Abruptly the flight was over. Devary's cloud-coloured dream-beast swooped to the ground and opened its talons, letting him settle into the engulfing embrace of Glinnery's thick blue mosses. Its mouth opened, revealing long, pearlescent teeth; it emitted an ear-splitting shriek as it hurled itself back into the sky. Devary blinked, mistrusting his vision. The beast had vanished into the air, its pursuer disappearing along with it.
Doors were flung open and the sky filled rapidly with winged human figures, chattering in shock and excitement. Devary realised that he had been deposited at the base of Ynara's tree, and here was the lady herself, descending from the heights with her glorious dark blue wings spread wide.
'Oh, Dev,' she gasped, dropping to her knees beside him. She paled to a stark white, looking into his face with the wide eyes of fear. He wondered idly how bad his wounds were. He became aware, distantly, of a warm body clinging painfully to one of his legs. Glancing down, he saw grey fur and a stub of a tail. Ynara prised Sigwide off him, and the pressure eased on Devary's calf and shin.
Aysun came up behind her and frowned down at him. Devary tried a weak smile, but his face wouldn't work properly.
'Right,' said Aysun, slowly. 'Lucky the infirmary's not far.' Devary was suddenly surrounded by people, faces bobbing blearily at him and voices raised in a babble of indistinguishable sound. He felt himself lifted again, and pain radiated outwards from the wound in his belly.
'Dev,' said Ynara's voice from somewhere. 'Where's Llandry?'
He tried to answer, but the sky fell in on him and he dropped into darkness.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Nobody moved for a long time after the draykons had flown away. Ana was slumped over Griel's body, as motionless as he. Tren had the vacant look of a man whose world has suddenly inverted itself. As indeed it had. The whurthags had vanished, and a profound silence reigned in the forest that was slowly reverting back to Ana's stone-built chamber.
Eva felt stupefied. It seemed impossible to equate the day's events with anything that ought to be possible within the laws of nature and magic. No matter how hard she pushed her shocked brain, the edges refused to match up. At length she stopped trying. She stood up slowly, careful of her spinning head, and took a few deep breaths. The questions she placed to one side, to be examined later. A more pressing problem was Ana and Griel, if he was even still alive.
Ana looked up as she approached. Her face was initially blank, but when she registered Eva's identity her expression grew harsh.
'I suppose you've come to be kind to me.' She was a mess, her hands and hair stained with blood and her clothes torn. She wore it with a kind of incongruous insouciance, her air defiant rather than crippled. For the first time, Eva truly saw how dangerous she was.
'I was more inclined to arrest you.'
Ana laughed, a high-pitched sound with an edge of hysteria. 'You?'
'Mr. Warvel, actually, as the nearest representative of the Chief Investigator's Office.'
Tren came up next to her and stood looking down at the wreck of a sorceress. 'You're under arrest,' he said gravely. 'Anything to say?'
Ana snarled something inarticulate. She grabbed Griel's body, dragging it close to her own. Then she disappeared.
'Inevitable, I suppose,' Tren murmured.
'Perfectly,' agreed Eva. 'I really must learn how she does that,' she added.
'Add it to the list of mysteries.'
'There's already enough there to keep us busy for a couple of decades, I should think.'
'Then it's lucky that we're young and bursting with energy.'
Eva laughed faintly. 'Speak for yourself.'
Tren grinned lopsidedly. 'I don't think I was, even. I feel at least one hundred and fifty.' He rolled his shoulders, grimacing as joints cracked and popped. 'So... what just happened?'
'Why are you asking?'
'Because if I wasn't dreaming, a girl just appeared out of thin air, transformed into a draykon and flew away. It seemed significant.'
'I mean. Why are you asking me?'
Tren smiled tiredly. 'I view you as a fount of knowledge, that's why. If you're as confused as me, that's fine. You can just say that.'
'I have some theories, but I wouldn't like to hazard anything without conducting some research.'
'Admit it. You have no idea.'
Eva grimaced. 'Fine. I'm a useless scholar and I have no notion what in the world is going on.'
'Good. Well said.'
'We can work on that later. The important point is that we have two draykons on the loose. One of them was a bag of bones until today, and the other used to be a human. That's the kind of thing that ought to be reported pretty quickly.'
Searching for traces of her companions, Eva found the shortig cowering beneath a small table that was tucked into one corner of the room. Now that it was empty, the chamber seemed vaster than ever. Her footsteps rang sharply as she crossed the stone floor, the sound echoing off the bare walls. She coaxed the shortig out from his retreat, handing the small, shaking body to Tren.
'Keep a hold of him for a moment, if you will,' she murmured, her thoughts already seeking for Rikbeek. She was distantly aware of Tren's nod as he folded his arms around the little dog, stroking the fur that virtually stood on end with stress.
Rikbeek, predictably, had flown as far away as he could get. He was plastered to the wall near the ceiling, virtually insensible with fright. It took her much longer to soothe him. At last he unsealed himself from the wall and flew down, making straight for her skirts. He hid himself in the folds and refused to move. That was fine with her.
'It's a pity we've lost the book,' she said regretfully.
'Actually, it's not lost. I hid it. I'll take you to it in a moment, but we should search this place before we leave. There might be more books like that one.'
'Good thinking,' she said, flashing Tren an appreciative smile. 'Fortunate that one of us is still in possession of his mental faculties.' To her surprise Tren flushed slightly and looked away. He set off towards the far door, the one that lead back towards Eva's erstwhile prison.
The search was conducted thoroughly, but with the swiftness of weary people anxious to be gone. Many of the books Eva found were copies of common texts, duplicates of many that she herself possessed at home. She found one exception, a half-finished work entitled 'Advanced Workings of the Sorcerous Mind.' No author was listed. Eva discovered it lying open in a tiny antechamber furnished only with a desk and chair. The book lay open, surrounded by pens and pots of ink. This and its unfinished state strongly suggested to Eva that Griel was its author. She took it.
Tren had stumbled over what appeared to be Ana's library. In it were all the core texts on Summoning that Eva had been familiar with for years, along with a few she'd never heard of.
'We'd better take all of those,' Tren murmured, flicking through a small leather-bound volume. 'This one's a novel. I suppose Ana got bored sometimes.' He tossed the book back onto the shelf. 'There's nothing else very interesting here.'
Eva nodded and picked up two of the unusual texts. Naturally they were enormous and staggeringly heavy. She made a pile out of them, adding Griel's book to the top of the stack, and collected them all into her arms.
'Let me,' said Tren. He was already carrying three others that looked at least as heavy, but he insisted on taking Griel's book off her and adding it to his own stack. 'I'm sure we can find a bag or something to carry them in.'
They couldn't, as it turned out. In the end Eva took off the remains of her cloak and fashioned a makeshift one. She watched with misgivings as Tren stubbornly piled all the books into it and hefted it, throwing it over his shoulder.
'It's fine,' he said as she tried to object. She rolled her eyes at this display of machismo but she let him have his way.
'Where's the other book?' she asked. He nodded his head in the direction of the draykon chamber.
'Back that way. I left it in the tunnel.'
'The tunnel?'
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He nodded, setting off at a brisk pace. She followed, trying not to wince at the obvious discomfort of the bundle of books on his back. The tunnel proved to be a long corridor only just tall enough for a six-foot-something man to walk comfortably through. It was paved in stone like the rest of the house. Tren paused at the end of it, searching the darkened stonework with keen eyes. Then he dropped to his knees and slid his fingers under the edge of a protruding stone, lifting it. In a hollow beneath the stone lay her satchel and Tren's. She was relieved to find that the book was still inside, unharmed.
'How convenient a hiding place,' she observed.
'Thank you,' said Tren modestly. 'Actually I made it. I didn't have time to be precise about it or I'd have lost sight of Griel.'
Eva chuckled. 'You're an adept student. What of the door?'
Tren stood up again and tugged at the wall over his head. A door opened, illuminating a set of steps that wound upwards into the open air. She followed Tren as he climbed up them, his steps heavy with tiredness. Bartel, somewhat recovered, trotted listlessly at her heels as she emerged into a white sandy landscape.
Tren closed the door behind them. There was the arrow and the smiling face that he’d described. 'How curious,' she said, confounded.
'I thought I was being so stealthy, following Griel like that. I'm convinced now that he knew I was there. He even found an excuse to pause briefly if I fell behind, to make sure I didn't go through the wrong door. I don't see why he didn't just kill me in the tunnel, if he was going to lure me down here.'
Eva thought fast. 'Odd, but I got the impression he didn't share his wife's fervour for her "project". He probably realised it was headed for disaster. Perhaps he hoped we could tip the scales in her favour.'
Tren shrugged. 'A rational possibility. I suppose we won't ever find out for sure.'
The light changed as he spoke, the moon turning to an unpromising shade of greenish brown. Abandoning her train of thought, Eva looked up into skies that were partially covered with fat clouds threatening rain.
'Why do I get the feeling things are about to turn unpleasant,' she muttered.
Moments later, the white sand was gone. In its place a marsh had emerged, saturated with stagnant water and stinking of decay.
'Ah, yes,' Eva sighed. 'Perfect.'
Epilogue
Ynara frowned down at Devary's prone form, absently smoothing the blankets over him. He had been delirious for two days, obviously hallucinating. She hadn't been able to gain a clear picture of what had happened to him and Llandry, despite her repeated questioning. He rambled incoherently about scaled beasts and wings like sails; the word 'draykon' even passed his lips at one point. Ynara thought briefly of the terrific, bestial shriek that had sent her and her husband racing down from their treetop abode to find Devary unconscious at the bottom. An unusual sound it had undoubtedly been, but Ynara did not credit Devary's ramblings. Gracious, the woods were already thick with the sorts of creatures long since banished to the pages of storybooks. Any number of strange, unidentifiable sounds resounded through the trees from the moment the sun rose through to the softest of the dusk hours. Some one or other of those had undoubtedly made that shuddering cry.
Doubt flickered through her for a moment, undermining her certainty. So many supposedly extinct or non-existent beasts had lately emerged, stepping through the gates that still opened and closed themselves with unusual frequency across the Seven Realms. If the muumuk, the whurthag and the gloereme were as real as she, why not the king of them all? Why not draykons, indeed? The thought made her heart beat hard and quick with fear, and she pushed it resolutely away. She had not seen this supposed draykon, and she had been out of her house within moments of hearing that cry. Neither had any of the other bystanders present. The prospect of their simply failing to spot something so enormous was absurd. She took a deep breath, feeling better.
Devary's eyes opened. He had been sleeping peacefully for more than two hours now, and she hoped that the delirium had passed. She bent over him, adopting a reassuring smile.
'Hello, Dev,' she said quietly. 'You're looking a little better. Not so grey in the face. How do you feel?'
'Abominable.' He looked at her quite gravely, no smile tugging at his full mouth or lurking in his eyes. A premonition of disaster tugged at her, Llandry's name hovering on her lips.
'Oh?' she said lightly, smiling. 'The healers dealt very smartly with you. They said you'll be well enough to get up in a few days, if you're good.'
Devary's gaze slid away from hers. Detecting guilt foremost among the misery of his attitude, Ynara gripped his hand hard, forcing him to look back into her face.
'Dev. You must tell me. What happened to Llandry?'
He turned red first, then paled abruptly. 'She got away. I think.'
'You think?'
'I... yes. We were on our way back to you. We stopped for a few hours on the southern edge of the forest. We were attacked. Ynara, some of them were from Glinnery.'
She could have shaken him, injured or not. 'Never mind that, Dev. Tell me about Llandry!'
Dev hurried on, painting a horrifying picture of the fight under the glissenwol caps and Llandry's escape. Her stomach clenched with fear when he spoke of the two winged men who had followed her into the skies.
'That was the last I saw of her,' he finished. 'After that, I lost the fight. I woke up back over the border in Nimdre, with someone standing over me. Not one of the original attackers. Tall man, grey hair, obviously a sorc. Pair of whurthags at his heels.' His words were growing faint with the effort to speak, but she didn't care. She levelled her coldest stare at him and waited.
'He found the pendant and took it off me. Disappeared. All of them did, left me there. I must've passed out after that.' He subsided into silence, struggling a little to breathe. Ynara felt torn between sympathy and a fierce desire to kill him herself.
'Dev, this can't be right. If you were left in Nimdre, how did you get to my tree?'
Devary repeated much of the same nonsense he'd talked in his delirium. She shook her head impatiently. 'A draykon came out of the skies and carried you back to my house? That's absurd, Dev, you must see that. What really happened?'
He looked at her helplessly. 'I swear, Ynara, every word I've spoken is the truth.'
She stood up, disgusted with him. 'Get some sleep.' She left the room without looking back.
She found Aysun bent over his work table. Since Devary's return he had been closeted in here hour after hour, working constantly at a complex device whose function she didn't begin to understand. That was all right. She had long since stopped trying to grasp the intricacies of her husband's inventions; it was enough that they satisfied and exhilarated him.
Set into the top of this contraption was a ring matching one that Llandry wore. He had given her that ring when she was five years old, and she never took it off, but neither she nor Ynara had ever realised that it was more than a trinket. Aysun had recently told her, rather tersely, that this ring was a twin to Llandry's and would be instrumental in finding her - as long as she was still wearing her own ring. Ynara hoped fervently that she hadn't lost it.
She slid her arms around his waist and hugged him from behind. He paused to pat her hands, but he didn't turn around. She realised, with a growing sense of trepidation, that something was different about him. Each time she had entered this room she had found him bent intently over his machine, working at a feverish pace. It had been frustrating him because it ought to have pinpointed Llandry's vicinity within an hour or two, but it had given him nothing. She recognised his relentless attitude as born of fear: fear that Llandry had lost her ring, fear that the machine was malfunctioning. Fear that he would fail in finding her.
Now his feverish energy had drained away. He was leaning on the table, braced on his two large hands, his head bowed. She released him and turned him gently to face her.
'Aysun?' She searched his face uncertainly. His expression was closed, unrespons
ive. 'Did you find her?'
'Not exactly.' He spoke with difficulty, his jaws fiercely clenched. 'I think I know why it won't show me her location.'
'Oh?' Ynara tried to keep her voice light, but it was hard. She had never seen him like this before.
'The machine cannot find her because she is no longer within its range.'
'You mean... she's dead?'
'That, or she has gone off-world.'
Ynara blanched. She knew that, to him, off-world was as good as dead. Ever since his father had stepped through to the Uppers long years ago, and never come back.
'Llandry... she wouldn't do that, Aysun. She must remember what you've always told her about the dangers up there. Perhaps the machine...' She trailed off helplessly. Aysun wouldn't want to believe it either. If he would rather believe Llandry to be off-world than that his machine was at fault, he must have sound reason.
'She may not have done so deliberately. Possibly she was taken up there by someone else.' He looked down at her. At last the iron in his face softened and he gave her a look of love. 'I'm going after her, Ynara.'
Ynara knew what a concession this was for him. He had always refused to have anything to do with the Upper Realms. He hated his wife's sorcerous abilities, and she had exercised caution in displaying them around him. She had not gone back to the Uppers after her one visit there, because it had caused him such intense fear she hadn't the heart. And he had prevented Llandry's joining the summoner guild, knowing that the profession would periodically carry her off-world. His dread of it was too wholly understandable, and her heart contracted with love at his courage.
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