by Jordan Reece
His temporary incapacitation faded. Crumpled in on himself, he blinked and sat upright with pinpricks of pain still sizzling upon his skin. Westen had engaged his controls in the second seat; the lights and dials on Elario’s dashboard were dead. Looking about in bafflement, he said, “What happened?”
“That fool of a regimenta shot the duster!” Westen spat. “Shorted out the navigation program. I can’t get it back online.”
Elario raised a hand to his dashboard to do . . . well, something, but fixing a malfunctioning widget duster wasn’t a part of the demonstration. “Hobbe? Are you all right?” he shouted back.
“I am well, Master Elario, as are all of our belongings, with the exception of a pick-axe.” Hobbe laughed mechanically. “Was this humorous, sirs?”
“I cannot answer that honestly for fear that Elario will throw me over the side,” Westen said. “But there is no need to panic. We’ll just have to fly manually. It isn’t as if one can get lost and miss the Great Cities.”
The fuel gauge had also fallen victim to the short; upon Westen’s display, the dial was below the red. That they were airborne at all was a divine grace. Since Elario could do nothing with his dead controls, he watched over the sides. Bare trees and bare earth and creeks aplenty, there was the sporadic sight of overgrown roads and villages reduced to rubble. Of dervesh there were none, but that was hardly reassuring. Elario felt malicious eyes upon the duster from the shadows.
They flew over the Crescent Islands some time later. No need for Westen to announce their identity; though there were few signs of its former habitation, the shape of the two islands left little doubt. The crescents faced one another in a river, the second with its crest at the height of the first’s midsection. Water raced through the space between them. A break in the flow attested to some great monster below the surface. The giant snake never raised its head, but the coiling and uncoiling of its long body revealed itself in the disruption of the currents.
The remnants of a port were evident on the mainland, but the town around it was decimated. Telltale towers of yellowish bones revealed the presence of a yorsa dervesh at some point in the past. At the top of each tower was a skull, a hole bored into the crown and a black plume affixed inside.
Red and black rags waved from the trees around the towers. Ruby medallions were strung among them in chains, and helmets wound around the trunks to form crude staircases. A battle had occurred at this site between dervesh and companies of Red Guard, and the soldiers were not the victors.
The dragon’s eye nudged Elario, who looked behind the tail of the duster. Among the gray ribbons of clouds high above moved one of deeper gray, its speed and shape curious. Then it plummeted down out of the clouds and showed itself to be a small aerial, which was moving fast.
“Is that a war aerial?” he inquired.
Westen’s head swiveled. “Damn!”
Immediately, Westen changed their course from southeast to southwest, the war aerial correcting to pursue. Shielding his eyes from the sun, Elario squinted to the horizon. White spires trembled in the haze. He recalled the locations of the Great Cities upon the map and figured these spires for Davenah.
The sights of villages in rubble and broken roads multiplied the closer they flew to it. The widget duster made swift work of the distance, but the war aerial was going twice as fast. It dropped as it flew until it was only a little higher in the air than the duster. A contraption lowered from the base, rotating to bring a metal mouth to the forefront. Several times it adjusted. Just as Elario began to warn Westen, despite not knowing what precisely to warn him about, a boom of noise obliterated every sound in the world.
It was a cannon. Shooting out of the mouth was a fiery lance, which screamed through the air almost too fast for the human eye to follow. Westen yanked the duster to the side in the nick of time. The lance punched through the tree canopy and hit the ground, where it exploded into a hailstorm of fire and earth. Burning pieces of grit struck Elario as the flying droid rocked and shuddered.
Then the duster lowered sharply. Dismayed, Elario said, “Does it think we need to drop another payload?”
“No, this is me!” Westen cried, bringing them down to fly just above a road framed by trees and cluttered in carriages. The work of stone knackers was undeniable in this unblemished road. It was so white that it was blinding in the sunlight, and the city they were flying towards was crafted entirely in the same snow-white stone. The buildings were tall and narrow, the windows made of stained-glass, and almost all of the roofs were topped in spires.
The war aerial fired. The road just ahead of the duster exploded. They flew into the cloud, Elario shielding his face from the embers and pebbles that roared upwards in a frenzied eruption. For several terrifying seconds, he saw nothing but black smoke streaked with orange flames.
The smoke thinned, Elario coughing as he looked down. They were flying above a bridge, which hovered over a rocky gorge. There was no longer the time for Westen to pull up and over the city, so they flew straight in. Unable to do the same, the aerial was pulling up hastily.
These stunning buildings along the wide road were temples. A marble totem of a god or goddess stood at the top of the steps to each one. A few totems had fallen down to the road, which was made impassable by carriages and rickshaws. Worn down to their metal pieces, the tangle of vehicles was blunt proof of the pandemonium that took place within Davenah. Everyone had been trying to get out all at once, traffic from side streets merging onto main roads and cluttering them further, people dropping their belongings as they fought to escape with their lives. Littered everywhere were vases and jewelry and trunks and cages.
“What are those?” Elario called when they passed a third staircase that ran down into the earth rather than up to a temple.
“The city of the divine,” Westen explained. “If the god or goddess ruled from the sky, the temple was above; should he or she rule from beneath the earth, the temple was below ground. Davenah was a place of pilgrimage for Hallowmas, which is why so many were here in the attack.”
Since Westen had to steer, Elario stared upwards for the war aerial. For a hopeful moment, he thought it had gone in another direction, but then it flew out from behind a spire.
The cannon rotated in their direction. “I think it’s going to-”
Westen turned onto another road. A colossal boom shook the air and a temple burst apart at their back, lobbing rocks in every direction. “Elequa!” Elario swore as the duster was pelted. Rocks clipped the wings, knocking off the paint but fortunately doing no more damage.
The lance had struck behind them, but there was a crater ahead in the road. The duster flew over it. At the lowest point of the crater was the end of a staff, which jutted out of the earth.
A dragonwood staff! This was where Davenah had been struck, and even as Elario looked into the hole, dervesh were generating. A black wolf lifted its head to stare upwards at the duster, baring its teeth hatefully as it came into being. Halfway up the crater, a ten-legged creature as large as a man was scrabbling from rock to rock to reach the surface. Another dervesh was hauling itself onto the rubble of the road, but turned invisible when Elario’s eyes fell upon it.
The war aerial continued to pursue them from road to road, firing rapidly. Temples collapsed around the duster, throwing out a hailstorm of debris and forcing Westen to turn again and again. He glanced up with a growl. “They’re chasing us into the square so it will be easier to shoot us down!”
“What do we do?” Elario asked, seeing the green of the square at the end of the block they were flying within.
There was no answer.
Just as they entered the square, Westen turned the duster hard to the side. There were no side streets that way, just a row of temples, and Elario tensed. The droid was flying directly for the temple of Elequa . . . and then Westen abruptly steered down. Down over a flight of stairs to an underground temple, the blood draining from Elario’s face as they went beneath the roof.
The
divine of the earth were housed within a single, cavernous chamber of columns beneath Davenah. A maze of pathways far below connected the hundreds of totems, who were surrounded by channels of stagnant water. Pockmarks of light shined down from cave-ins, illuminating swirls of dust motes and statues.
There was enough space between the columns to allow the passage of the widget duster. Down in the gloom, dark forms turned to the engine’s noise. Upon the ceiling was a rippling in a black pool, this puddle of liquid somehow affixed to it upside down . . . a whelos, Elario thought, just as it released its hold. It had no head, but there was a crude intelligence in this dervesh, which timed its drop in order to spill upon the duster.
However, it failed to make its landing. Westen tilted the duster onto its side, the whelos falling harmlessly down to splash in a channel. As he righted them, the engine made a hoarse rattle.
It had been some time since Elario thought of their fuel. He prayed feverishly that it wouldn’t run out here of all places. Appearing to have the same fears, Westen steered for a staircase.
“They aren’t firing anymore,” Elario said.
“There are staircases below all over Davenah, and they can’t see them all from above,” Westen said. “If fortune shines our way, we will emerge unnoticed.”
The duster would not remain unnoticed for long. They soared up the stairs and back into sunlight, the war aerial nowhere in sight when Elario craned his neck to check for it. “How close are we to Nevenin, Westen?”
“Closer than we were,” Westen said, which didn’t answer the question. At times, to not have the answer was a kindness.
They had exited at the eastern side of the city. The road of temples turned into a bridge over a continuation of the gorge. Then they were flying over an expanse of yellow grass, the nearby road smashed to pebbles and the engine going into a state of noisy vexation. They were almost out of fuel.
Here in the grass was where they had to land. The only obstacle in the field was a single tree, which was a simple matter to get around. It was of no recognizable kind, a whorled trunk and branches laden heavily in enormous brown leaves. The wind rustled the grass but the leaves of the tree neither trembled nor flew away, even though they were obviously dead. They just hung downwards from the knotted, winding branches, as still as if the tree and its leaves were a painting.
Westen brought them lower, jabbing at the control to drop the wheels and looking with Elario back to Davenah. The war aerial was now in view, flying towards the last of the eastern side spires and picking up speed. The position of the sun blotted out the features of the cannon, but Elario was confident that it was rotating to the widget duster.
They turned to the front, Westen’s eyes widening upon the tree. In a choked voice, he said, “It’s a sanga roost.” At once he tried to wrench the duster higher, but to no avail. The engine spluttering and wheezing and clanking, the body of the duster shaking, it went down.
One of the leaves was shifting upon the branch of the tree. Wings unfolded from the leaf, and a head lowered to follow the flight of the duster. A second head lowered, a third and fourth. Then all of the leaves were unfolding their wings with their heads turning in tandem. These were the giant birds from Sable, their beaks freakishly long and sharp. Upside down, the flock was clinging to the branches of the leafless tree.
The war aerial cleared the spires and dropped. Elario looked in panic from the aerial to the tree, where the sanga were releasing their claws, the flock tumbling down a short distance before a beat of their wings propelled them upwards. They flew to intercept the duster, which gasped in its final death throes and went silent.
And then the cannon fired.
There was a rush of fire, feathers, metal, and noise. Something burned briefly upon Elario’s cheek as he was whipped around in violent circles. The dragon’s eye lifted him free . . . Dispassionately, he watched from above. The lance had destroyed a wing of the duster and it was spinning, spinning crazily through the grass below a swarm of screaming birds. Around and around it went, heading for the woods beyond the field.
Elario was going to witness his own death. In this detached place, he was indifferent.
He turned his head and he was within the war aerial, within the captain, the crew upon the bridge shouting out in triumph at the duster breaking apart and being assaulted by dervesh. Elario’s hand went up, the captain’s hand, to hold fire.
His second in command reduced their speed to a crawl. Elario’s mouth that was the captain’s mouth opened with an order to pepper the duster with small fire. Those two heads in the seats were upright, fighting to get the birds off them.
Either the dervesh killed them first, or the aithra bullets stunned them and then the dervesh killed them. Then it was done, no need to release any of the soldiers in the war aerial to ground in the bucket.
They peppered the duster. The birds were so thick about it that several of them burst apart. The target was still mobile, though slowing. Wings snapped off, wheels gone, only the body of the duster remained intact. It was sliding through the grass.
Captain Helder? Sir? Captain-
As if they thought with one mind, the flock of gigantic birds abruptly quit the duster. They beat their wings and curled for the aerial, blotting out his view of the smaller aircraft. Too late, the captain realized his error. The dervesh thought the small fire was directed at them, changing the focus of their ire to the aerial.
Fire! Fire! Lift and evade! Small fire continued to pepper them. Dozens of the birds died, but they were dozens of hundreds. The aerial lifted but so did the birds, gushing upwards in an unstoppable brown swarm.
-he was hanging upside down, wetness slipping along his forehead, Westen shouting and Hobbe fighting to release Elario’s belt as he stared insensibly to the aerial-
The aerial and swarm collided. Razor-sharp beaks shattered the windows and perforated the fabric hull overhead . . . Air rushed into the engineering compartment as the crew upon the bridge screamed and shot the birds muscling through the broken windows.
“Elario? Elequa damn you, wake up!”
The aerial lurched, throwing everyone off their feet. “I’m awake,” Elario said, aware that another part of him was on the ground, or more precisely, hoisted over Hobbe’s shoulder. Westen had their baggage slung about his back and chest. Their knees were rising high in the grass as they ran . . . ran from the smoking duster, the sinking aerial covered in sanga, ran for the trees and running still . . .
-they were going down-
-they had to make it to the cove-
The dragon soared away within his mind, taking the unity with it. Elario beat at Hobbe’s shoulder and was put down. The ground trembled beneath their boots as the aerial crashed into the grass and exploded.
Elario fled with fire at his back.
Chapter Nineteen
They ran for a very long time, staying under tree cover whenever possible. The terrain was rugged, the ground broken by roots and rocks and made slippery by sifts of dead leaves. Westen’s eyes moved constantly and rapidly from side to side, noting the details of their surroundings; he always checked above and below and behind, for that was how much danger they were in from every quarter.
Sweat soaked through Elario’s clothes and his thighs burned from exertion. The others were not going to tire and he dreaded the moment when his exhaustion would force them to stop. Fear was helping to speed him away from the maddened sanga and the wreckage of the war aerial, but fear could not keep him going forever.
When a stitch of pain in his side grew too great, he called to Westen and bent over double with his hands on his knees. Westen turned, the impatience in his eyes fading to understanding. They had run such a distance that the spires of Davenah were small at the horizon. The afternoon was growing late.
“Sit,” Westen ordered. “But not for long. The days are too short and we still have some distance to go.”
Elario sat upon a boulder and steadied his breath. Blood had dried upon his gashe
d cheek. He recalled nothing of the beak or talon or specific bird to deliver the wound. It had all happened too fast, so that even hours later upon the very same day of the crash-landing, his mind failed to hold onto the memory.
“What is a cove?” he asked.
Westen accepted that this term had transferred between their minds. “The dervesh radiate outwards in a circle from the staff. Eventually, as they wander about within their territory, they arrive at the boundary where they can go no further without their energy dispersing and returning to the staff to be reborn.” Even as he spoke, he was turning in a circle to keep an eye on the woods around them. “The boundary waxes and wanes with the hour of the day and night and the type of dervesh to test it. Though the line moves a few paces either way, it never ceases to exist. A cove is a place within the Wickewoods where no dervesh can tread, because it is too far from the surrounding staffs to produce them. I’ve marked the coves I’ve found.”
“Are there many of them?”
“I would not say many, but several. Most are outside of the Great Cities. The dragonwood staffs were not dispensed of at equal distance in some regions, so two staffs will overlap their dervesh in some areas, while other areas remain wholly untouched. We aren’t far from Peddlers’ Cove. There we can spend the night.”
Elario got up, his fatigue battling with his fervent desire to be within the boundaries of this cove. They ran again, Westen reducing the pace so Elario lasted longer. Another hour and the spires of Davenah disappeared. Stay on the move, stay on the move, Elario chanted. That was the downfall of madcaps, so Elario had to keep moving.
It was evening when he left the woods to step over a line of rocks after Westen. This was the cove, Westen slowing to a walk once they were all over the boundary. Hillocks rolled away within it, swathed in grass that rustled in an icy breeze. A thin road of gravel appeared and disappeared in foliage, guiding them through the rippled land.
“To travel from one city to another in olden days,” Westen said, knowing this road so well that he could follow it even when the gravel completely disappeared, “one had to pay a toll upon the kingsroads. It was quite costly for peddlers and poorer merchants to get about, as the toll was frequently raised. They developed their own roads to move their wares. This was one of them.”
