The Sylph Hunter

by L. J. McDonald

  He was relieved to finally see the Racing Dawn still docked in her cradle. There weren’t any lights left on for him and in fact there weren’t any lights at the harbor at all. It was just more of a sign of how badly Meridal was falling apart, he thought grumpily. He hoped he wouldn’t wake Kadmiel. Right now, he just wanted to lie down and get some sleep. The queen could wait until tomorrow.

  Maybe in the morning he’d get Kadmiel to take him home instead.

  A vision of Leon’s and Solie’s disappointed faces filled his mind, along with Heyou’s snarl as the battler reminded Devon he had no home in the Valley, not if he wanted to keep all his limbs attached. Devon shuddered and climbed onto the ship, his boots echoing almost eerily on the gangplank and then even more eerily on the wooden deck. He still had to buy some sandals, but right now he was glad to be wearing the boots.

  “The temperatures in this kingdom are insane,” he grumbled.

  Are we going to stay here tonight? Airi asked. Ocean Breeze isn’t here.

  Lovely, Devon thought, just lovely. So much for his great plan to have her take them to the queen.

  “Well, do you have any idea where she went—” He stopped. Right before him was the doorway that led down into the interior of the ship. It wasn’t just open; the door had been broken out of its frame and the deck was covered in wooden shrapnel.

  There’s blood in there, Airi whimpered in a tiny voice.

  Devon could smell it too: a copper scent that was unmistakable. He backed away, suddenly terrified, and felt Airi press against the back of his neck, not playing with his hair for once. Suddenly, Devon was aware of just how silent the harbor was. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder and across the dark length of the wharves to the darker color of the water. Nothing. No voices, no footsteps, not even the sound of birds.

  This place is dead, Airi whined.

  That was more than enough for Devon. Turning, he pounded across the deck and down the gangplank, sprinting back across the stone toward the city he’d just left, Airi pressing fearfully against him. Not since that battler on the hill had Devon been this terrified. Instinct spurred him through and he ran, almost slipping several times on wet, filthy cobblestones. There were no people. He smelled the strong sea air, but in his mind, it turned to a copper reek and he felt Airi crying, as frightened as he was.

  Attracted by his terror, a black cloud filled with lightning dropped down before him, looking at him with ball-lightning eyes. Devon screamed and ran in another direction, heart pounding. Another one cut him off and he darted another way, only to find a third there. There seemed to be hundreds of the creatures, but in reality there were only six. Six was more than enough to drive him into a sputtering panic.

  Tell them! Airi squealed. Tell them what we saw!

  Devon stumbled, crashing to the ground next to a building and cowering, his arms up over his head. “The harbor!” he screamed. “Blood at the harbor! There’s no one there! They’re all dead, we found blood!”

  The battlers looked at each other, communicating in silence, and lifted away, vanishing into the night. Devon leaped to his feet and ran on. No one stopped him or Airi this time and he ran until he was exhausted.

  Six battle sylphs swept over the harbor in close formation, looking for the threat. The human’s terror had been undeniable and they moved quickly, ready to destroy whatever had sent the man running.

  The harbor was empty. With a quick, silent word, they spread out, searching, but there were no people there; no sylphs; there weren’t even any rats or cockroaches. Just crates of goods left sitting, some things spilled, and at one air ship, blood around a doorframe where the door had been torn completely out. That and blood randomly spread over the docks were the only signs of violence they found.

  They gathered then above the harbor, massing into a single cloud while they discussed it. What do you think happened here? one of them asked.

  The rest swirled. I don’t know.

  Should we hunt that human down and ask him more?

  How would we find him?

  He’s probably still running in a panic.

  He has that air sylph from another hive with him.

  Why did we let her live?

  Tooie said to leave her alone.

  Get Tooie.

  Most of them fell silent then, one of them concentrating his voice and calling out.

  Tooie came a short while later, dropping down from the dark sky to join them. He already knew what happened from listening to their reports while he approached, but seeing was better than hearing secondhand and he floated over the empty docks, the others following respectfully. He was of an age with most of them, but he was the lead battler, the lover of the queen, and with her support his word was only secondary to her own.

  Tooie spent the longest time at the Racing Dawn, examining the blood on the deck, walls, and the shattered door. Shifting to the human form Eapha liked, he ran a gentle hand down the wood, barely touching the splinters left behind.

  “Humans aren’t strong enough to do this,” he noted. “Someone was pulled out.”

  None of us did it, one of the battlers said.

  “No.” If one of them had, it wouldn’t be a problem because there would have been a reason for it. He looked out over the empty harbor. People had been leaving the city, for reasons he didn’t understand, but this emptiness was eerie. As he stood there, a faint whistling tune sounded and all of them turned to see a man walk out from between two buildings and down to the harbor, swinging a waterskin as though nothing at all was wrong. Unaware of the battlers, he kept whistling, happy and relaxed.

  Tooie turned away, walking to the railing of the ship and looking down past the cradle she sat in at the dark ocean waters lapping against the seawall only a few feet beyond. The water was dark and impenetrable. “Are there things in these waters that would hunt creatures on land?” he wondered aloud.

  The battlers shifted uncertainly. I’ve never heard of that happening before, one said.

  “Everything has to happen for the first time,” Tooie replied, still watching the waters, so dark and unfathomable. Anything could be under there.

  Do we tell the queen about this? the same battler asked.

  Tooie thought about that for a moment. “No,” he said at last. “She doesn’t need to know.”

  Zalia returned to the hovel she shared with her father to find he had a fire going and was sitting beside it, carefully toasting a piece of bread at the end of a stick. He smiled at Zalia as she came up and handed him a full water canteen, along with her day’s wages.

  “How was your day?” he asked.

  She didn’t tell him about the battle sylph. She didn’t think she’d have the courage to tell anyone that, let alone her father. Instead she told him about meeting Devon Chole and what he’d come for. He’d been a nice man, she thought, and far more approachable than Leon Petrule, who had been intimidating beyond belief, even when he was being kind.

  Xehm listened in stunned silence, his mouth hanging open and his eyes huge. “He’s here to see the queen,” he gasped at last, “and you didn’t help him?”

  Zalia blinked, surprised at her father’s reaction. “What was I supposed to do? I don’t know where she is.”

  “He needs help.” Xehm abruptly stood up, almost losing his bread in the fire before Zalia rescued it. “We have to help him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Xehm waved around at the hovels and their neighbors, all sitting destitute and hungry around their own fires. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen. We weren’t supposed to still be here, living like this. I talked to Leon many times; I talked to him after that…woman…became queen. He told me what it was supposed to be like, and all the gods help me, I can’t stop dreaming of it. Things have only grown worse though. Had Leon never left, it wouldn’t be like this. If he’d had to turn th
at foolish woman over his knee and spank her, he would have. Now his replacement is here. We must help him get to her.”

  Zalia gaped at him. She hadn’t seen her father so passionate in years. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever seen him so determined about anything, except for when her little sister had been sick while Zalia herself was still a child. With their mother long since taken to be a concubine in the harems, she’d thought he’d move the world to save her little sister.

  Now she tried not to think about how he’d ultimately failed.

  “What do we do, Father?” she asked, sitting nervously by the fire that was their only warmth, burning out of a bed of dried animal dung. “I don’t know where to find him. He could be at her side already.”

  Xehm sagged, sighing before he sat down again. Zalia passed him the bread. “I don’t think so. The gods wouldn’t be that kind.” He took a bite and started chewing before handing her another chunk to toast for herself. Zalia took it gratefully. She hadn’t eaten in hours. “If he comes back to the restaurant,” he decided, “bring him to me. Understood?”

  “Yes, Father.” Not that she knew what they’d be able to do. It was good to see her father fiery about something though, and good to think again that things could get better, as she’d believed when Eapha first became queen. She sighed and turned her toast over in the fire, daydreaming of better things.

  One-Eleven watched the girl, his form hunched to the ground in the shape of one of the lizards that ran across the desert in search of food. In his natural form, his lightning would be too easy to see in the dark and he didn’t want his human appearance to make her feel frightened again.

  She was a beautiful woman, but not at all like those in the harems. She didn’t just give what he wanted. He’d been surprised by that at first, but now he reveled in it. To have her, he’d have to prove himself worthy and win her, just like a suitor to a queen. Then she’d give him his name, as a queen would, and the world would be wonderful.

  One-Eleven studied her with his reptile eyes, the night air cold against his leathery skin. This wasn’t a nice place to be living, but he’d give her palaces if that was what she wanted.

  Distantly, he heard a call, the head battler summoning all of the battle sylphs to a conclave. One-Eleven kept his belly low to the ground, not wanting to leave, but not able to stay. He drank in the shadowed sight of Zalia, committing it to memory, and backed away, sashaying in an odd, reptile walk across the sand until he was away from all the odd little human buildings. There he took on his cloud form again and rose into the air, heading across the city to where the battlers had been called to meet. His thoughts never strayed far from his new love, even when Tooie told them about the suspected sea creature that attacked the harbor and sent out scouting parties to find it. One-Eleven ended up in one of those parties, skimming the surface of the ocean while scanning as deeply into it as he could and destroying anything he sensed that was larger than a human child. They left the waters behind them thick with dead risen to float at the surface, but still he thought about Zalia, and how he’d win her heart.

  Yahe had now been on duty for more than a day and was ready to start killing people if he wasn’t relieved soon.

  He was done sweeping overhead through the city. Now, as he had for decades while a slave, Yahe walked the streets of the city, looking for rule breakers. He was a beautifully handsome man, as flawless as his shape-shifting ability could make him.

  Not that it was doing him much good out here. He didn’t want to impress the humans in this pathetically shrunken marketplace and he certainly didn’t have to impress the elemental sylphs he saw. The one he wore this shape for wasn’t around to see him.

  Disgusted, he looked up at the palace floating in the night sky, lights shining like stars in a few of the windows. Kiala was up there, waiting for him and growing so increasingly impatient that he could clearly feel it. She had reason to be. He was supposed to have been relieved six hours ago, but the idiot battle sylph who was to take over for him tonight hadn’t shown. Yahe knew they were all brothers now that they were in the same hive, but that didn’t mean he was required to like everyone and at the moment, he rather hated Bift.

  Bift! he bellowed along the hive lines, as he had for the last hour. Where in the chasms are you? BIFT!

  A few complaints came along the line back to him, from elementals as well as battlers, but no response from Bift. Yahe fumed, planning what he’d do to the miserable wretch when he found him. At this rate, he wouldn’t be relieved until Bift’s replacement showed up.

  Bift obviously didn’t understand duty. He’d been planning to take his master to the ongoing party at the gate to the hive world and had been bragging about it the last time Yahe saw him. Well, he wasn’t the only one who wanted to go there.

  In the back of his mind, Kiala’s impatience started to turn to outright anger. Yahe miserably looked up toward her again. He wanted to be with her too, but he couldn’t leave, not without someone taking over. Nothing was going to happen, he knew she’d say. No one would care if he were there or not. Yahe wanted to listen to that kind of logic, but obviously Bift had as well and where did that leave Yahe himself?

  Grumbling under his breath and making the few people still cleaning their stalls very nervous, Yahe continued on his rounds, planning his revenge on a battler he didn’t know he was never going to see again.

  The winds still wanted to push it out to the ocean.

  It had been tired after it reached the shore, its tendrils pulled up close to its body and still almost touching the water. It had never fallen so low, so it gorged itself on the life it found, devouring everything as quickly as it could.

  That almost resulted in it blowing back out over the ocean again. The more it ate, the more the gases that kept it in the air increased, lifting it higher. Too high and it wouldn’t be able to reach the ground unless it let some of the gas go or waited to grow hungry again. If a strong enough wind caught it before then, it could end up just about anywhere.

  Mostly, it was a self-correcting problem, since if it started to rise too high, it wouldn’t be able to reach the food on the ground. It glutted itself though, snatching up the food and devouring it as fast as it could, and rose high with food still in its tendrils, waiting to be swallowed.

  It barely managed to grab the edge of one of the things the food called buildings before the winds took it back out again. Satisfied, it wrapped some of its strongest tentacles around the building, digging its hooks into the soft stone, and ate the rest of the food it had. It couldn’t rely on the winds here, it decided. They would only drive it back out to the ocean, and as it hung there, it saw that it didn’t matter if they blew in the other direction anyway. The word city was surrounded by the word desert and there was no food out there at all. It would have to stay in this unprotected hive and hope it learned from the food where to go next before it ate all of them.

  For now, as always, the food didn’t know it was there, which would make the hunting easier, at least until the battlers realized what was happening. Sometimes that made the hunting even better if they didn’t just hide in their hive, and there was no hiding here. It dug its tentacle deeper into the stone. It could tear this city apart to reach the food if it needed to.

  Crumbled stone fell to the street below and it wrapped another of its largest tentacles around a second building, watching with interest as battle sylphs arrived below, searching. The rest of its tentacles it pulled up. If one of the battle sylphs blundered into one, it wouldn’t matter how much it didn’t want to rise any higher. It would eat them anyway.

  It got the tentacles out of the way just in time as one of the battlers swept through where they’d been, hundreds of feet below its actual body. The battler didn’t react at all, but of course, he couldn’t see it. None of the food could ever see a Hunter and it listened with sleepy interest as they searched the harbor and discussed what might h
ave happened. None of them suspected it, which was good. The food tasted better when it was just newly frightened and not worn out by terror.

  Floating in the air above the harbor, hanging on to one of the watchtowers that framed the main gate to the city, the Hunter slept, and listened, and consumed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Zalia was back at the restaurant before dawn, after a nervous bath at the back of the stable where she was half afraid and half hoping that One-Eleven would return. He didn’t, or if he did, he just watched her in secrecy, and she tried to keep him out of her mind while she wiped down the tables and served water and cheese to the customers.

  “He’s coming back,” Ilaja said, sounding annoyed.

  Her heart suddenly pounding in her chest, Zalia spun around. It wasn’t One-Eleven, she saw with something that might have been relief and something else that was probably regret. Of course it wasn’t him. He’d never been to the restaurant and Ilaja didn’t know anything about him.

  Instead, Devon Chole was walking down the street, the dawn light shining on his face and fluttering hair. He was wearing the same clothes and boots as the day before and he looked as if he hadn’t slept all night, or even stopped walking.

  Zalia gaped at him in surprise, her daydreams about One-Eleven blowing out of her mind as she took in how tired and stressed he looked. Her heart surged for the poor man and she ran forward, meeting him at the edge of the patio.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever find this place again,” he sighed. “This whole city is a maze.”

  “What happened, Mr. Chole?” she gasped, daringly reaching out toward him before snatching her arm back.

  He didn’t seem to notice her unseemly forwardness, stomping up onto the patio as though he barely had the energy to do so. His hair was still fluffing around, but not so much as the day before. Zalia thought about what her father said about wanting to meet him, but discarded the idea for now. He didn’t look as if he had it in him to do anything other than fall down. His skin was badly sunburned from the previous day and he moved slowly as she led him to a seat away from the other customers. Ilaja sniffed noticeably from across the patio, but Zalia’s heart clenched again at how much he needed her help, and how sweet the lines around his eyes were when he still found it in himself to smile at her.