Rhaki stood just inside the open door, his eyes on the rock before his feet. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to look on the Sacred Balance. Seven black disks gleaming dully in the steady candlelight, floated chest high from the floor. One of Emla’s Weights WAS lost he thought exultantly, although he strained to keep his mind as calm as he could lest anyone or anything be observing him, unlikely as that might be.
The Weights had hung in their impossible suspension above an inlaid circle of crystal and gold set into the floor, always level with his eyes. At the end of the last Cold Season, he had come to this chamber and had been stunned to see they had begun to drop lower. It could only mean that Emla had lost one of her counter-weights. Rhaki had fled the chamber then, unable to control or conceal his excitement, but he had returned several times since to verify this unbelievable fact.
He dropped his gaze again and lifting the lantern, he turned to leave the chamber. Unable to resist the melodramatic gesture, he waggled his fingers as he closed the rock door, causing the candle flames to be instantly extinguished. He retraced his steps only a short way and halted by another door. This was more conventional in that it was clearly outlined on the wall and opened towards him.
He entered a cupboard that in turn gave into a large room, faintly lit by glow lamps. A door on the opposite side of the room gave access to the household staff who worked in here. They had no knowledge of this rock doorway at the back of the cupboard, from where Rhaki could peep out to ensure he was alone.
This was where Rhaki kept various beasts. There were hoppers, squeakers, feathered singers and a few, very poisonous, writhers. After checking there were no servants cleaning or feeding the collection of animals, Rhaki swiftly left the cupboard and went to a caged run full of hoppers. They became tame very easily and now rushed to the side of their cage in the hope that this two legs had food for them.
Unlatching a small door, Rhaki thrust his hand inside, grasped a large black hopper and pulled it from the cage. It screamed eerily with the shock of being so suddenly removed from its brethren, but Rhaki held it firmly and took it with him, back through the cupboard.
Further yet up the rock passage went Rhaki and the now silently shivering hopper under his arm. Another hidden doorway, and Rhaki was in a room he used for certain rituals, magics, experiments. Putting the lantern he still carried on the tabletop, he then lifted the hopper so that it was face to face with him.
Rhaki began to chant softly, monotonously, staring into the hopper’s large brown eyes, which quickly became glazed and fixed, its body relaxed and limp. He laid the hopper gently on the table, its ears drooping and its pink nose twitching with each breath. Still chanting, Rhaki pushed his cloak back, freeing his arms, and placed a large goblet upon the table beside the hopper.
From the hundreds of jars, and pots, and bottles, lining shelves on each wall, he chose certain pinches of needful ingredients. There was a great importance in adding these ingredients in the correct order, disaster could result from the slightest error – a sorely beset stomach being the very mildest of these.
Rhaki added a small quantity of wine – the very best from the distant South Land vineyards, and stirred the potion with a long sliver of bone. Laying aside the bone, he lifted a thin curved blade in his right hand while he turned the hopper with his left. The blade sliced down through the hopper’s breast and Rhaki’s fingers were seeking through the chest bones for the beating heart. He held the heart above the goblet, squeezing every drop of blood from it. Tilting his head, he swallowed the heart and raised the goblet to his lips. He drained the potion then turned to a smaller table where he sat gazing steadily into a bowl of glassy black stone. He put his bloody hands on either side of the bowl and stared into its emptiness with total concentration.
‘Shardisi! Your Master is ready to speak to you!’
Inside the bowl, the blackness swirled as if a finger stirred paint. Colours flickered through the black, whirling dizzily. Gradually a scene began to clarify, becoming the interior of a cave of ice. Several white shapes appeared in the scene, slowly taking more solid form. A shaggy faced, hulking beast glared at Rhaki, whose body sat empty and rigid at the table in his stronghold. His spirit form was in the presence of these Shardisi, looking, he knew, completely solid. The terror plain in the yellow eyes made a mockery of the bared fangs and clenched claws of these slow-witted creatures.
Rhaki stood before them, calm and relaxed. One by one, the Shardisi fell to their knees, whimpers of fear replacing the snarls.
‘Two will try to pass through your lands – small creatures of two-leg tribes. They may have Dragons with them.’ Fear boiled off the hairy bodies at his feet. ‘There is nothing to fear from Dragons, my fearless ones! The two-legs I would speak with, so you are to capture them for me. I repeat, they are to be brought to me alive or you will feel your Master’s anger.’ Moans came from the now prostrate Shardisi. ‘Look at me Shardisi, look at your Master!’
Slowly and fearfully, yellow eyes lifted to look at Rhaki. He spread his open hands towards them. ‘Please me, and I will give pleasure to you.’ His form wavered, and winked out, the Shardisi now groaning and sighing as ecstatic pleasure pulsed through their ungainly bodies.
Rhaki stirred. He was slumped at the table, his outstretched hands empty, dropped beside the bowl. His heart raced and his head ached. Forcing himself to his feet, he poured a little wine into the goblet, swirling it around before drinking it. He took a soft cloth and wiped the goblet clean and dry before placing it beside the amplifying bowl. Such an expenditure of power always drained him utterly. But creatures such as the Shardisi had to be approached thus, they took notice of nothing more subtle.
The hopper’s corpse Rhaki wrapped in another rag and took with him as he wearily left the room. It was a great effort to climb the passage back to his library and he sighed with relief as the rock door slid silently shut behind him. He doused the flame in the lantern and removed the cover from a glow lamp over the fireplace. He tossed a couple of logs, and the hopper, onto the embers of the fire and removed his cloak.
Outside the other door he found a large tray with covered dishes from which arose the inviting aroma of roast meat. He stooped, biting back a groan and making a mental note to have a higher bench put beside his door, and returned to his fireside with the tray. Despite his fatigue, he made himself eat the hot meat, and drink some of the spiced wine, to restore a little of the energy he had lost in contacting the Shardisi.
He ate some cheese and found himself going over recent events yet again: the death of Jerak, whose power all believed to be the strongest of all, yet he, Rhaki, had destroyed Jerak with his cunning and his superior craft. Then the first intimation that Emla had been so careless, so foolish, as to lose one of the Weights entrusted to her keeping.
Yet again, Rhaki started to go over his intricate plans to find that lost weight and to steal more from her, making his position finally unassailable. He leaned his head back on his chair and closed the dark eyes so deeply set in his gaunt face. No, no, he was far too exhausted for serious thought he told himself. He contemplated instead his dream of the future – a future in which he alone held the power of this world. The future in which Emla would have to beg him to spare the lives of her various creatures. He chuckled happily at the thought of a future in which all would tremble at the name of Rhaki and abase themselves before their Master.
Chapter Eight
As Rhaki slept his exhaustion away, so Emla was wide-awake. She sat on a simple stone bench in her moonlit Garden. Tomorrow the young ones would be in her presence and she must study them and make the decision that could so easily mean their destruction.
Emla was the One who spoke to all who would listen, and when the Linvaks from the Swamp Lands had made their approaches to her, she had been glad for the opportunity to help them from their darkness. She had ignored all those signs – the fact that her involuntary revulsion had not diminished the more she spoke with the Linvaks, rather the reverse. The
fact that their servility never lessened; always they grovelled before her and agreed too quickly with all she said.
Emla had told herself this was all because they had been neglected, had had no true guidance since their creation and subsequent escape into the world. She was forced to admit that that escape should have been seen as suspicious even then. But despite Jerak’s occasional discourses on the need for care, caution, and awareness of the dark side of the Balance, Emla had been engrossed in her work to the exclusion of all such warnings. And thus the Linvaks had been given the freedom of her House and Garden and had learned where the Sacred Balance was kept.
A morning came when Emla’s maids told her the Linvaks had gone, vanished in the night. Emla had puzzled for a while as to both their unexpected arrival and now this equally unexpected departure. It was another day before she had cause to go to the Pavilion of the Sacred Balance. As soon as she entered and realised she had to tilt her head rather than be able to see the top weight at eye level, she knew. Six golden disks floated, a handspan apart, above the brilliant mosaic circle set into the floor. But the smallest, the seventh, was gone from the top of this floating column.
Anger and despair had alternated in her during the first days following her discovery. Of course, she had sent guards in the direction of the Swamp Land immediately. They returned saying they had found no trace of Linvak on the paths and trails at all. And she could make no contact through mind speech. None had seen Linvaks pass, humans, sky-singers – no one at all.
For the first time, Emla directed men to stand watch day and night around the Pavilion and herself set certain other wards that would warn of any creature approaching her House. ‘A bit late,’ she imagined Jerak grumbling, ‘but better late than never I suppose.’
She had examined every book she possessed that made any mention of the Scales of Balance. She had concluded that the loss of the smallest Weight, although serious enough, could be held in check with careful effort on her part. If her vigilance were to slip now though, she would face a hard struggle to maintain the equilibrium.
Emla had found among the books, and in some parchments written in Jerak’s own hand, obscure references to Dragons. She had at first believed her tired brain was reading things not really there but as she worried at the phrases, gradually some clues seemed to emerge. She admitted to herself that she could be clutching at clouds, but determined to follow the clues and see whence they led her.
Emla had neglected the Dragon Kin over the cycles. She bespoke the elders of the Treasuries on occasion, but so many newer things had taken her attention that it was very long since she had thought closely of them. They had been one of the first creatures she had changed. Jerak had trained her, had shown her the possibilities lying dormant in so many of the creatures of this world.
She had begun working on her own, slipping into minds concerned only with daily survival. She saw how, by widening a pathway here and nudging a vague concept there, it was possible to expand these creatures’ perceptions. Her first subjects had been feathered sky singers, as they were easy to keep caged and quickly lost their fears. She discovered they were very limited though, they showed no interest in other forms of life unless it was for crawlers, which they ate.
Then a hunter had brought her a great eyes with a damaged wing, and to Emla’s astonishment he seemed to “overhear” her work with the sky-singers. She concentrated on working with the great eyes and within days had proved that he had an individual mind, which could respond to hers.
She widened her research to include squeakers and hoppers. Her results indicated that they saw themselves as integral parts of a group, not individuals - like the sky singers did, in fact. They were separate beings, but only really complete within their groups. Emla moved on then, to the creatures of the Plains – wapeesh, lumen, fengars.
To her surprise, she found little difference in these animals either. She realised that those who dwelt in close groups had enclosed minds: more solitary animals proved to have some interest in things outside of their immediate group needs. Many Seasons passed as Emla strove to understand the ways of so many varied minds. She had just discovered the Dragons, who in that long ago age lived only in the Spine Mountains, and with mounting excitement she was becoming aware of by far the greatest intelligence she had yet encountered.
While Emla was thus engrossed, her brother Rhaki was studying the Craft of Power with the Seniors in the ancient city of Gaharn at the foot of the High Lands. They had never been close, Rhaki taking pleasure from early childhood in teasing Emla, a teasing which grew gradually into a subtle but sadistic bullying. She learnt quickly to avoid both his company and his attempts to get into her mind. His ability to use the mind speech never progressed beyond the most elementary level while she found it as natural to use as vocal speech.
It was at this time, when Emla had made her first journeys to meet Dragons in their original Treasuries, that the Grey Guardian, Kovas, began to weaken. He had summoned Jerak and told him a successor must be appointed, as he would soon go beyond. Rhaki was Named Grey Guardian despite there being older and more experienced members of the Craft who may have hoped for the honour. But Rhaki was the closest in the blood lineage and thus was raised to the Guardianship.
He gloated openly to Emla while remaining modest before all others. She had been Named successor to the Golden Lady whilst still a small child and it had rankled bitterly that Rhaki, the elder of the two, had not also been Named. But now, he was already come into his Power while she was still playing games with her pets! With a great fuss and magnificent ceremony, Rhaki left Gaharn for the Realm of Ice.
Twelve cycles after Rhaki had departed, Emla came to this House to spend the last Seasons with Caris before she went beyond and Emla took her place as the Golden Lady. Tales of Rhaki’s increasing power spread through the lands, although he never returned to Gaharn. At the time of Emla’s raising to the Ladyship, Jerak spoke to her of his growing fear for Rhaki. The Power had begun to control Rhaki rather than he control the Power. He refused to respond to mind speech or to letters sent by Jerak and the Seniors. Rumours spread of great, hair covered, killing beasts Rhaki had brought into being to protect his Realm. Tales of two-leg tribes whom Rhaki had altered to something far less than human, which he had been dissatisfied with so had set loose into the world. Thus such as Linvaks came to be.
And Jerak. His fears finally decided him to journey to the Realm of Ice personally, to face Rhaki to discover what he planned and to remonstrate at his misuse of the Power. Not one soul knew exactly what transpired, except that there was dispute between Rhaki and the ancient one Jerak. Jerak would argue with words, but Rhaki would argue with the Power, forcing Jerak to use a Craft he had not called upon since time out of mind.
For many days, lights blazed luridly in the northern skies, by day and by night. The ground trembled and all things went creeping in terror. All the people of Gaharn knew when Jerak fell. They all cried out in pain as a great heat screamed through each and every one of them. The heat was followed by a numbing cold and utter silence. The Seniors and Emla tried again and again to reach Jerak’s mind but met only silent cold. Rhaki appeared before them as they sat Gathered, his spirit form showing by its solidity just how full of Power he was, and told them arrogantly that Jerak was no more, and he, Rhaki, wished no further intrusions in his Realm.
Season followed Season, and life went on in its balanced way. Seniors continued their work, students studied the many disciplines under the Seniors’ watchful eyes, and the human citizens of the Realm of Gaharn lived their peaceful lives.
But now the Linvaks had stolen a Weight of Balance. Emla consulted the Seniors and Iska, Yash and Kemti moved up from the city to the Lady’s House in the High Lands. These four pored through the books and documents to learn how they might locate and retrieve the gold weight. Another Senior, Yar, spent his days farseeking the Linvak until finally he glimpsed a place deep below ground, where the weight shone in darkness. Yar was of very gr
eat age and this concentrated task exhausted him. He was able to indicate a southerly direction as being where the Linvaks hiding place was but then the Senior healers insisted he must work no more at such intensity.
In gratitude, Emla sent him to a House of Rest a few leagues distant and begged him to remain there as long as he wished or needed. Perhaps the beauty of the place would soothe him and inspire him to compose some of the music for which he was famed.
Yash had concluded that the reference to Dragons that Emla had uncovered in Jerak’s writings was of vital importance now. He questioned Emla closely on all she could tell of the Dragon Treasuries. He was surprised by the great intelligence, morality and sense of kinship Emla described to him. Everyone knew of Emla’s fascination with the workings of the minds of all living things, but most assumed the interest was of a purely basic and academic nature.
As the Season of Soft Rain followed the Cold Season when the weight was lost, Iska and Yash withdrew to another Pavilion within Emla’s Gardens. They remained in seclusion, working with the Power, as day followed day. The Hot Season was beginning when the two Seniors emerged. Emla and Kemti were shocked by their frailness. They had worked nearly two moon cycles and were spent and exhausted, but they could report success.
‘We found two young ones whose minds differ from all others but have similarities with each other. These two we contrived to be in place in time for the hatching of Dragon broods.’ Iska sipped the hot tea and moaned with pleasure. ‘It was luck that two of the best Dragon females had eggs at this particular juncture.’ She put her head on one side thoughtfully. ‘Then again, perhaps luck had nothing to do with it.’
Soul Bonds Book 1 Circles of Light series Page 7
