Orlind

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘I want one of those in our house,’ Tren told her.

  ‘If you’re good for the next hour or so. Llan, please keep with Tren. Ori too. Make sure he can reach one of you at all times. Pensould, you’re with me if you have no objection.’

  Llandry didn’t like being separated from Pensould, but Eva’s strategy was sound. Pensould was the strongest and could support Eva alone; Tren would do better with both Llandry and Ori to help him.

  ‘We’d better get out of this building,’ Ori said, eyeing the increasingly unstable floor with misgiving.

  ‘Seconded,’ Eva said. ‘Run!’

  They hastened for the greenhouse’s misted glass walls, and as they approached no less than three doors blossomed in the transparent surface.

  ‘That’s a waste,’ Eva said curtly as they passed through. ‘Pense, please keep in contact with the others in that draykon fashion you have. We’ll need to coordinate better.’

  Outside, a clinging fog had descended from the cloud bank overhead, obscuring the island. ‘Clear it or no?’ Tren asked.

  There was a difficult question. If they left it alone, they couldn’t see what was happening and therefore they couldn’t stop it. But if they did remove the fog, they would betray their presence to Krays and the advantage of surprise would be lost.

  ‘Leave it and use Rikbeek?’ Llandry suggested.

  ‘No good,’ Eva said. ‘I’d need an army of Rikbeeks to see enough of what’s going on, and besides I think the fog may interfere with him, too. Tren, can you handle invisibility on five people at once?’

  ‘If I have to,’ he said, ‘but it’ll take all my concentration.’

  ‘Then that’s your task, please. Keep it up as long as you can. If he can’t see us he can’t stop us.’

  ‘Right.’ Nobody spoke or moved for a few minutes while Tren worked his sorcerer magic upon them. ‘Done,’ he said at length.

  ‘Thank you. Drayks, get rid of the fog, please.’

  Llandry wondered briefly whether the task would be as simple as that sounded, fog being both all-pervasive and incorporeal. But it required only a light touch to send the fog streaming away. The indigo sky cleared, revealing faint stars, echoes of the two moons of the Lowers and a shadow of the Uppers sun all crowding the heavens.

  And other things. The fog had muffled sound as well as sight; once it was gone the distant buzz of machinery reached her ears and overhead soared the dark shapes of flyers. In shape and form - as far as she could see in the twilight - they differed from Irbel’s constructs, but the principle was the same. Fear clutched at her as she thought, perhaps they simply wished to destroy the Library after all. She waited, tense, for the sound of gunfire, but none came.

  Instead, as she looked at the plane a dark figure dropped from it and fell away towards the rock of the island. Something like a gathered sail blossomed over the figure’s head and the headlong fall slowed to a gentle descent.

  Once the newcomer was safe on the ground, the flyer began dropping a series of smaller objects at intervals, each one’s descent supported in the same way. That these were Krays’s energy collectors she didn’t doubt. And was that Krays himself, running to intercept each one as it reached the ground? He was fitting them together, working fast; with every new device that reached him the construct he was building grew larger.

  ‘We need to get in the way of that,’ Eva said calmly, her voice pitched low. ‘What can we do about that flying machine?’

  ‘There’s more than one,’ Llandry said, noticing another dark shape coming into view over the edge of the island.

  ‘Okay,’ Eva murmured. ‘If each machine is carrying several of those devices, we’d do best to destroy the flyers before they can drop too many of them. Tren, do you think you can maintain the invisibility if they shift to draykon form?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tren said, a note of desperation in the word.

  ‘Why don’t we each take care of our own visibility?’ Llandry suggested.

  Eva looked at her. ‘You can do that?’

  She nodded. ‘We experimented with it before. Though it might be hard to keep it up in this place.’

  ‘Compromise,’ Tren said. ‘Use the Cloak method. It’s a simpler matter of blending yourself into the darkness, and it’s just dark enough out here to pull it off.’ Tren explained the process, talking fast. ‘Pensould, try it first?’ he finished. ‘Tell me when you think you’ve got it.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ Pense said right away.

  Tren lifted his brows but didn’t argue. ‘All right, the invis is gone. How’s that looking?’

  Llandry could tell from Pense’s voice where he was in relation to herself. Staring at that spot, she could faintly see a hint of movement, but it was like the natural shift of shadows in the twilight. If she hadn’t been looking for him, she doubted she would have noticed anything.

  ‘Great,’ Tren said with relief. ‘Llan next.’

  It took her a few moments longer to get the hang of it, but once she grew comfortable with the process she found she could maintain it without wasting too much concentration on it.

  But while she’d been working at it, Pense had already shape-shifted and gone.

  ‘In the air, Llan, if you’re ready,’ Eva murmured. ‘Pensould went for the flyer to your left.’ Looking up and to the left Llan saw the machine she meant.

  ‘Going,’ she said. Shape-shifting while holding on to her Night Cloak was tricky, and in her haste she almost ruined it. But soon she was in her draykoni shape and still - she hoped - shrouded from sight.

  On my way, Pense, she told him, unnerved by the fact that she couldn’t see him.

  Hurry, he replied. The machine has dropped one device already and is readying a second. I will attack before it can release another.

  Llandry was happy to hurry, but she had another problem to deal with first. How could she safely fly in this topsy-turvy, inside-out space? Merely remaining upright on her two human feet was challenge enough. Remembering their flight in, she shivered. If she took off when she wasn’t ready, her confusion of mind would send her plummeting back to the ground in short order. Eterna was right: Orlind was particularly dangerous to draykoni.

  Rework the pattern, Minchu, Pensould told her urgently. As I have taught you. It is hard, but you are strong enough.

  Rework the pattern. It sounded so simple when he said it that way, but it wasn’t. She would have a difficult time unravelling the mess that was Orlind, before she could impose any semblance of order upon it. But needs must. She rushed to comply, reworking the fabric of the world around her, forcing it to confirm once more to ordinary rules of up and down, untangling the confused mess of Iskyr and Ayrien and Irtand until she stood in a little space that made sense. The pressure on her confused brain eased and she could stand without struggle.

  So far so good. Now she just had to accomplish that trick while flying, constantly reordering every piece of sky that she flew through to maintain the clarity that she needed to stay aloft. Panic gripped her at the very idea. It wasn’t a matter of strength alone; she would have to do about six things at the same time!

  She couldn’t delay any longer. Pensould needed her help, and every moment that she hesitated allowed Krays to proceed that much further with his plans. Steeling herself, she rose a few feet into the air, pushing her reordered pattern onto her surroundings as she did so.

  She quickly realised that she could hold that pattern in her mind and project it outwards with reasonable success. The effect was only a fleeting change; underneath the realm remained impossibly tangled and chaotic. But a brief alteration was all that she needed as she sailed through. Calming herself with a deeply indrawn breath, she fixed the pattern in her thoughts and steadied herself. She could do this.

  Minchu!

  Llandry flew hard to catch up with Pensould. She wobbled a little halfway along, when her concentration slipped for an instant and panic rushed back in. But she caught herself and flew on.

  Go for the wings
, Pensould said as she neared the machine he was preparing to attack. I’ll take the one on the left, you the right.

  Whose right?

  The machine’s right, when it’s facing forward.

  All right. Llandry got into position near the assigned wing.

  Do it now! came Pensould’s cry.

  Llandry dived at the flying machine’s fragile-looking wing, prepared for it to be stronger than it looked. The machine was only half her size, but it was fast and she couldn’t tell what defences it might have.

  She thought about trying to tear off the wing, but it was made from a sleek metal that she guessed would be hard to grip with her smooth talons. So she settled for crashing into the protrusion from directly above, allowing her full weight to collide with it. A satisfying splintering sound resulted and the wing dipped low, half torn off.

  The flyer began to fall and she spun away, checking to make sure her Cloak was still intact. Pensould was still invisible, but she could see that he’d made short work of the flyer’s other wing. The machine dropped, spinning, and crashed into the rock below. Smoke billowed up, obscuring her view of the wreck.

  Not enough altitude! came Pensould’s voice. That will not be enough to destroy all the devices as well as the machine. I’m going for them.

  Llan would have helped, but that would be dangerous when she couldn’t see him; they might collide. So she hung back, watching in fascination as a bundle of the cloth-wrapped devices rose into the air apparently of their own accord. They floated high, higher still, until they were further up than the flying machine had been. Then Pense released them and they went plummeting back down.

  The noise of impact was terrific. Staring down at the twisted mess of machinery scattered across the rock, Llan doubted that it would be possible to reassemble those constructs.

  Looking around for Krays, she saw ... nothing. A quick circuit around the island confirmed her fears: he wasn’t here. That meant one of two possibilities. He may have already gone into the Library, in which case she couldn’t guess what might happen next. Or he had realised he was dealing with a Cloaked enemy, and had used his stolen draykon magics to conceal himself in the same way. Could he do that? Were his new abilities that strong?

  She didn’t know, but that would be bad news indeed. If their invisibility protected them from harm, Krays’s also shielded him from their interference. They wouldn’t even know what he was doing, let alone find an opportunity to interfere with him.

  She relayed this to Pensould, hoping he had seen something of Krays. He had not.

  Keep at the flyers, she told him. I’m going to talk with Eva.

  She flew as silently as she could back to the place they had left Eva and Tren, and shifted back to human form. ‘Eva,’ she hissed.

  No answer.

  ‘Eva? Tren?’

  Wandering in circles revealed no sign of them. And what of Ori? She hadn’t heard from him since she and Pensould had gone after the flyer. Was he with Eva?

  Ori!

  She sent the cry as far as she could, hoping he would hear her, wherever he had gone. When no answer came, she called a second time, still more urgently.

  Stop shrieking like that, Llan, Ori replied at last, sounding irritable. Krays Cloaked and we are after him. Eva says you and Pensould should carry on with the flyers.

  All right, but-

  Can’t talk more, sorry! Just keep intercepting those devices!

  Llandry sighed, but she let him go. She would have to trust that the three of them could handle Krays, and that she and Pense could handle the flying machines between them.

  More machines, Pensould reported. And they are firing. Needing help, Minchu.

  With a start, she recognised the harsh staccato sounds she was hearing as gunfire. The flyers had realised they were under attack from an airborne enemy, then, and were defending themselves. Her task was only getting harder. But if this was to be her contribution to the fight, she would give it everything she had.

  Coming to you, she told Pensould and donned her draykon form once more. Securing her Cloak, she leapt into the air.

  ***

  Eva had almost followed Llandry’s example and left her animal companion behind. But while Sigwide was fragile, easily hurt and unlikely to contribute much to their task, Rikbeek was another matter.

  Now she was relieved that she had brought him along.

  It was Tren who had first realised that Krays might conceal himself. They had had no confirmation that Krays’s attempts to usurp draykon magic had succeeded, but if they had, Tren pointed out, he would be quick to follow their example and adopt some form of invisibility.

  Tren had been right. As the first flying machine came crashing down, Eva had kept her eyes on the dark figure working feverishly on the ground. He had looked up at the sound of the crash... and then vanished.

  Ori was preparing to assist Llandry and Pensould, but she stopped him. ‘Stay with us, Ori. We may need you in a minute.’ Inwardly she was cursing herself for not anticipating this. Her strategy was already in tatters; instead of Pensould, who was strong and capable of acting alone, they had only Ori by himself. He was strong, too, but he was also the least experienced of the three draykoni. He’d had little time to accustom himself to his abilities. If it came to a face-to-face battle with Krays, would he be able to hold his own?

  Well, it was too late to fix the situation. Pensould was urgently busy. If she tried to swap him and Ori now, the flying machines would be dropping more devices while the pressure eased on them and Krays would be quick to take advantage of that. She would have to have faith in Ori.

  She woke Rikbeek and tossed him into the air. Fortunately for her he had already seen Krays more than once; it was a simple matter to place the Lokantor’s image in her gwaystrel’s mind and send him out in the direction she had last seen her enemy. For once, Rikbeek did not protest. Perhaps he sensed her urgency.

  To her relief, he located Krays within a few minutes and launched himself in pursuit. Locking part of her mind to her companion’s, Eva was able to follow his movements even without being able to see him in the twilight.

  That reminded her. ‘Tren, could you get a Cloak on Rikbeek?’ she whispered.

  ‘I can’t see him.’

  Cursing inwardly, she called Rikbeek back long enough for Tren to bind an invisibility enchantment on him. Then she sent the gwaystrel streaking away again, waiting only until he’d settled himself in pursuit of the Lokantor.

  ‘Ori,’ she said. ‘Please take my left hand and Tren’s right. Don’t let go of us, no matter what happens!’

  ‘Right,’ he whispered back, and a moment later his smooth young fingers clutched hers. Ori was her substitute for draykon bone; his flesh contained the same vitality, was composed of the same amasku-drenched matter. As long as she kept a link with him, her own, weaker draykon powers would be amplified.

  She just hoped that the three of them would be a match for Krays.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Tren murmured in her ear.

  ‘Still working at the construct,’ she replied. ‘No movement yet.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we attack him now, before he’s got time to do any more damage?’

  She bit her lip. ‘I’m not sure. We’re still working off speculation, and I want to be sure we haven’t misunderstood something.’

  ‘Would it matter? Krays is the problem; remove him and whatever he’s doing goes away.’

  She sighed. ‘In theory, but we don’t know who is helping him, if anyone. It doesn’t seem that he has any assistance on the ground, but someone is flying those machines. And... to tell the truth, I’m worried about Limbane’s part in all of this. I don’t want to remove Krays only to clear the way for Limbane to do exactly the same thing in his stead.’

  She wondered, then, what had become of Galywis. She’d have given much to be able to consult with him at that moment. Wherever he was, she hoped he was both safe and doing something helpful.

  Ori’s grip suddenl
y tightened on her hand. ‘He’s activated something,’ he muttered. ‘Those things are functional.’

  ‘What? But more than half of the components were destroyed.’

  Ori shrugged. ‘Apparently he’s got enough to do something.’ He drew in a laboured breath and Eva felt him beginning to tremble. ‘I do wish he wouldn’t shake things up like this,’ he said lightly. ‘It’s so unpleasant.’

  Eva felt it too, a pulsing thrum of energy that shot through her body, setting her bones humming. The effect on her mind was even worse; all the dizzying confusion that she fought so hard to subdue came rushing back and for a moment she forgot who or what or where she was.

  The effect receded a short time later. She came back to herself to discover she was lying flat on the ground. Mercifully she had not lost Tren and Ori; reaching out her hands revealed them both lying on either side of her.

  They were also visible.

  ‘Tren,’ she gasped, shaking him. ‘The Cloak’s gone.’

  He didn’t have time to reply, for another wave of coruscating energy battered them anew, and Eva’s mind spun off again. This time she gritted her teeth and fought it back, struggling shakily to her feet.

  ‘We can’t keep this up,’ she muttered. ‘Forget what I said before. We need to make an end to this, and soon.’

  ‘Right,’ Tren said, back on his feet but swaying alarmingly. He helped Ori up, then the three of them resumed their former arrangement with Ori in the middle.

  Eva shut her eyes for a moment, holding tight to Ori’s hand to keep herself upright. Searching for Rikbeek, she sensed him about fifty feet away, still in pursuit of Krays. The Lokantor was moving now, though with no particular speed. What was he doing?

  ‘After him,’ Eva said. ‘This way.’ She set off in Rikbeek’s direction, grateful that she didn’t have to run. The disturbances came in regular bursts now, each one threatening to hurl them all back into head-spinning confusion. Their pace was necessarily slow as they closed on Krays.