Two hours passed, then a demigod blinked.
‘Your Majesty,’ he said, his eyes lowered.
‘Yes?’
‘I think I have detected a faint vision signal emanating from the city of Kin Dai, by the river estuary. It appears to be coming from a river boat.’
She went into his mind, and saw the location he had pinpointed.
‘Everyone,’ she said, breaking into the thoughts of the others; ‘that will be all for tonight. Say nothing of this to anyone.’
The gods and demigods rose from their seats, bowed, and left the room. When they had gone, she sent her own vision out into the night sky. She crossed the fertile plains of Tordue, then soared over the mountains where the wild dragons lived and entered Kinell. It looked similar to Tordue, but its farms and fields were less organised, and its villages held free people rather than the indentured slaves of Tordue. That was another thing she would change if she gained power – there would be no more slavery.
Her vision raced north-eastwards until she reached the coast of the ocean, then she turned north until she found the city of Kin Dai. Using the image she had taken from the mind of the demigod, she focussed on the river boats that crowded the muddy estuary. Her vision landed on the vessel that the demigod had identified, and she went inside, guiding her sight down from the deck. She came to a narrow galley kitchen, with a table where four men were sitting. She smiled when she saw Corthie, then noticed that he was drunk. Next to him sat Van and Sohul, and Naxor was at the other end of the table. She scowled at the sight of him, her hatred bubbling back to the surface after being suppressed for so long. She longed to talk to Corthie, but his mind was shielded, and besides, only Naxor had the information she needed.
She entered the demigod’s mind, and began rifling through his memories as quickly as she was able; searching for the last time he had used a Quadrant to travel to the salve world. She found it. It was a memory that she herself was in; the time Naxor had fled from her, Karalyn and Sable when they had first arrived in the Falls of Iron. She memorised his hand movements over the copper-coloured device, then paused. She had done what she had come to do, but she still needed to warn them, not for Naxor’s sake, but for the others.
He stopped talking, as if noticing something, then blinked.
‘So,’ he went on, ‘it was faint, but I think it might have been Amalia. The powers flickered for a moment, then ceased, and I could find no trace of her after that.’
‘But if it was Amalia,’ said Van, ‘then clearly Kelsey couldn’t have been with her. How do you explain that?’
‘I can’t,’ said Naxor; ‘I’m merely reporting what I sensed.’
‘And it was up north?’ said Sohul.
‘Yes, in one of the ancient fortress towns along the coast – the Forted Shore, I believe it’s called.’
‘We should go, tomorrow,’ said Corthie.
Naxor, said Belinda.
He froze. He recognised her voice, she could feel it.
‘Are you alright?’ said Van. ‘Corthie’s suggestion wasn’t that crazy; this is the first clue we’ve gained about their possible location.’
Make your excuses and go to your cabin.
‘I’m fine,’ he spluttered; ‘fine. Yes, I’m, eh… I just need to pop into my room for a moment.’ He got up as the others frowned at him. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
He hurried across the galley and into a tiny cabin, then closed the door. He sat on his bed, his hands trembling.
Belinda?
Yes.
I, uh, I…
I’m not here to hurt you, although you deserve it for what you did to me.
I can explain!
Shut up and listen. The use of your powers is endangering Corthie. The Ascendants believe he is dead, and I wish it to stay that way.
How did you find us?
The Ascendants have a team of gods and demigods who have been searching for Kelsey Holdfast. They found you instead. Right now, I am the only hope you have of surviving this. I know I can’t trust you, but I’m sure you are perfectly capable of acting in your own interests.
But…
Be quiet, Naxor. I need you to cease using your vision powers, immediately, and move to a different location, tonight if possible; if not, then first thing tomorrow. If you don’t, then the Ascendants will discover where you are.
Why are you helping us?
I am doing this for Corthie, Van and Sohul. Hide.
Are the Ascendants still in Alea Tanton?
Yes. They have no idea how to use the Sextant.
Then the City is safe? And Corthie’s world too?
For now they are, and I have a plan that will hopefully keep it that way.
A plan? What plan?’
Never mind that, Naxor. Just do as I say. And tell Corthie I love him.
She severed the link before he could say anything else to her. She felt a little disgusted with herself for having been inside his mind, but if she had saved Corthie then it would be worth it. She walked to the window and gazed down at the dark city. Her city, in truth. Khatanax was hers; Lostwell was hers, and, if she wanted it, ultimate power would be hers too. She merely needed to take it.
Chapter 10
A Glimmer of Silver
N orthern Kinell – 12th Luddinch 5252
Aila had never been so hungry. She and Kesley had been walking for days, keeping to the main roads that wound down the eastern coast of the Forted Shore, but their lack of money had slowed their progress. Some days, they had barely covered a few miles, instead spending hours trying to find enough food to eat, and on other days they had been too tired to walk at all.
The landscape was doing little to improve their mood. Acre after acre of hillside was covered in nothing but tree stumps, and the great majority of traffic they had seen on the road was involved in transporting timber down to the large port of Kin Dai, ready to be exported to Alea Tanton. Labour camps dotted the countryside, filled with workers who went out each day to cut down more of the vast forest that had once covered the whole of Northern Kinell, leaving behind nothing but a wilderness of tangled undergrowth and the remains of the fallen trees. No attempts were being made to plant new ones, and after seeing how the City of Pella had carefully managed its own small woodlands, Aila was sickened by the waste.
They had spent several days working at one of the camps, collecting the scraps of wood that the lumber gangs had left behind, but the hours were long and hard, and the pay had been barely enough to cover a single day’s food.
Kelsey had lost a lot of weight and, considering she had been slim to begin with, Aila worried about her health. As a demigod, Aila knew that her reserves of self-healing powers would keep her going almost indefinitely, but the young Holdfast woman was starting to look gaunt and ill. For the previous two days, they had veered away from the barren coast, and headed inland, closer to the edge of the forest and the labour camps. They had slept in a hut abandoned by the lumber gangs, huddling together in the cold night air among the miles of tree stumps.
The following morning, Aila awoke, her back stiff from sleeping on the rough ground. She allowed her self-healing to do its job and poked her head out of the shabby hut. All around was a wilderness of broken ground punctuated by never ending lines of tree stumps. To the south and west, smoke was rising from the edge of the forest in the distance, where the gangs were clearing undergrowth.
‘There’s a camp a couple of miles away,’ she said to Kelsey. ‘We should make for it.’
‘How do you know it’s there?’ said Kelsey, who was still lying on the ground.
‘Just a guess, really. If the gangs are already burning stuff, they must have slept somewhere close by.’
‘Do you think Amalia’s still looking for us?’
‘She must have given up by now. Come on, get up.’
Kelsey groaned, then scrambled to the hut’s entrance. ‘I hate this place.’
‘I know; it’s horrible.’
‘Maybe
we should go back to Stoneship.’
‘We’re more than half way to Kin Dai; it’ll be easier to keep going.’
‘We should have… No, I’m not going to say it. You’re right; we need to keep going. Though, the next time I escape from a maniac god, I want it to be with someone who can carry me on their back and run all the way to Kin Dai.’
They left the hut and Aila checked the position of the sun. In the City, the sun was always in the same part of the sky, but she had become accustomed to its rise and fall every day on Lostwell. Kelsey had told her that it was Lostwell that moved, not the sun, but she wasn’t sure if that was true, and in the situation they were in, it hardly mattered.
They began walking towards the south, following a rough track between the stumps. Aila scanned the ground as she always did when they were on the move. Once, she had found a silver coin that had bought them a loaf of bread, six apples and some cheese, which had felt like a feast, and she was determined not to miss anything else that had been carelessly dropped in the mud. Next to her, Kelsey trudged on, her hunger and exhaustion keeping her uncharacteristically quiet.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Aila. ‘Why would they cut down all the trees and not plant more?’
‘They’re idiots.’
‘If they keep this up, there will be no forest left within a decade or so.’
‘Do you think the gods care? Alea Tanton needs wood, and they’d rather cut down every tree in Northern Kinell than pause to think about the bigger picture. Khatanax is finished.’
Aila nodded. ‘I’m going to steal again today.’
Kelsey said nothing.
‘No complaints? No moral qualms?’
‘Not any more, if it keeps us, I mean me, from starving. People who haven’t eaten in days can’t afford those kind of morals.’
‘That’s not what you said when we first started out.’
‘I wasn’t starving then. What’s your plan?’
‘When we get to the camp, you stay back and I’ll go in alone and check the place out. Then I’ll take on the identity of someone and help myself to whatever I can. Money, ideally, and then we can maybe rent a room with an actual bed for the night.’
After a mile and a half, Aila saw a large cluster of tents ahead of them. Small tendrils of smoke were rising from a few camp fires, and wagons and carts were parked by the side of the track.
‘Alright, Kelsey,’ she said; ‘you stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
The young Holdfast woman sat down on a tree stump. She looked tired out already, Aila thought, feeling a weight of responsibility for her. After everything she had been through, to die of hunger in the wastes of Northern Kinell seemed an ignominious way for it to end.
Aila turned, and hurried down the track. Ahead, she could make out a few figures moving through the camp, or sitting by fires, but she knew that the bulk of the workforce would already be at the forest’s edge. She glanced back to check how far away Kelsey was, then considered a disguise.
You see me as an old peasant woman.
She slowed her pace to match her appearance as she walked into the camp. Kelsey had been right about hunger leading to the abandonment of morals; everywhere she looked, she was sizing up opportunities for theft, seeing the people in the camp as targets to be exploited rather than fellow human beings. She would never steal from a child, but that was about the only condition she had set herself. She watched as men unloaded sacks of grain from the back of a wagon, but it was well guarded, and grain was not much good to her or Kelsey. The guards were local militia, paid to keep order in the camps, and to ensure that the flow of timber never ceased. Quotas had to be met, as they had learned in the few days that they had worked in a camp, or there would be consequences.
The guards paid her no attention as she walked past. As she turned a corner, she saw a pile of rotting vegetables on the ground by a large tent and she walked over to take a closer look.
‘Hey!’ shouted a man. ‘Keep your hands off; that’s for the pigs, not you.’
‘Do you have anything to spare?’ she said.
‘No, now bugger off.’
‘Asshole,’ she muttered, then she saw the small herd of pigs on the other side of the tent. One of those would last them a good day or two, she thought, at least until the meat went bad.
She watched as a heavily pregnant woman emerged from another tent, and she stared at her for a moment, imagining what her own appearance would look like in a few months. She was past her first trimester, but was still barely showing, and due to the way her self-healing worked, she sometimes almost forgot that she was pregnant. Even if the child within her was mortal, her powers would shield and protect it from starvation.
A well-dressed man approached, his long robes trailing in the mud. He looked like an official from Kin Dai, and had a worried expression on his face. Aila silently apologised to him, drew her knife from her belt, then walked right into his path. He came to an abrupt halt, raising his palms, and Aila fell to the ground in front of him.
‘I didn’t touch you,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I slipped.’
She slowly got back to her feet as he glowered at her, then she lashed out with the knife, slicing through the man’s belt. She caught it with her other hand as it fell, and she bolted, her turn of speed taking him by surprise.
‘Stop her!’ he cried to the guards by the grain wagon.
Aila darted between a row of tents, detaching the purse and dropping the rest of the belt into the mud.
You see me as a young pregnant woman.
A moment later, three guards barged their way towards her, nearly knocking her over.
‘Careful, please!’ she cried.
‘Sorry, miss,’ said one; ‘did you see an old woman go by?’
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘just a moment ago. She was running.’
‘Where?’
Aila pointed in the opposite direction, and the guards rushed away. Aila walked back to the main track leading through the camp, the purse hidden in her clothes. The man she had robbed was still standing there, a furious look on his face as he talked to a handful of other guards.
‘The security in this camp is a bloody disgrace!’ he shouted. ‘I have enough to worry about without some old witch thieving from me in broad daylight. I want her flogged when she’s found, understood?’
Aila took back her silent apology from before.
‘Is the rumour true, sir?’ said one of the guards.
‘Yes. It’s a dragon, there’s no doubt about it. I’m heading straight back to Kin Dai to request immediate assistance.’
‘Shall we move the camp?’
‘No. Absolutely not. The work here must go on, without cessation. The dragon’s not interested in stopping us.’
‘But I heard it ate someone, sir.’
‘Lies. A man was killed, yes, but he was torn to shreds, not eaten, and that was only because he had strayed too far into the forest. He must have disturbed its lair. We hold tight here, and carry on, and wait for the regular army to turn up to deal with it. I’m also going to request a demigod with vision powers to assist in tracking it down.’ He paused, then noticed Aila’s glance. ‘Do you want something, girl?’
‘Did you say a dragon?’
‘It’s of no concern to you; go back to… doing whatever you were doing.’
Aila glanced away, and began to walk back down the track. When she was out of sight, she switched her appearance to that of an old man, and continued out of the camp. Kelsey was still sitting where she had left her.
‘Good news,’ Aila said.
Kelsey’s eyes lit up. ‘You have food?’
‘I have a purse.’ She sat down next to the young Holdfast woman. ‘And, as a benefit, the man I stole from was an asshole, so there’s that too.’
Kelsey smiled. ‘How much is in it?’
Aila opened the purse, and almost cried in relief. ‘A lot. Enough.’ She picked out six gold co
ins and gave them to Kelsey. ‘Hide these; they’ll be no good to us in the camp, but they’re bound to come in handy later. That leaves at least twenty in silver. Oh, and apparently, there’s a wild dragon terrorising the lumber gangs in the forest.’
‘Really?’
‘You don’t seem very impressed.’
‘I’ve seen plenty of flying reptiles.’
‘But none that could speak.’
‘I saw Blackrose for about five minutes when Van took me to Fordamere. Is there any chance at all that it’s her?’
‘Highly unlikely, I would imagine. A colony of wild dragons lives in the mountains a hundred and fifty miles south of here; it’s far more likely to have come from there. I believe that Blackrose stayed there for a while, but I don’t know what happened to her after Yoneath.’
‘Maybe we should check, just in case.’
Aila stood. ‘Let’s eat first. Come on.’
They walked back into the camp, and made their way through the maze of tents to a small market, where they bought enough food to fill the empty bag Kelsey had been carrying. With her mouth salivating, they went to a quiet spot, sat on a dry patch of earth, and ate in silence.
‘Pyre’s arse, that feels better,’ Kelsey said, as she licked her fingers. ‘Thanks, Aila.’
‘We have enough for three days, I reckon,’ she said, ‘but we’ll need to find somewhere that will take the gold, or at least change it into smaller denominations for us. Or, we could use it to buy passage to Kin Dai.’
‘How would we do that?’
‘We’d have to walk back to the main coastal road and wait for a passing wagon. If we try to spend it here, it’ll only arouse suspicion.’
Gates of Ruin (Magelands Eternal Siege, #6) Page 14
