by Ian Irvine
Bel’s backhanded blow crashed into the side of Maelys’s head and knocked her down. Spots floated across her vision and, before she could move, Bel picked her up, upside down, threw her across her ample shoulder and was at the window. She thrust it up and scrambled onto the sill, the aged wood creaking under her weight as she caught the top of the window and supported herself there for a moment, one-handed. Maelys, folded over her shoulder, had her face pushed into Bel’s stomach, which was firmer than it had appeared.
To Maelys’s astonishment, for Bel didn’t look as though she’d taken a day’s exercise in her life, she began to climb the front of the inn, her toes finding footholds between the stones, her soft hands lifting her weight, and Maelys’s, easily. Maelys, terrified that she’d slide off Bel’s shoulder, clung to her flimsy gown.
The flappeter was still thup-thupping, supporting itself on its feather-rotors. Maelys didn’t want to go anywhere near it, but she couldn’t escape without falling. She pressed her knees against Bel’s back and locked her arms around her waist.
Bel chuckled. ‘Won’t do you any good, boy. If you fall, my gown will tear off and I’ll be dangling here in the altogether for the whole world to see.’ It didn’t sound as though either prospect bothered her.
Flydd emerged from the window and looked up the sheer face of the building. Maelys made out the whites of his eyes. ‘I can’t climb that!’ he said.
‘Wait, I’ll come back for you.’ Bel climbed another span or two and said to Maelys, ‘Grab the edge of the roof and pull yourself up.’
‘I can’t!’ Maelys hissed. ‘I’ll fall.’
‘One less problem for me to worry about.’
Maelys reached out with one hand, her fingertips scraping across the rough stone, and felt an indentation between two blocks. Taking hold as best she could, she tried to slide off Bel’s shoulder, but slipped and her fingers were torn free. Bel threw her weight against Maelys, squashing her against the wall and forcing the air from her lungs. Maelys found a better grip and attempted to climb, but her fingers weren’t strong enough to support her.
Bel put a hand between her legs and heaved her effortlessly onto the roof. She sprawled on the splintered shingles with her feet in the guttering, getting her breath back as Bel turned to go down for Flydd. Could she possibly be on their side? Maelys looked up at the flappeter and knew otherwise. She’d put them right into the enemy’s hands.
The flappeter was a huge, elongated shadow hovering above the ridgepole. The gutter was half-full of shingles and she could just make out a hole smashed through the roof. She couldn’t see the rider, which was a mercy – he must have gone down the hole. She flattened herself on the roof, for the flappeter was more dangerous than any rider.
Little Maelys! What a pleasure it is to see you again.
Maelys nearly fell backwards off the roof. ‘R-Rurr-shyve? I thought you were dead?’ Months ago she had killed Rurr-shyve’s rider and managed to gain a tenuous control over the flappeter, but subsequently it had fallen into a river near Tifferfyte and she’d believed it had drowned.
It takes an awful lot to kill a flappeter. The Imperial Militia lifted me from the river with an air-floater and sent me back to the flesh-formers of Farentyl, to be restored. Improved. You can’t touch me this time.
It rotated on the ridgepole, its hooked feet clasping and unclasping, sending more heavy shingles sliding down the roof at her. Rurr-shyve was a good five spans long, half of which was the heavy tail which it could swing hard enough to smash down small trees. It could hover on its feather-rotors or walk awkwardly on its pairs of thin legs, and its long head had two pairs of horns.
It emitted a honking hoot, no doubt calling the soldiers. Maelys scrambled backwards along the wooden gutter, not game to take her eyes off the beast. There was no hope of escape now.
Flydd was heaved over the edge onto the roof a few spans away. Rurr-shyve made a purring sound in its throat and darted its long neck at him. He yelped.
Two soldiers ran out the front door of the inn and looked up. Maelys, peering over the guttering, could see them clearly, for someone had thrown bales of straw into the street and set them alight, sending a blaze spans high into the air. More soldiers were running up the stairs.
‘Xervish, you’ve got to do something,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t have strength to take on – flappeter.’ His voice was slurred; he was still ensorcelled.
She shook him but it made no difference, and now it sounded as though the soldiers were scrambling back up through the roof; they couldn’t be allowed to get through. Maelys scrabbled up towards the hole on hands and knees. Rurr-shyve’s long neck swung towards her but it couldn’t reach without lifting in the air. Its feather-rotors began to beat more rapidly.
The movement sent shingles sliding down at her, and they were heavy enough to break her fingers. She stopped one with the heel of her hand and tossed it up through the hole in the roof. There came a satisfying cry of pain, so she hurled more shingles, as fast as she could catch them. After the fourth a man cried, ‘Aaargh!’ and she heard him go crashing down.
A second soldier cursed but Maelys didn’t think he’d fallen, and Rurr-shyve was coming for her.
‘Xervish, help!’
Bel was crouched further along the gutter; Maelys couldn’t see what she was doing but she’d made no move to stop Maelys throwing her shingles, so why had Bel brought them up here? Because there was no end to Jal-Nish’s convoluted and malicious cunning.
Flydd stood up, thrusting his hands at Rurr-shyve, but gave a grunting cough, fell on his face and began to slide towards the edge. She went backwards on her belly, and hit the wooden gutter hard. It held; she wedged her feet in and broke his fall; threw her arm across his back to steady him, but felt sticky wetness there. He’d been shot, probably with a cross-bow bolt. It did not feel like a grievous wound, though he was losing a lot of blood.
A soldier’s head popped up through the hole, holding a blazing torch. ‘I see them,’ he roared. ‘We’ve got them.’
A second man followed, clad in leathers – Rurr-shyve’s rider. Firelight glinted off the control amulet mounted on a chain that ran across his forehead. Rurr-shyve hovered at the edge of the roof, preventing her from climbing down, and with Flydd incapacitated there was no hope anyway. It was taking all her strength to hold him.
Bel suddenly stood up, thrust her arms high and cried three words in an unfamiliar tongue. A sudden breeze plastered the gown against her opulent figure. A gasp escaped her; her left knee wobbled; her arms shook as if she were holding up a huge weight but she forced them higher, grinding out more words.
With a shrill cry, Rurr-shyve sideslipped away, but Bel slammed into the roof, face first. She began to slide down but hooked her fingers over the edge of a shingle and held on. Maelys stared at her. That Bel had just used all the power at her command was evident, but if she were one of Jal-Nish’s mancers, why go to all this trouble?
A pair of closely-spaced carmine sparks shot across the sky, accompanied by an unnervingly shrill and ululating whistle that came ever closer. It passed high overhead, and vanished.
BOOM-BOOM.
The sound, deeper than thunder, shook the roof, dislodging more shingles. One thumped Flydd in the back and he moaned. The whistle rose in pitch, coming from the other direction; the pair of sparks curved around towards them.
Abruptly the whistle was replaced by a sobbing moan; a yearning cry; then a trumpeting roar as something monstrous raced their way.
‘No!’ Bel said faintly, struggling to her feet. ‘I didn’t call a male.’
‘What …?’ said Flydd.
‘I can’t control a male; I’ll try to seize the other.’
‘Can’t do it,’ said Flydd. ‘Not without amulet.’
‘On your bellies!’ hissed Bel, flattening herself on the roof.
Maelys pushed Flydd’s face against the roof as a second flappeter, twice the size of Rurr-shyve, thundered above them. Bel c
ried three more foreign words – evidently orders. The larger flappeter skidded in a tight circle, hovered and rotated its long head to stare at her. There were tinges of red in its globular compound eyes, though that might have been reflections of the burning straw. Its neck extended towards Bel; its maw opened and, with a steamy hiss, a yellow cloud boiled towards her.
She sprang sideways right over Maelys’s head, landing with a thump that shook the rafters. Bel had avoided the cloud but a yellow tendril wisped out and touched Flydd on the left hand. He yelped and his hand jerked convulsively; the skin was already swelling. Maelys wiped his hand with her sleeve and felt the vapours stinging her forearm.
Bel, weak-kneed and wobbly, repeated her orders, harshly. The flappeter stared at her, eye to eye, and made as if to breathe at her again. She drew herself up, pointing directly at it, and the male shuddered, lowered its head submissively, rotated in the air and squirted something rank along the ridgepole.
Extending several pairs of legs, it hooked into the nearest soldier’s chest and lifted him, squealing and spurting blood, high into the air. It turned towards Rurr-shyve’s rider, who frantically pressed his hand against the now-wriggling amulet on his forehead, shouting, ‘Rurr-shyve, Rurr-shyve!’
A hook-ended leg scraped down the rider’s forehead, snapping the chain. With a cry of pain he dived for the amulet, which was sliding down the roof, but missed. Another pair of legs caught him by the shoulder and belly, dragging him up besides the soldier, then they were sent flying over the edge and fell to the road in front of the tavern.
Rurr-shyve shrilled in sympathetic pain. The amulet slid into the gutter beside Maelys. She reached for it but drew back as its eight metal legs snapped out and the curled leaves of its segmented body opened to display its mechanical innards. But it was the key to Rurr-shyve, and the only way out of here. It began to scuttle along the gutter, trying to get to Rurr-shyve. If it did the flappeter would be free, and uncontrollable.
Could she control Rurr-shyve again? She had to try. Maelys snatched the amulet off the side of the gutter and closed her fist around it. It struggled furiously, the tiny metal claws tearing at her until she slid her fingers between several of its legs and squeezed hard, whereupon it went still.
Bel, now ashen in the light of the blazing straw, spoke another phrase. The male flappeter let out that trumpeting roar again, flew down to the road and, to Maelys’s horror, began to eat the head of Rurr-shyve’s rider. Rurr-shyve bellowed in agony and shot across the ridgepole, only to stop suddenly and settle there. It began to sniff the ridgepole.
‘What’s that about?’ said Maelys.
No one replied.
The amulet began to struggle again. Maelys pressed it against her chest, between her breasts where Rurr-shyve’s original amulet had once hung. The amulet went still, then slowly folded its legs.
Rurr-shyve turned slowly, staring at her. So, little Maelys thinks she can best me again? She’d better be stronger this time.
‘I will be,’ said Maelys savagely.
Rurr-shyve was still sniffing; suddenly its tail shot up.
‘Now!’ whispered Bel.
‘What?’ said Maelys.
‘Get on its back.’
‘What about Xervish?’
‘Just go!’
Maelys didn’t hesitate, for more soldiers were gathering outside, and maybe Bel was on their side after all. With hindsight, how could the woman in red have been one of Jal-Nish’s mancers? If she had been, why would she have helped them to escape the plateau?
Maelys crawled up the slope, put one foot into the left stirrup and pulled herself into Rurr-shyve’s front saddle. Bel staggered across the steeply sloping roof, picked Flydd up and heaved him up onto the rear saddle. Rurr-shyve lurched sideways and Flydd nearly fell off. Maelys reached back to steady him. Bel slid a pale, plump leg over Rurr-shyve and slid in behind Flydd.
Maelys expected the flappeter to throw them off, for such creatures bitterly resented being ridden, even by their bonded rider, but the sniffing beast ignored them. Below, the male had eaten the head and chest of the rider and was crunching into the fallen soldier. The other soldiers had retreated, evidently afraid to attack one of the God-Emperor’s precious flappeters, and a robed scrier was calling into a loop listener. The male looked up, saw Rurr-shyve with tail upraised, and lifted into the air. Rurr-shyve lowered its tail and fled.
The male emitted another urgent, yearning cry, raised its own tail and rotored after them, and only then did Maelys realise, with a thrill of horror, what was going on. Rurr-shyve must be a female.
‘We’ve got to get off! Right now!’
A soft hand slapped over her mouth. ‘Don’t move, don’t speak!’ Bel whispered over the thup-thupping of the feather-rotors. ‘Interfere with the mating dance and we all die.’
‘Why did you call a flappeter?’ hissed Maelys, turning around. ‘Couldn’t you think of a better –’
‘Best beast I could reach –’ Bel sagged sideways.
Not you too! Maelys couldn’t do anything for her; Rurr-shyve was rolling from side to side in the air and swinging her tail up and down; an invitation?
‘To conjure such a beast from – so far – almost beyond my capacity.’
‘Who are you?’ Maelys hissed, but could barely hear herself over the trumpeting of the male. It must have been three times the weight of Rurr-shyve and, whether it mated with her in the air or on the ground, they could not survive it.
Bel said exhaustedly, ‘Fading fast. Look after Xervish.’
She slumped against Flydd’s back, breathing noisily, but forced herself upright again and appeared to be pressing her right hand to the wound on his back. Maelys felt heat wash through her and sensed something stir in Flydd, as if he was finally being released from her bewitchment.
‘Direction?’ slurred Bel.
Flydd managed to raise his head. ‘West-north-west, about four leagues; a deep, narrow valley surrounded by knife-sharp ridges. Entrance a slot between buttresses of rock. But there are many valleys; without Colm …’
‘Amulet!’
Maelys handed it to her and, with limp gestures, Bel directed Rurr-shyve in that direction, flying just above the treetops. The flappeter resisted, turning her head to left and right, whilst raising and lowering her tail invitingly. It had gone bright yellow, and the horns on her head were glowing; the pair thrusting out sideways were a pale orange and the pair projecting forwards the dull red of warm coals. Sticky saliva dribbled from her mouth and was blown back along her flanks; acrid puffs of a stinkbug stench from her breathing tubes burned Maelys’s nose.
The male let out another bellow. It was not far behind; the brilliant yellow of Rurr-shyve’s tail reflected off its largest pair of eyes, while both its pairs of horns were a fiery red. Its dark body could barely be seen but the erect tail, which terminated in a fan of oval discs almost as extravagant as the tail of a peacock, shimmered with waves of colour.
Rurr-shyve slowed and turned its long neck to look back; the male dived towards a little clearing in the forest, then came zooming up right in front of Rurr-shyve, whose feather-rotors reversed and beat frantically as it came to a stop in mid-air. The male hovered, waving its iridescent tail suggestively. Rurr-shyve went forwards a few spans, then backwards, then forwards again, but as the male darted towards her she slipped to the side and raced away, her own tail flat. The male, its flanks coated in windblown trails, turned to follow, and so the pursuit went on.
Bel seemed very weak now. She was clinging to her saddle horn with one hand while she tried to direct the flappeter west-north-west with the other. She managed to drive it in that direction for a league or two before Rurr-shyve, whose cries were becoming ever louder and her tail-raisings more lasciviously inviting, suddenly dived towards a treetop.
Maelys choked. ‘They’re going to mate!’ It had been bad enough next to Flydd and Bel last night, but these flesh-formed monstrosities – yuk! ‘Bel? Bel?’
TWENTY
-EIGHT
Maelys could see right through Bel – she was barely there. What was the matter?
She solidified fractionally as Rurr-shyve settled on a sturdy branch in the crown of a spreading tree, then bent its knees and raised its yellow tail. Pores along its flanks dilated, gushing a greenish vapour which drifted into their faces. Maelys caught a whiff; it had hardly any smell, but she felt more intoxicated than she had after drinking that beer last night. The male was boring down towards them, bellowing with lust, its paired horns throbbing red. The rainbows of colour pulsing across its tail discs lit up the tree’s canopy.
The thought of being caught between a pair of mating flappeters made her feel ill. She tried to heave Flydd out of the saddle onto a nearby branch, though she had no idea how she was going to get him down to the ground. She wasn’t sure she could get herself down.
‘On, Rurr-shyve,’ said Bel ineffectually. ‘Hurry.’
Rurr-shyve didn’t take any notice, for Bel was no longer in control. Maelys took back the amulet and tried to speak into Rurr-shyve’s mind the way she had done months ago, but couldn’t reach her. In the intoxication of the mating ritual the flappeters must be oblivious to anything else – rather like Flydd and Bel last night, Maelys thought sourly.
‘Help me with Flydd.’ She tried to haul his weight out of the saddle.
Bel made a distressed sound in her throat, but managed to partly solidify herself and dragged Flydd across a small gap onto the wildly shaking branch. She wavered there and nearly went over the side, until Maelys steadied her.
‘This way,’ Bel said limply, backing down the steeply sloping branch, holding Flydd.
Maelys didn’t understand how she could stand upright without falling off; clearly Bel was a brilliant mancer, though perhaps lacking in judgment.
Rurr-shyve’s feather-rotors came to a stop and drooped. In the light from her lurid tail, Flydd’s face was the colour of mud. Maelys held him as best she could, her feet slipping on the damp bark, as the male flappeter hovered above Rurr-shyve. The brilliant colours racing across its tail fans could have been seen back at Plogg. The male gave a steamy hiss, settled on top of Rurr-shyve, and it began.
