‘You’re in the catacombs of the Khvech Daas. This used to be the fortress of the Ashuak Khvechevik, the dragon priests, until it was destroyed.’
‘We’re under the rubble?’ she queried.
‘That is one way to describe it,’ he said. ‘I presume the city is still dead.’
‘Apart from the rabbits,’ Meg remarked. ‘How do you get in and out of here?’
‘I don’t,’ he replied.
His answer made no sense to her. Then she recalled A Ahmud Ki’s fate, bound by his enemy to the dragon statue in Se’Treya. ‘Are you being held prisoner?’
‘No.’ Erin ran his hand through his hair and looked down at Whisper. ‘I thought she would never come back.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Meg. ‘You’ve seen Whisper before?’
He chuckled to himself. ‘Oh, yes. I missed her when she left. I thought I’d never see her again.’
Meg stared at the sleeping bush rat and then at Erin. Nothing was making sense. ‘How long ago did you last see her?’ she asked tentatively.
He turned to her and rubbed his chin with his forefinger. ‘A long time ago. I don’t keep track of time any more. I tried, but it got tedious. It has to be at least three hundred years.’ Meg blinked. Three hundred years? she contemplated. She knew that Whisper was old, unnaturally old for an animal, having received her as a gift from Samuel Kushel when she was fifteen, but for the bush rat to have lived for three centuries? ‘You’re surprised, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘I—it’s just, well, I know she’s unusual—’
‘Magical,’ Erin interjected. ‘She’s a magical construct. I made her.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, staring at Whisper.
‘My sister, Caetlyn—I told you that she died. She was murdered, by a man whom she refused to marry. Caetlyn was very gifted. She couldn’t speak aloud, but she could use mindspeak. She became the object of an Ukesu warrior’s love, but he couldn’t understand that she didn’t love him so he speared her out of spite. Friends brought her to me to save her life, but she was already dead. I tried to bring her back—’ He choked and paused to catch his breath. ‘I nearly lost myself in the shadows of death,’ he continued, ‘but I retrieved a spark of her and I put that spark inside the only living creature I had in these catacombs. A rat.’
‘Whisper is your sister?’
Erin looked at Meg, his dark eyes brimming with tears, and he laughed, a response that startled her. ‘It’s true. My sister is a rat,’ he said, and laughed again. When he saw Meg wasn’t laughing with him, he said, ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she answered.
‘You probably think I’m mad or cruel for putting my sister’s essence, her being, inside a rat.’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ she said, caught in confusion and uncertainty of Erin’s mood.
‘I loved Caetlyn. I didn’t want to lose her. Megen had already gone. I didn’t want to be alone,’ he explained. ‘What would you have done?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know.’
Erin turned to the chair and lifted the sleepy rat, cradling her in his arms. ‘That’s why she’s telepathic.’ He rolled her over and spread apart the fur on the underside of her neck. ‘You never found this, did you?’ Meg squinted, but all she could see was purple skin beneath the black fur. She shook her head. ‘No. It’s not easy to see if you don’t know it’s there,’ said Erin. ‘I buried a tiny sliver of amber under her skin. It sustains her. That’s why she’s so old and still alive. She carries a tiny piece of the Genesis Stone.’
Meg’s eyes widened as a host of things she never quite understood about Whisper’s uncanny abilities suddenly snapped into clarity—why Whisper was never injured in a fracas, how she was able to appear and disappear at crucial moments, why she could communicate, why she never aged. Whisper carried the amber too. Annoyed at the unwanted attention, the rat wriggled out of Erin’s grasp and jumped effortlessly to the floor. She sniffed Meg’s boots before she scampered out of the room.
A thousand questions spiralled through Meg’s mind, each begging to be answered, but the one that came first was, ‘So why did she end up with my great-uncle Samuel?’
‘I don’t know your great-uncle, but I’m guessing that my other sister, Megen, was your ancestor, related somewhere in your family tree.’
‘Why is that important?’
‘The amber,’ Erin said. ‘It all has to do with the amber.’
‘I can’t find her anywhere,’ said Chase as he met Wahim at the centre of the rubble. The rising sun’s rays were gilding the tree canopies and the ruin echoed to a cacophony of bird song.
‘Perhaps she’s gone into the city?’ Wahim suggested. ‘Without telling us? Why would she do that?’ Wahim shook his head. He looked up and saw Swift approaching from the south-east corner of the ruin. ‘Anything?’
‘Nothing,’ Swift said. ‘No tracks, not even into the tunnel we came through.’
‘She can’t just have vanished?’ Chase argued.
‘Oh yes she can,’ Swift retorted. ‘First her rat disappeared yesterday, and now she disappears overnight.’ She swore and squatted on her haunches.
‘We can’t have missed anything,’ said Wahim. ‘We’ve searched everywhere.’
‘Three times,’ said Chase. ‘I vote we go into the city. She has to be there.’
‘What if she really has used her magic to leave us here?’ Swift asked.
‘I don’t see the sense in that,’ Wahim argued. ‘What reason would she have?’
Swift shrugged. ‘The old woman is strange at any time. Who knows her reasons?’
‘So what will we do?’ asked Chase.
‘We wait,’ Swift replied and swore.
‘Let’s catch some rabbits while we’re waiting,’ Wahim suggested. ‘I could eat some cooked meat.’
‘I sailed with Julian Kushel for a year,’ Erin explained as he led Meg along a short stone passage, a light sphere floating above them. ‘His grandfather was Sardek Kushel, a famous sea captain in Ashuak and Jaru history. My sister sailed with Julian Kushel after she left here, so I was told, and loved him for at least long enough to have a son to him. Then she went her own way again. I never heard anything else about her, but if your name is Kushel, as you say, then that would explain why Whisper has come to you. You have one of the surviving shards of amber that Alwyn took from the last Dragonkin. Megen left it with her son.’ He finished as they entered an octagonal room with openings in every wall. ‘Welcome to the stored knowledge of the known world up until the collapse of the Ashuak Empire, and some beyond then that I collected,’ he announced, and the sphere brightened as it reached the ceiling. ‘Where do you want to go? Sekesu?’ He pointed to one opening. ‘Chekisu, perhaps,’ and he indicated another opening.
‘What’s through the openings?’ Meg asked.
‘Books,’ he said. ‘The oldest libraries, collected from the first writings on stone to the paper collections the Western Shess kings began to accumulate. If it was written down somewhere in the world, a copy of it will be stored down here.’
‘You said I have one of the surviving shards of amber,’ Meg stated. ‘How many others are there?’
Erin looked at her as if he was assessing her intention, before he replied, ‘Just me.’
‘You?’
He touched his chest. ‘I’m the only other amber shard. That’s why Whisper followed you. She was charged to protect the second shard, the one Megen took with her. Wherever that shard was passed, Whisper was to protect it, or retrieve it if it was stolen or lost.’
Meg considered the choice of openings. ‘Does one of these lead to Andrak?’
Erin shook his head. ‘Not Andrak. Perhaps you mean Andrakis?’
‘That was its old name.’
‘This way,’ Erin gestured, and he directed her along a short corridor into another octagonal room, one much larger than the initial chamber, its walls f
illed from floor to ceiling with shelves of books and parchments. A table and two chairs sat in the centre of the room on a floor that was etched with a map. Using her amber to translate the names, Meg gazed at the outlines of the old Andrakian, Ranu, Targan, Uz Erhaagian and Androsian kingdoms. ‘Nations change over time,’ Erin said, crossing the room to the table. ‘The map was drawn from an ancient parchment.’ He sat and crossed his legs, and asked, ‘Why did you choose this library?’
‘I lived in Andrak for a while,’ she explained. ‘Just curious.’
‘I don’t have guests,’ he said. ‘You’re my first visitor since I sealed myself in here. I haven’t got food or drink anywhere for you.’
‘You sealed yourself in? Why?’
‘I made a decision that was mine to make,’ he said, but she heard a defensive tone that made her curious.
‘What decision was that?’ she asked.
‘You had a reason for coming here,’ he replied, avoiding her question. ‘What is it?’
Tempted as she was to pursue her question, she sensed that it was a taboo matter. Instead, she said, ‘What do you know about the Demon Horsemen?’
All three started at the echoing report of a thundermaker and Swift rose, drawing her knife and staring to the south. ‘Surely the Kerwyn haven’t followed us all this way?’ Chase muttered. Another shot echoed through the city.
‘Did we see any thundermakers in the Ashuak towns we passed through?’ Swift asked.
‘I wasn’t looking for them,’ said Chase. ‘Were you?’
Swift glared at him. ‘We should be safe in here,’ Wahim suggested. ‘If they do come, we can easily defend the tunnel.’
‘With what?’ asked Swift sarcastically. ‘One knife? You might be able to brawl, Wahim, but a thundermaker will just put a hole through you. And you, half-brother…’ She left her statement deliberately unfinished for effect.
Wahim and Chase looked at her sheepishly. A third shot resounded in the distance. ‘What if they’re shooting at Meg?’ Chase suddenly considered.
‘You two stay here,’ said Swift. ‘I’ll go and see what’s going on.’
‘And we’ll do what?’ asked Chase.
‘You’ll wait,’ said Swift, fixing him with a cool stare.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Swift eased onto her stomach on a flat slab between two walls on the second floor of a ruined building and waited. A small, long-legged yellow-banded spider crept from a crack in the slab and she watched it wander towards her arm. Nice timing, she mused, irritated. As the spider made an exploratory touch, three men appeared in her field of vision, sauntering along a street in the late afternoon sunlight. One carried a weapon that looked like a thundermaker, but it was a model or type unfamiliar to her. The other two carried bags. All three wore baggy pants and shirts. Not soldiers, she observed thankfully. She gently eased her arm away from the curious spider, silently willing it to go about its business elsewhere so that she could observe the men without a distraction. The men stopped twenty paces from where she was secreted. The weapon bearer raised his thundermaker, took aim and fired. His friends patted him on the back and one trotted into the ruins, returning with a rabbit, which he held up for his colleagues’ approval before stuffing it into his bag. The thundermaker owner reloaded his weapon and the rabbit hunters resumed their stroll through the ruins.
Swift waited until the men were well gone before she climbed out of her eyrie and circled back towards the Khvech Daas ruin.
The rabbit hunters were a nuisance, but she was glad that they were not Kerwyn soldiers and she knew her friends would be grateful to learn her news. She was puzzled and annoyed by Meg’s overnight disappearance, however, especially because the old woman hadn’t told them where she was going and because almost a day had passed without her return. People like that could not be trusted.
She stopped beside a pile of rubble and leaned against the remnant of a wall, checking first for movement in the nearby ruins, and when she was certain she was alone, she sank to the ground despondently. What is wrong with me? she wondered, feeling the pangs of depression seeping through her body. ‘I want to go home,’ she muttered. She reflected on her outburst at Meg the previous day. I never get angry like that, she thought. Killer Dagger warned me to push aside my emotions and I always have.
You didn’t when you spared Ella, an inner voice argued.
I don’t kill innocents, she replied.
Dagger would tell you there’s no such thing in this world.
Dagger is dead.
She rested her head in her hands and cleared her mind of the argument. The thundermaker echoed across the city. I have to change what I do, she reasoned. Runner is wild. Jewel I can still save. First, I have to get home.
He carried a new pile of books from the shelves and put them on the desk before her. ‘How much do you want to know about the Demon Horsemen?’
‘Have you read all these books?’ Meg asked, looking up from an old Andrakian text.
Erin laughed. ‘I’ve been here for three hundred years with nothing else to do. You know how quickly we can read with the amber. I’ve read some of these books four times.’
‘Then which book should I read first? This one is just a historical account of the Dragonlord Wars.’
‘What are you trying to find out?’ he asked.
‘How to stop someone releasing the Demon Horsemen from Se’Treya.’
‘Ah, Se’Treya. I’ve read about it.’
‘I’ve been there,’ she said.
His eyes widened. ‘How?’
‘Using the amber,’ she replied. ‘Just like entering here.’
‘But how did you know what it looked like? You need a clear image of the place before you can go.’
‘A Ahmud Ki showed me in a dream.’
‘A Ahmud Ki? I know that name. Andrakis. He was involved in the Dragon Wars or something like that. He was an evil man, hungry for power.’ Erin headed for the shelves and returned carrying a thick leather-bound volume. ‘This is the chronicle of King Dylan, written by—’ He paused to scan the flyleaf. ‘It’s titled The New History of Andrakis and it was written by Jana Drycraefter. It has a lot of detail about A Ahmud Ki.’ He placed the book on top of the others on the table.
‘He wrote his own books,’ Meg said. ‘I read them in the Royal Shess library.’
‘There are copies here,’ Erin told her, turning to retrieve them.
‘No, leave them,’ she urged, finding the young man’s eagerness to fetch books annoyingly obsessive. ‘I’m interested in something in particular, but I’m not sure what it is.’
‘That’s a conundrum,’ he remarked. ‘Describe it.’
She described the canvas bag that she had originally found in the Royal museum and that the Seers were seeking, and as she finished she saw intense fascination spread across Erin’s face.
‘I know what it is!’ he declared. ‘At least, I think I know. Read this.’ He lifted The New History of Andrakis from the pile onto the tabletop, flipped it open and skimmed through a host of pages. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Read this part.’ He left the table and headed out of the room, saying, ‘There’s another volume worth reading as well. I’ll get it while you read that part.’
Meg let Erin depart before she settled to translating the page. She wrapped her hand around her amber crystal and focussed on the elegant writing.
Because Abreotan’s broken sword represented the war-riddled past for King Dylan and contained the terrible magic of the imprisoned Dragonlords, he called upon the Aelendyell Ieldran to lock it away so that no one could use it again. Furthermore, it was his wish that the hilt be locked in a nondescript canvas bag, so that he could store it in an undisclosed location and the bag would never attract attention as being of any worth. The Ieldran agreed. They combined their magic to weave a powerful spell on both the lock and the canvas so that no one could break open the lock or cut into the bag. Satisfied that the hilt was safe, King Dylan hid it in a place that only he kne
w, and the sword of Abreotan quickly slipped into mythology within the kingdom.
She skipped several pages and read:
King Dylan took an important piece of information to the grave upon his death—the whereabouts of the hilt of the legendary sword of Aian Abreotan. People searched the castle and the tunnels for years in the hope of finding the most powerful artefact in Andrakian history, but to this day no one has ever located the resting place of the canvas bag containing the hilt.
She looked up as Erin returned, carrying two slim volumes. ‘These are from two different places,’ he said, placing them on the table and opening the orange-covered book. ‘This one is an inventory from a trading merchant who plied the seas between Targa and Shess almost four centuries ago. Look at this entry.’ He pointed to a scrawl in the margin beside a list.
Meg read the list and the scrawl attached to one item:
‘1 canvas bag curio: this strange bag cannot be opened or punctured to our knowledge. Contents might be a sword hilt or similarly shaped object of worth.’
‘And this one,’ Erin continued as Meg finished reading, ‘is the diary of a Western Shess pirate, Dagger “Sheets” Wildwave. Read this entry.’
Again Meg read. The language was definitely Shessian, but it was an archaic style and she had to use the amber to get the full sense of the writing:
In the haul today we found a strange canvas bag that defied all sense. Try as we might we could not force the lock. Not knife, not sword, not fire harms the material.
It is an altogether bewitched object and one we will be well rid of to the king when the time comes to sell our goods.
‘How do you remember all these entries?’ she asked.
Erin smiled. ‘Some things are more interesting than others. The Ashuak society was built on the power of dragons, so I followed the dragon motif through a great many books and the Andrakian stories have a period more than a millennium past when dragons were significant.’
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