves. On the inside, Ferel thought he was a master, but that was an attitude that could easily get one killed.
Kantees said nothing. She listened, agreed, and learnt, just as she had always done with Romain.
Getting the ziri into the eyries was a little tricky since she and Gally were no longer able to ride. No one mentioned that fact they had arrived on zirichak-back. Perhaps it would be ignored since supposedly they had been saving their master’s life and his valuable property. Riding was the only possible way that could be done.
She wasn’t sure.
In this instance, however, they stripped off the tack and Kantees went down through the tower to Sheesha’s allocated eyrie. Then called to him. He came and after examining the eyrie thoroughly he settled down to sleep. She stood at the exit for a moment looking out. This side of the tower stood on the edge of the cliff and below her was not only the height of the tower but the drop-off from the cliff top past the houses to the very distant ground below. She shivered and went back inside.
She went through the same process with the other three. Looesa first to get him settled and then the other two to join him. Gally came down and for the first time in a ten-day, he seemed happy. The life of adventure was not something he tolerated easily. He preferred things to be steady and predictable. This might not have been their original eyrie but it was close enough for Gally. Romain might not be here, but Ferel could tell him what to do.
If she could have left him here with the Hamalain she would have done. If it had been her alone she would have mounted Sheesha and flown away. Avoiding masters, ley-circles, and shadowy creatures, she would have gone up into the mountains to find her people.
But it was not just her. She might not like Daybian but somehow he had become her responsibility, even if she had managed to nearly kill all of them so many times. She was the one that had got them all into the protection of Yenteel’s ward. She was the one who had given them the way to escape from it. She might have got them out over the sea, but she had given them the right direction to come back.
She leaned against Sheesha. They were safe for the moment at least. And she fell asleep.
Twenty-Two
It was still raining outside when she woke up but it was not dark. She realised she was very hungry and imagined Sheesha probably was as well.
She went through into the back and looked at the trapdoor and ladder. She was going to have to go down at some point in order to eat and arrange for food so it might as well be now. But perhaps she could take Gally for support. He might not be useful, but he would be on her side—and that meant a lot.
The eyrie for Looesa, Shingul, and Jintan was two levels down. She found him shovelling ziri dung.
“Already?” she said with a smile.
He frowned. “Gally thinks Shingul has an upset tummy. The poop is very horrible.”
Hardly surprising, she thought; Shingul had been eating wild food and who knew what was in it that might be bad for ziri. Still, she had not noticed any problem in Sheesha.
“Are the others ill?” she said.
“No, Kantees, but they have not pooped.”
“We shall ask Ferel,” she said. “Leave the pile somewhere off to the side. He can take a look at it.” He certainly seems better informed than Romain and she was very curious to know if he was aware of their magic. But she did not see how she could ask without giving it away, if he didn’t know.
Gally had finished shovelling.
“Come on, let’s find Ferel and see about some food for ourselves and the ziri.”
“Gally is hungry, Kantees.”
“Me too.”
The construction of the tower seemed to be identical to the one at Jakalain, which she found odd. It wasn’t just that it was a tower with eyries, but the placement of all the trapdoors, ladders, even the design of individual eyries seemed to be the same.
Just as she had seen when they arrived, the stone of the Ziri Tower was different to the rest of the Hamalain palace. It was not the red-pink stone but something darker and greyer. And older. A rebellious thought crossed her mind: What if the towers had been built by the Kadralin before the Taymalin invaded? What if this was the work of her people?
Such thought was sacrilege, of course. The Taymalin insisted the original people had been nothing more than warring tribes roaming the island. They claimed to have brought peace.
She sighed, but that had been hundreds of years ago. Even if the stories they told were lies, it was really too long ago to do anything about it.
What it meant was that finding the kitchen and dining area was easy. Though her confidence at being able to find her away around was crushed when the eyes of a dozen strangers were directed in her direction. And Gally’s. She searched for Ferel’s face but she didn’t see him, there was an older man who looked as if he might have some authority.
“Excuse me,” she said.
The man looked up from the plate of tiny fish with some sort of root vegetable.
“You the ones from Jakalain.”
It sounded more a statement than a question.
“Yes, I am Kantees, this is Gally.”
“What do you want?”
“We hoped we would be able to feed our ziri,” she said. “We flew far and they have not been able to eat properly in a while.”
“On a ship, were you?”
“Yes, there was a storm, I think it sank.”
The man eyed Gally. “Your boy doesn’t say much.”
“He is simple-minded but a good worker and the ziri like him.”
“Gally looks after Looesa and Shingul and Jintan,” said Gally.
The man’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly, then came back down. “And you get the dominant male?”
“For seven years.”
“Surprised he didn’t eat you.” He grinned at her, although Kantees wasn’t sure if he was smiling at his joke or the thought of her being eaten.
&n
bsp; “Sheesha is kind enough to put up with me,” she said carefully. Being a keeper of the ziri was a job where it did not matter if one was man or woman, but some men did not like it.
“Race, does he?”
Trick question. They were only supposed to have picked him up from the island but she said she had been with him for seven years. She had already endangered them all, but perhaps she could rescue it.
“Only mock races, he has been training.”
The man grunted.
“Do you think it will be possible to spare food for them?” she said again, trying to get back on track.
“And Kantees and Gally,” said Gally. “Gally is very hungry.”
“Hope you like fish,” he said. “Just about all we get.”
“Who should I speak to about the food?” said Kantees.
“Payla, over there, about your own,” he said. “And me about your ziri. Wouldn’t let one of them starve. Temekin’s the name. I’m in charge of stores.”
“Thank you,” she said and pushed Gally in the direction of the food.
Temekin stood up and leaned in to her. “You and the others were riding.”
She nodded as she looked into his face to see whether he approved or not.
“That’s a death sentence.”
She still could not tell if he was happy with the idea.
“Better dead later than dead soon,” she said.
He nodded and then spoke even quieter. “Is it good?”
“It is the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced,” she said.
His face took on a forlorn look which he replaced almost immediately. “Ever? You must still be a virgin then.”
“And planning to stay that way, Temekin,” she said. “Until I meet someone who’s a better ride than a ziri, even an old one like our Jintan.”
“I’d be willing to take that test.”
“No offence, but I won’t be looking for someone retired to the eyrie.”
Then he laughed out loud and clapped her on the shoulder. “I like you, Kantees of Jakalain. I’ll make sure your ziri get a good feed.”
