Lokant

by Charlotte E. English

  He finished speaking and she said nothing at all.

  ‘I suppose I’d better go home,’ he said at last.

  ‘Must you? I was about to order breakfast.’ She stood up and dusted off her skirt. ‘Don’t worry about the book. Not your fault. But it’s interesting. Shall it be eggs?’

  ‘Thank you, I-’ He stopped. She was already gone.

  Breakfast was a leisurely affair. Suffering from a headache and some degree of eye strain, he was in no hurry to return to the study, and neither did Eva seem to be. Their conversation was restored more or less to normal; his vague feeling of awkwardness faded and by the end of the meal he felt cheered and more like himself. As Eva’s servants cleared away the remains of their meal, Eva paused at the dining room door and smiled at him.

  ‘I have the morning free, and I think I shall spend it assisting you. If books are spiriting themselves away, it would be best to take copious notes as soon as possible.’

  The prospect of another long day at the desk was suddenly desirable. ‘Agreed,’ he said, stretching the muscles of his arms and neck as he followed her back to the study.

  The desk was empty.

  Both stood frozen for some moments in complete astonishment. They had been absent for an hour and a half at best; Tren was certain that all of the books had been on the desk when he had left the room.

  ‘Tren, did you...?’

  ‘I have not moved them.’

  She nodded. ‘Milyn must have been tidying in here while we were at breakfast. I’ll enquire where she put them.’

  Tren had a sick feeling that Milyn would know nothing about it. Sure enough, Eva returned to the study looking dismayed.

  ‘All of my staff have sworn that they have touched nothing in here. I do not think they would lie to me, but...’ She trailed off, stared at the empty desk. Tren was chilled to see her lost for words; she who normally had an answer for everything.

  She shook her head. ‘The house will be searched. In the meantime, you spoke of cross-referencing your notes at the city library? Perhaps we should continue there.’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed readily enough. She was taking the event well, he reflected, but just as he formed the thought her elegant shoulders slumped and her face took on an expression of stress. A deep sigh came from her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s my fault, I should have guarded them better.’

  Her head came up at that. ‘Your fault? You’ve forgotten that it is my doing that the books were here in the first place. I insisted on detaining you at my home instead of the library, because it would be more secure. In fact I suppose I was merely being self-indulgent.’

  Tren watched her uncertainly. ‘No one could blame you for preferring to have them studied here in your own house, under your eye. You couldn’t possibly have found time to travel to the city library every time you wanted a report.’

  ‘That was part of it, yes.’ She took a breath and looked him in the face. ‘There was something else, though, I think. More to do with you.’

  ‘Uhh. Me? What?’

  Eva gave him one of her warm, bright smiles, the ones he’d seen her direct at Vale but never before at him. ‘I like having you around.’

  Tren blinked, trying to decipher her tone. ‘Wait, you did that because of me? – I mean, because you – um, no. That can’t be true.’ He ran a hand through his hair, feeling hopelessly confused. ‘I, um, like being around you too. I don’t even need to say that I guess because it’s obvious, and, um.’ Eva was staring blankly at him, her smile gone, and he realised he must sound like an idiot. Adopting what he hoped was his usual friendly smile, he tried again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sleep deprived. What exactly are you saying?’

  A tap came at the door.

  ‘Enter,’ Eva called, without taking her eyes from his face. The door creaked open and a soft female voice with a broad west city accent spoke.

  ‘Milady, I was wondering if you’d noticed Lord Vale’s carriage has just drawn up.’

  Eva blinked as if coming out of a trance, turning to stare at her maid with apparent incomprehension. ‘Oh,’ she said at last. Then, more firmly, ‘Yes. Thank you, Milyn.’

  The girl bobbed a curtsey and, flicking a brief glance at Tren, she left.

  Eva looked back at him, and in an instant she was all business once more. ‘I will be at the library later on. Perhaps I’ll see you there?’

  ‘Yes, um. I’ll be there.’

  With a nod but absolutely without a smile, she was gone.

  Tren realised with distant interest that his hands were shaking. Stuffing them into his pockets he ventured out into the hallway, then immediately regretted it. Lord Vale stood near the staircase, his grey hair damp from the rain and his powerful frame swathed in a magnificent great-coat. His arms were around Eva and he held her very close.

  ‘Eva,’ Tren heard him say softly, ‘I’ve had enough of waiting. Never mind the grand wedding; we don’t need it. Just marry me. This week. Tomorrow, even.’

  Tren found that he badly needed some air.

  He passed many long hours at the city library, but Eva did not arrive. He found nothing relating to the mysterious Eterna Conflict, and nothing about Ayrien, but that was much as he expected. It was clear by now that this area of research was, for whatever reason, beyond the capacity of the city resources.

  Sometime after moonset he abandoned his hope of seeing Eva and went home. There he found a note lying on the floor.

  Mr Warvel,

  I apologise for my failure to appear at the library today. Vale and I have decided to proceed at once with the wedding. It is another outstanding obligation that I am anxious to remove, that I may focus entirely on our joint venture. We both hope you will attend our modest ceremony at the City Hall on the 12th of this moon.

  E. Glostrum.

  For a moment he struggled to breath as a cold, sick feeling settled somewhere in the pit of his stomach. The twelfth was five days away. Five! And the coldness of the address hurt. She’d stopped calling him Mr Warvel some time ago; to resurrect it now placed him at an insurmountable distance from her.

  He found a chair and sat down. For some minutes he merely sat and tried to breathe, reading the note over and over again. The twelfth. Five days.

  Then, with shaky composure, he sat at his desk and wrote a reply to her ladyship. It was not a particularly long response, but it took him some time to form the words.

  He posted the letter at the nearest post box. Lady Glostrum had dispatched hers by the expedited messenger service, but he was in no hurry for her to read his reply.

  When he returned home, he drew his sturdy travelling bag out of the depths of his wardrobe and began to pack.

  ***

  Carefully, experimentally, Devary Kant flexed his left arm. Most of the left side of his body had been badly injured during his fight with the white-haired sorcerer and his inexplicable escort of whurthag beasts, but now he was whole and hale; not even a scar remained as a souvenir of his ordeal. The muscles of his arm responded perfectly. Encouraged, he went through a few experimental blocks and strikes and stretches, slowly at first then with increasing speed as he pulled off each move perfectly.

  His body, then, was fully recovered, even if his mind remained perturbed. His superiors obviously didn’t trust him, as he had been locked into his recovery room ever since he had been deposited here. Presumably he was to be released and sent on his errand at their pleasure. He would rather do it at his own.

  Llandry Sanfaer. He knew from Ynara that she had last been located in the Upper Realms. How long ago that had been he couldn’t say; it had been impossible to measure the passage of time in this stark room where the light levels never varied and he never caught a glimpse of the sky. Llandry might be anywhere by now.

  Nonetheless, he would follow the only clue that he had. And if he found her, well... he would handle that when it happened.

  He collected the few possessions of his that remained in this room
. His clothes had been taken shortly after he arrived, but to his relief they had reappeared, laundered and mended, sometime while he slept. His daggers were gone, of course, and that loss pained him, for they were expensive, perfectly balanced weapons that had been designed for him years ago. But no matter. He would acquire another pair.

  The matter of escaping from this place would be no small feat. There were no doors or windows in the bare walls. The one time he had caught sight of his captor, the man had appeared apparently out of the air, as he had done at Ynara’s house. Devary could not render himself insubstantial, but he was capable of another kind of translocation. Just barely.

  Closing his eyes, he reached for the boundary between the worlds. It always took him some time to find the divide, for he was a sorcerer of no particular talent. He was prepared for that, but today the endeavour took still longer than it should have. He searched diligently, visualising the pathways in his mind, but he found nothing.

  Puzzled, he took a few slow breaths and then began again. True, he did not absolutely know whether he currently stood in the Daylands or the Darklands or somewhere in the Seven Realms in between. He kept his mind open, casting for any hint of a route into either the Uppers or the Lower Realms. Still, nothing emerged. The spaces between the worlds yawned before his anxious mind, empty and silent.

  This he had not anticipated. True, it was a risky prospect to escape through one of the Off-Worlds. Both were perilous, and without his daggers he would be placing himself at risk. But he trusted his erstwhile employers still less than they apparently trusted him, and he found this desperate option preferable to that of awaiting their next appearance.

  If it was denied him, he had nothing; no alternative but to sit and wait and hope that they had no worse plans for him than they had already expressed. But how could it fail? Had he somehow lost even his limited sensitivity to the boundaries while he lay ill?

  He took a breath to calm himself and began again. This time, he searched not for the familiar shades of possibility that usually hovered just within reach, but for anything that beckoned, however distantly. And at length, he found something.

  It was almost nothing at all; merely the barest whisper of a way. It appeared hazy in his mind’s eye, as if muffled or shrouded behind something else. Straining, he sought to grasp it before it vanished, but his mind encountered an obstruction.

  It felt like he came up against a wall of gauze, fine but infinitely layered. He could sense, increasingly clearly, the opening that lay behind it, but he couldn’t reach it. He beat at the bindings in frustration, but only succeeded in giving himself a headache.

  He withdrew, and sat upon his narrow bed to think. He could not force his way through, that was clear enough. But if he could make only the smallest hole in its surface, perhaps he could widen that gap until it was possible for him to slip through.

  He tried this. It took all of his power of concentration, and at length it was indeed only the very smallest of gaps he created, but it was enough; the boundary was breached. Sweating and gritting his teeth with the effort, he pulled and worried at that gap until he had worked his way through all the layers, and a hole opened wide enough for him to pass through. Then he paused, gasping for air as he explored the possibilities revealed.

  Beyond it stretched not just one pathway, but many.

  Staggered, he reeled under the onslaught of so many rends in the boundaries of the worlds. They crowded together, kept apart only by some force of energy that Devary couldn’t understand. He felt that, without it, they would merge together into an impossible chaos. For a moment he panicked; how could he determine where to go?

  But he swiftly found that it was simple. A glance through each gate sent his vision soaring into the world that lay beyond. Some of the paths led into the Seven Realms: he saw a sun-drenched Glinnery landscape and wondered briefly whether it lay near to the city of Waeverleyne. Ynara would have been left without any knowledge of where (or indeed how) he had gone; for a moment he was sorely tempted to go to her and explain. But he pushed the thought aside. Llandry’s need was more immediate.

  Another gate offered him passage into the Lower Realms, or so it appeared, and he pressed on feeling encouraged, for there must also be a gate into the Uppers.

  At last he found just such a gate. He tensed, ready to hurl himself through it, but for an instant he paused. This collection of gates was remarkable; he had neither seen nor heard of anything like it across the Seven. So where was he? He would have dearly liked to remain and explore in the hopes of answering that question; but once again concern for Llandry spurred him onward.

  He clutched at the gate and pulled, dragging himself through the hole he had made in the curious shroud. Gritting his teeth against the nausea that such a gate always generated, he stepped through.

  The pain hit him halfway. He resisted the temptation to stop, suspended as he was somewhere between wherever he had come from and wherever he was going to. The not knowing added to his sense of disorientation and he had to force his way out of the gate. He fell through at last and dropped to the ground, his body a mass of pain as if the two worlds between them sought to tear him apart.

  As soon as he could breathe again, he staggered upright and wrenched the gate closed. Almost immediately the pain receded and the nausea ebbed away.

  He stood in a sea of moss, soft and thick and mottled in shades of yellow and green. An enormous sun shone powerfully overhead and he soon began to sweat. A glance at his surroundings revealed nothing on the horizons but empty sky above and hills covered in moss below. There was nothing to suggest a starting point, nowhere he could begin in his search.

  Still, at least he had escaped into the Upper Realm. Stretching out the limbs so recently creased with pain, he lifted his chin and set off in pursuit of Ynara’s daughter.

  Chapter Eight

  Llandry was learning that when two stubborn old men were placed into the same room together, their individual stubbornness not only doubled but increased tenfold. On the topic of any degree of reconciliation, they were both wholly intractable. At last, dejected, Llandry fled their mutual chill of manner and took refuge in the garden behind Rheas’s house.

  Inevitably, Pensould followed her.

  ‘You see, Minchu,’ he said, sitting on the grass at her feet, ‘where one has been wronged, one cannot forgive. Your father understands this. Where one has wronged, one cannot likewise forgive. Your grandfather understands this also. Only you and the Mags expect differently.’

  ‘Mags, Pensould, not the Mags. If we think it possible, why shouldn’t they?’

  ‘It is because you are female.’

  Llandry bristled. ‘Don’t tell me it is because women are stupid, or inferior, or some such nonsense.’

  Pensould bristled as well, in so like a manner that Llandry wondered if he was making fun of her. ‘No draykon female is stupid or inferior. You are strong, but you see things differently. And I, too, am different.’

  ‘Oh? In what way are you different? You’re a male as well.’

  ‘But I am no ordinary male. I am the special and magnificent type of male which you have never before seen. From me, you should expect marvels.’ Pensould gave her a hopeful smile, in which he showed too much of his teeth.

  Llandry couldn’t help smiling back. ‘Are you indeed? How fortunate that I should have met one of those by chance.’

  ‘It is not chance,’ said Pensould solemnly. ‘It is fate. You are wrong to resist me.’

  ‘Oh? You pursue me because I’m the only female draykon around.’

  ‘Not so.’ Pensould looked affronted.

  Llandry stood up and flexed her wings. ‘Well, anyway. I think it’s time to take Papa home.’

  Llandry waited with anxiety as Pensould helped Aysun to seat himself on Llandry’s back. She had never carried a human before, and this was her father; what if she hurt him?

  She hadn’t chosen to use a gate because she didn’t want to take him straight home, not righ
t away. She’d come to realise how much her father had missed out on during his years of self-imposed exile from the Uppers. It was her home, now; she couldn’t imagine leaving it, no matter how much she loved Glinnery and her parents. She wanted her father to see some of its beauty, to feel the magic of the place. She hoped he might then understand her choice.

  Once in the air, she circled away from her grandfather’s house and began a tour of some of her favourite places in the Uppers. It took some time, for she flew slowly to avoid hurting or losing Aysun. But it was worth it. As they flew over lakes and waterfalls, woods and valleys, mountains and wolds, she felt Aysun’s tension relax and his suspicion and fear give way to wonder.

  That was victory enough for today. Careful not to overdo it, she headed for home. It was an advantage that, for her, passage through the boundaries was virtually seamless, with none of the nausea and pain that marred the experience of traversing a sorcerer-wrought gate. Nonetheless, Aysun endured it as though it were an ordeal; Llandry could feel his tension return tenfold as he sat between her vast wings.

  Ah, well. He would grow used to that soon enough as well.

  When they arrived home, a small sea of reporters awaited them.

  They were assembled just far enough from the Sanfaer home that Ynara herself probably couldn’t see them from the window. Llandry guessed that she had thrown them out, but they, unbelievably, had outright disobeyed the order of an Elder and lingered anyway. As Llandry landed gracefully and let Aysun down from her back, the flashing lights of many image-capture machines went off around her.

  And under the onslaught of their curiosity and their scrutiny, Llandry felt her old nerves crowding upon her for the first time since her transformation. She shifted back to her human form clumsily, too aware of the intrusive gaze of her audience. Pensould however strode up to them in his draykon form, flexing his wings and lifting his chin. He roared for their benefit, then slowly metamorphosed into his still-imperfect human shape, obviously relishing the attention. Grabbing his arm, Llandry dragged him away.