Dragonsight

by Paul Collins

  Jelindel woke with sunlight on her face. She had a feeling of wellbeing that was quite unfamiliar, given what had been happening over the past weeks. It was as if she had awakened from a long dark nightmare and had finally come into the light of a new day. She stretched, yawned and rubbed her eyes, then sat up and looked around.

  Daretor snored softly beside her. They were in a strange bed in a strange room. A few feet away stood a table littered with the scraps of a late-night meal. She gazed up through a transparent skylight, and stared at the astounding cliff city of the Farvenu.

  Memories flooded back, and the peace she had felt receded into mere relief at being free again. She got up carefully and went to the washbasin, where she washed her face and hands. For a time she played with the wonderful taps, which poured a seemingly endless stream of clean water, then she cleared the table. A search of the cupboards revealed that one was a pantry, with dried fruit, cheese, bread, small salted fish, and nuts. She had laid out breakfast by the time Daretor opened one eye and grunted something unintelligible.

  ‘If that’s good morning, then the same to you,’ said Jelindel, smiling impishly.

  ‘Could I have some bread and cheese in bed?’ he asked.

  ‘No. This is on the table as incentive for you to get up.’

  Daretor sat up, clutching his head, then lay back again.

  ‘Five bottles of wine. No wonder you are feeling like that,’ Jelindel pointed out.

  ‘I was establishing a bond of male comradeship with Hakat,’ mumbled Daretor.

  ‘I knew there were advantages in being female,’ replied Jelindel. ‘Get up, drink some water from the spigot at the washbasin in the corner, then get yourself into the privy. It’s behind that door that looks like a cupboard.’

  ‘Everything in here is so small and compact.’

  ‘But a lot less so than your cell. Come now, move.’

  Daretor got up and meandered to the corner to wash his face. He entered the little room beside it, and Jelindel heard clattering and curses for a short time. Daretor returned to the washbasin next, turned a spigot and cursed as he unexpectedly got hot water instead of cold.

  Hakat was nowhere to be seen but Jelindel was not worried by his absence. He turned up halfway through the meal with several packages, one of which contained fresh-baked bread and a thick chunky fish soup.

  ‘I’ve been higher up in the city,’ Hakat said in answer to their queries. ‘Getting supplies and finding out stuff.’

  ‘And what have you found out about us?’ Jelindel asked.

  Hakat frowned. ‘I don’t understand it meself,’ he said. ‘No alarm’s been sounded. They gotta know by now you escaped. I wonder what their game is.’

  ‘If we were caught, would we be turned over straight away?’

  ‘No. Not unless there’s a reward, and maybe that’s all there is to it. The bigger the hue and cry the larger the reward would have to be. Maybe they’ll just stick you on the list of escaped slaves and leave it at that. It’s not like you can go anywhere.’

  ‘Why do you have a house here, Hakat?’ Daretor asked. ‘You said the Sargasso usually lays over only five days.’

  ‘Aye, that it does,’ said Hakat. ‘I’m a kind of quartermaster, you see, and they often leave me here between trips to get the best price for the cargo and set up deals for when they come back. They can’t stay more than five days; I dunno why, something to do with the magic that opens the sea portal.’

  ‘Don’t you mind staying here?’

  ‘I do and I don’t. Mostly I hate it, but more than that, I hate being on board the Sargasso and under Helnick. I know what’s likely to happen to me. One day the Sargasso won’t come back and I’ll be left here. It could be worse. There’s some things here … there’s a girl, you know …’ He shrugged.

  Jelindel leaned forward. ‘If we find a way back, do you wish to come with us?’

  Hakat gazed at her, as if she was offering him something he could not comprehend. ‘Go back? To Q’zar?’

  ‘And be free,’ said Daretor, glancing perplexedly at Jelindel.

  Still puzzling over the idea, Hakat said, ‘I’m sort of free here, mostly. Where would I go? What could I do?’

  ‘We need all the help we can get,’ said Jelindel.

  Hakat looked out the window. ‘Could I bring someone?’

  ‘Someone, as in a female someone?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Someone who can cope with hardship, and who only screams when it is absolutely necessary?’

  ‘Er, I s’pose so.’

  ‘Then why not?’

  Hakat sat back, laughing to himself. ‘Well, imagine that,’ he said. ‘Imagine that. Me, free as a bird, away from all these devils.’ Then doubt passed across his features. ‘Dreams are good an’ I’ll keep that one to meself for now, if you don’t mind. Makin’ it come real is the trick.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jelindel. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘First, you gotta know what this place is like.’ He told them as much about Farvane as he could. Although he spoke for more than two hours, there was something he left out. He never described the Farvenu themselves. Eventually Daretor raised the point.

  ‘I was comin’ to that,’ Hakat said with strange reluctance. ‘You gotta see ’em for yerselves. The truth is, you already seen ’em, in your nightmares.’

  He would not elaborate. Instead he unpacked the bags he had brought from his visit to the city. He gave them local clothes and the necessary papers they might require. These were fairly crude identification documents, each one bearing a strangely sharp and accurate sketch of Jelindel and Daretor, which Hakat called a ‘photograph’.

  ‘The likeness on these papers is uncanny,’ Jelindel said.

  ‘They’re good all right,’ Hakat agreed. ‘But to the Farvenu we all look alike anyway. They can’t tell us apart, except by hair colour, size, and whether we be a man or a woman or other.’

  Daretor’s eyebrows went up. ‘Or other? What else is there except man and woman?’

  Hakat looked at him as if he were asking a silly question. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘Now get dressed. We need to scout the headquarters of some clans.’

  ‘It’s still odd,’ said Daretor, ‘seeing Zimak’s face with my name under it.’ Jelindel quickly squeezed his arm.

  An hour later they were in the city proper. Up close, the architecture had a gothic look, ornamented by carved grotesque figures that were fantastic in appearance and cruel in mien. Jelindel shuddered, wondering about the nightmarish paraworlds the creatures must come from.

  The streets were narrow and paved with a white stone that was smooth and very hard. It had a milky opalescence that contained intriguing depths. When Daretor gazed down into the depths, he gasped and stepped back.

  ‘What is it?’ Jelindel asked.

  ‘Faces,’ he said. ‘Faces inside the stone.’

  ‘Don’t stare,’ Hakat hissed at them. ‘Of course there’s faces. They make this stone in a factory down by the ocean an’ in it they place the severed heads of their enemies. Some say the heads are still alive, frozen in the stone like the sea shells that turn to rock. They’re said to be alive, aware, but insane.’

  Daretor swallowed. ‘What manner of beings would …’ he began, but trailed off. He attacked problems with a sword and sought, at worst, an honourable death. There was nothing honourable in having a head encased in rock for the city traffic to roll over endlessly.

  So far they had not seen a Farvenu. Hakat had explained to Daretor the previous night that they were largely nocturnal, moving about by day only when necessary, and then usually in a drowsy state, as if sleepwalking.

  They reached the first clan building. The palatial façade was built five hundred feet up into the cliff. It had numerous apertures dotting its face, each with a small ledge instead of a sill. Like most Farvenu buildings, it was built half into the cliff face, while the rest jutted out from the granite. Hakat pointed out that most such structures
went back into the cliff for hundreds of yards, taking advantage of a network of tunnels and caverns that had been dug out of the rocky massif over generations.

  On an outcrop near the clan building stood an inn. It was part of a larger structure that fell away down the cliff face on the ocean side of the street – only the façade could be seen from the street; the rest was in the rock. At the foot of the structure was a street built into a ledge. Thus the Farvenu city was built, tier upon tier, climbing the vast massif to the very top, thousands of feet high.

  They entered the inn and settled at a table with a view of the clan building. It was then that Daretor noticed something odd. Several of the windows had staircases sloping up and away. It was as if the staircases were designed to lead to the windows and nowhere else.

  He was about to remark on this oddity when a creature came into view. It descended a stairway, before standing on the ledge at the base of a large window. Jelindel saw it too, and covered her mouth with her hand.

  ‘Don’t react,’ Hakat whispered, glancing around. It seemed everybody was preoccupied with their own affairs, though a woman at the bar looked away too quickly.

  Jelindel and Daretor eased back into their chairs, forcing themselves to relax. The creature at the window had wings and was easily eight feet tall, with leathery skin the colour of red wine. It sported two small horns on its head, and a tail that ended in a vicious barb. Its eyes were bloodshot, the irises yellow, like parchment. There was no expression on its face, which made it more unsettling. Stepping out onto the ledge, it stretched its wings, flexed once or twice, and took to the air, flapping away and dropping in a lazy spiral that quickly took it from view.

  Jelindel and Daretor breathed out and looked at Hakat. ‘I’ve met creatures from forty different paraworlds,’ he said, shrugging, ‘and every one of them has a tale, a fable, a nightmare, about a creature like the Farvenu. They call them devils, daemons, ghouls, vampires … it’s all the same. Something that comes in the night and terrifies all who see it. Something that eats the living and damns the dead to eternal torment.’

  ‘They have been to Q’zar then,’ Jelindel said. ‘Maybe thousands of years ago. And now they are part of our myths …’ She gulped the juice that Hakat had bought her. ‘Strange how you never quite escape your childhood nightmares,’ she concluded.

  ‘The faster we leave this paraworld the better,’ Daretor said, and the others agreed.

  Jelindel’s brow furrowed, making Daretor wary. When she got that expression it usually meant trouble.

  ‘What worries you now?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing worries me, but if these creatures came to Q’zar long ago they may have records, or even memories, of that time.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They may know the first language of Q’zar. Perhaps we have come here for a reason. Perhaps here we will find the meaning of Hadirr.’

  Daretor sighed. ‘There’s just one small problem.’

  Jelindel looked at him, her eyes twinkling. ‘And that would be?’

  ‘Someone would have to question one of those things,’ he said. ‘And I just remembered that I’m a simple swordsman, not an interrogator. I do not torture.’

  ‘Neither am I, so where is Zimak when we need him,’ she said, laughing.

  Jelindel turned to Hakat. ‘Tell me about the clan building; its entrances, layout, defences.’

  They spoke quietly and kept ordering drinks. No one seemed to be paying them special attention. Hakat noted the serving woman’s departure, and relaxed.

  Over the next few days they made several reconnoitring trips past the clan building. They also checked out several others, but the first had the advantage of being close to the edge of the city and the port below, which was familiar territory for Jelindel and Daretor.

  During this same time they noted the loading and unloading going on at the Sargasso. Hakat was unavoidably involved, and was away for long hours. In his absence, Jelindel and Daretor went over their plans again and again, partly with the help of the strange ‘photograph’ sketches of the clan building that Hakat had taken. Though Jelindel and Daretor viewed the enchanted box he used with unease, they admitted its usefulness.

  At Hakat’s suggestion they did not venture out when he was not present. There was no point in taking unnecessary risks. But as the days passed risk could not be avoided. Their plans received a jolt three days later.

  Captain Helnick wanted Hakat to return to Q’zar with the Sargasso, which was due to leave a day before the attempt on the Farvenu’s paraworld machine. Jelindel and Daretor would need Hakat to work the contraption, and to translate should they get any information out of the devil creatures.

  ‘Oh, they speak Q’zaran all right,’ Hakat said. ‘There’s other stuff –’

  ‘Have you ever missed a sailing before?’ Jelindel interrupted.

  ‘Once,’ he said. ‘I got rotten drunk in a tavern and they couldn’t wake me, so they left me here.’

  ‘Would that work again?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe Helnick’s not planning on coming back. I dunno.’

  Daretor put a hand on Hakat’s arm. ‘You must decide then,’ he said gently. ‘Do you throw your lot in with Jelindel dek Mediesar, and take a chance, or go back on the ship?’

  Hakat looked at them both. ‘What if you fail? My girl and I’ll be stuck here, maybe forever.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jelindel.

  She made no effort to persuade him. She believed that human beings tread the path to their own destiny; their decisions must be their own. Her calmness affected Hakat. He swallowed once and his rapid breathing subsided. He nodded quickly, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak.

  ‘Good man,’ said Daretor. ‘Now, we must anticipate their moves. What happens next?’

  ‘As soon as they miss me, they’ll come here and search the place. They mustn’t find any trace of you two, or they won’t go at all. I still don’t know why no alarm’s been raised. It ain’t right.’

  It took two hours to collect their things and scour the small dwelling of all traces of their presence. Jelindel found several long hairs that clearly did not belong to Hakat and which were a different colour to that of his sweetheart.

  When all was done they hurried through the evening streets. Hakat led the way, Jelindel followed several paces behind him, and Daretor was farther back. It was the hour after sunset, just before the Farvenu emerged for the night. They were heading for Hakat’s sweetheart’s boarding house. She had recently moved there, which would confuse their trail further. Hakat doubted his shipmates would make more than the most perfunctory effort to find him. Now that he was protected by Jelindel, he seemed to have a light step to his walk.

  They were two hundred yards from the boarding house when three Farvenu dropped out of the sky with a suddenness that was almost heart-stopping. Jelindel gasped and involuntarily took a step backward. Daretor had the presence of mind to hurry forward and grip her elbows to steady her.

  One of the Farvenu barked a command and held out his hand. His voice was deep, almost basso profundo. Hakat answered in the same staccato speech. It sounded like a language creatures in the bowels of the earth might speak.

  Jelindel and Daretor saw Hakat reach for his identification papers. He did this slowly, giving them time to pick up on the cue. Then all three held out their papers. Each Farvenu took a document and peered at it. Eons of time seemed to grind slowly by. Daretor tensed. In a moment those huge taloned hands would flash out and seize them.

  The hands did flash out but only to hand back the documents. One creature’s nostrils flared, as though scenting fear, but its colleagues seemed oblivious to its concern.

  Jelindel and Daretor breathed a soft sigh of relief. Then came a woman’s shout, and a figure hurried towards them. It was the woman from the tavern. Neither Jelindel nor Daretor had paid her any attention, but Hakat recognised her immediately.

  To Jelindel he whispered, ‘Stop her. Quickly!’

  The Fa
rvenu were looking in the woman’s direction. Jelindel whispered a spell, cloaking the blue light, and flicked her hand. The woman hurried past without so much as a glance in their direction, staring ahead as if she had seen someone she knew.

  Jelindel, Daretor and Hakat took back their papers. The Farvenu sprang into the sky and soared away, as swift and graceful as eagles.

  Hakat took a trembling breath. ‘My ticker’s not up to this,’ he said. He explained how he had seen the woman in the bar. ‘What’d you do to her?’ he asked Jelindel.

  ‘I clouded her mind,’ Jelindel said. ‘Made her think she’d seen a friend and that it was urgent she catch up with him.’

  ‘Thank White Quell you was with us, Jelli.’

  They continued on their way. Within a few minutes they stood in QeSu’s cramped bedchamber. She was small and dark-haired, with a friendly face and eyes that were bright and curious. She already knew their story and quickly admitted, in stilted Q’zaran, to a fascination with magic. Little of it was practised in the city of the ever-practical and machine-loving Farvenu.

  Jelindel promised to show her more magic, but right now they needed to know how Zimak fared and his exact location. QeSu became excited. She had news of her own.

  ‘He’s on the breakfast menu,’ she said.

  Daretor said, ‘Could I get a copy of that menu?’ When Jelindel sneered, he shrugged. ‘I’m as anxious about him as you, don’t worry.’

  ‘Ignore him, QeSu. Now. How do we get to Zimak?’

  The young woman looked at each of them in turn. ‘Then it’s tonight?’ she asked, a tremor in her voice. ‘We will journey to a new world tonight?’

  Jelindel took the girl’s hands in her own. She could feel them trembling. ‘Everything will be all right,’ Jelindel told her. ‘You will like Q’zar.’

  ‘There are none of them there?’

  ‘None.’

  That seemed to reassure her, and she went on to tell them all she knew about Zimak and where he was being kept. It became clear they would have to split up, with Jelindel and Hakat going after the machine. Jelindel explained to Daretor that, should the opportunity arise, she would force a Farvenu to tell her what Hadirr meant.