City of Death (21 page)

They skimmed over the treetops, sometimes brushing a tip so that it rustled. The paradise, as seen at night and from above, seemed like an ocean of shadows that had been frozen into billows and crests and troughs. It made her feel as small and insignificant as the vast Arctic wilderness had.

She felt even more helpless as something crashed through the treetops, branches shaking as if something heavy were jumping on them. She looked below at the tangle but she could not see the creature stalking them.

Tute began glancing from side to side and sniffing the air, his ears twisting and turning, trying to find a clue as to what was following them. Within her robe, Scirye felt Kles's fur ruffle with tension. She reached for the dagger the princess had given her, but she could not grab it through the coating of moon butterflies.

Suddenly she jerked to a halt as her ankle snagged on something. When she looked behind her, she saw a hairy apelike paw clutching her boot. A foxlike head with long ears thrust out of the branches to snarl at her. Its fangs looked incredibly sharp.

She kicked at the creature's wrist, but its grip was unshakable.

Within her robe, Kles began thrashing about, trying to break through the layer of butterflies.

On the tree next to her, another creature rose, its hind paws clinging easily to the swaying treetop as it stretched long, long limbs toward her.

Nandi struck her captor, flowing downward through the branches on the right like a silvery avalanche. There was a startled squeal and the creature let go. Branches snapped and broke as the creature and Nandi plummeted.

Suddenly butterflies sprayed from around her throat and she dipped at the sudden loss of buoyancy.

“
Tarkär!
” Kles cried as he emerged from her robe. He dove at the second predator and both disappeared within the tree.

Scirye hovered anxiously as the tree shook violently. M
ā
ka, Tute, Koko, and Leech circled around her. It was hard to simply float there while her best friend in the world might be fighting for his life.

Then, from beneath her, she heard a howl cut off abruptly, followed by a shriek from the first creature. There was the sound of more branches crashing and then a pair of heavy thuds.

The next moment Nandi emerged like a tattered golden flag, his body trailing in tatters. And then a battered Kles struggled into the air.

Scirye held out an arm, and the griffin fluttered onto it, his claws clicking on the butterflies scaling her skin. She hugged him tightly against her. Even through the layer of butterflies, she thought she could feel how wildly his heart was beating. Kles had all the courage and pride of a war griffin packed into his small body, and she loved him all the more for it.

Nandi pulled his shredded body into a compact ball. “We have to hurry. The scent of the blood will draw other predators.” A tendril gestured at the fluttering butterflies that had left Scirye and they resumed their positions on her.

Flattening himself into a disc, Nandi began to speed forward and Scirye, with Kles flying beside her now, followed with the others. After a while, he slowed and extended a tendril, gesturing for them to go down into the tree canopy.

Scirye was a bit nervous about entering the forest, but nothing was stirring as she flew among the branches.

Nandi flitted like a golden wraith, but Scirye and her friends made more noise, knocking through the tree limbs until they came to the edge of the wilderness.

Beyond them was a lake where water lapped gently at the pebbly shore. A graceful bridge arched high across the lake to the large island in the middle. It reminded her of pictures of Chinese bridges, but it had been built out of stone rather than wood. Willow trees edged the island's shore, their leafless branches hung like long curtains of hair. Beyond the trees they could make out empty flower beds marked by shrubs cut low like thick walls. And in the center were several rectangular marble buildings. Like the citadel, they were decorated with panels of brightly colored tiles.

The order of the island contrasted sharply with the wild chaos of the paradise.
The villa would look lovely in the spring and summer,
Scirye decided. And even though the villa was lying dormant in the winter, it looked too harmless to be a prison for their friend.

Even as she studied the island, a shadow passed before the moon. A rider was landing on a griffin within the villa. Was it a messenger?

“There's a guard on the bridge,” Tute said, his lynx eyes appearing to glow as they gathered in the moonlight.

Scirye stared at the marble statues decorating the ends of the bridge and realized that one of them was a man in the white uniform of the vizier's guard. He'd set his bronze helmet on the bridge railing against which he was leaning.

When they scanned the island, they saw only a single guard strolling along on the shore of the island. He looked just as bored as the bridge guard.

“We'll fly close to the surface,” Nandi whispered. He held up a tendril, watching the guards intently. When the island guard had left and he'd made sure the bridge guard was still daydreaming, he waved them forward. “Now.”

They glided at an angle until they were skimming just above the lake. The air was chillier here and Tute jerked up and down erratically, obviously hating the notion of getting this close to water.

When they reached the midpoint, Scirye began to believe they were going to sneak onto the island successfully. But then she heard a bubbling sound off to their left.

“Someone please tell me that's their stomach growling,” Koko begged.

The water fountained upward and an elephant head reared up from the water, long snout wriggling as it shredded the mist. It rose from the water higher and higher as the huge body leaped into the air, revealing the glistening scales of an armored fish.

It was a makara and from the way it stabbed its tusks at the cloudy ribbons, it was in a foul mood.

 

37

Bayang was having trouble standing up. The cage thwarted any magical spells, even her duplication magic, so the only solution was brute force. She had made several attempts to break the bars of the cage and each time had left her wracked with pain. Now her hind legs trembled with fatigue, but slumping down would only bring her into contact with the bars and more pain.

And yet the thought of the hatchlings—her hatchlings!—in the clutches of Roland's henchman made her gather her strength for another try. She was just about to reach for the bars again when she heard the deep, sonorous voice outside in the hallway.

It was the kind of voice that could sway thousands, but there was also a peevish quality to it, a hint of a perpetual grievance, as if there was always a tack sticking the owner in the foot.

“This is an outrage, an outrage!” the man thundered. “Who built this altar here?”

“It was Roland's thugs,” a second man replied. “We tried to stop him, but he told us to leave them alone.”

“And you obeyed him?” the first man demanded. “You're my guards, not his. Take this thing away and burn it.”

“At once, lord,” the second man said.

Bayang suspected the vizier himself had come. Had he brought the hatchlings with him?

The bearded Wolf sergeant opened the door. The statue of Kali was gone, but her makeshift altar had been left behind, bloodstains and all. A second guard was taking it apart so he could bring it outside and destroy it.

Bayang expected the vizier's build would match his grand voice, but instead of a tall man bulging with muscles, a short pudgy man strutted into the room in a leather riding outfit that made him look like a giant football. His long hair and beard were curled and glistened with oil. And his puffy cheeks made his eyes seem small and piglike.

He stopped dead when he saw the axes dumped into a corner. “And this sacrilege”—he jabbed a horrified finger at the sacred battle-axes—“is beyond comprehension!” Yanking off his gloves, he gave a grunt as he picked up the first one—as if he was not used to having to lift anything heavier than a pen.

The sergeant had followed him into the room. “Allow me, my lord.”

The vizier nodded curtly for the guard to get out of his way. “No, this is my personal penance for allowing hooligans to treat sacred treasures like empty bottles.” As the guard took up a post by the doorway, the vizier set the axes reverently on a long table against one wall. “The hatchlings,” Bayang said, “what have you done to them?”

The vizier's eyes shifted uneasily, but he intoned, “I swear by my ancestors that those young pests will meet the fate of all those who try to oppose me.”

The vizier seemed so agitated that Bayang suddenly felt a flicker of hope. “The children rarely cooperate with others' schemes for them. Did they escape?”

“This mess is all Roland's fault!” the vizier spat out the name. “I told that idiot that I would delay the bunch of you with a long, drawn-out trial while he found the arrows. But no, he insisted on destroying all of you. So I had to rush and improvise and they got away. And now everything's falling apart. Well, I'm through with that maniac.”

Bayang thought smugly,
The hatchlings are free!
She could endure anything now. “You should be fleeing the empire instead of chatting with me.”

“I'll catch the brats soon enough,” the vizier snapped. “No one will ever see them again, and once I get rid of you and Roland, I can get everything back on track.”

“Roland has Badik and the thugs,” Bayang said.

The vizier paused and threw back his head for a deep laugh. “The emperor was ever so grateful when I offered to post most of my Wolf Guards there. Once I send a messenger there, they'll dispose of Roland, Badik, and their thugs. If that idiot hasn't already found the arrows, I can take my time searching for them myself. I put up with that pompous peacock strutting and screeching about how he was going to rule the world when everyone knows I'm the only one fit to do that.”

Bayang suspected that the vizier had planned some form of double-cross all along. “You're as mad as he is.”

When he heard shots outside, the vizier frowned and gestured to the bearded sergeant. “See what's going on.”

The sergeant immediately pivoted and hurried down the corridor.

But Bayang thought she knew who was creating all that commotion. It could only be those foolish hatchlings who were coming for her instead of going on to the City of Death.

Bayang wanted to seize the cage's bars and break them, but she could only stand there helplessly.

 

38

Leech

Spikes shot outward all over Nandi's misty body so that he looked like a giant mace. Nandi extended a tendril that motioned them to go on to the villa. “I'll take care of the makara,” he said as he shot upward.

Leech's body suddenly lurched to the right and he fought to swing it back on course.
Stop trying to take over!
he told the Voice.

Leech's body was like a favorite toy that two brothers were trying to share.

We should head away from the dragon, not to her,
the Voice objected.

Bayang's my friend, even if she's not yours. And I'm going to save her,
Leech warned the Voice.
So don't try to stop me or you'll kill us both.

You're too weird to understand. So I guess you really are different from me,
the Voice declared sullenly.
Well, I'm not going to lift a finger to help you. How do you like that?

What's it going to take to make you forgive her?
Leech asked, frustrated.

Let her die as many times as I have,
the Voice said.

Before he could make peace between the Voice and Bayang, he reminded himself, he had to rescue the dragon first.

When the ifrit struck the makara's head, his body flattened around it, oozing over the creature's eyes and blinding it. Nandi's spikes were not solid enough to penetrate the monster's hide. Instead, they snaked into the monster's ears, nostrils, and mouth.

The makara jerked its head about as it tried to stab its attacker with its tusks and whipped its long snout to knock him from its face. The great mouth opened for a howl, but there were so many of Nandi's tentacles down its throat that it only came out as a choked sound. Suddenly the makara plunged into the only safe place it could think of—the lake. The splash sent large waves rippling across the surface and the tallest washed over them.

The startled butterflies managed to keep them aloft but they slowed, and their luminous butterfly coatings made them easy targets. The bridge guard shouted the alarm. The next moment, there was the crack of a rifle shot and the water sprayed upward a yard away from Leech.

Leech knew that all he had going for him was speed, so he zoomed on. “Hurry!” he urged both his friends and butterflies with a wave of his hand.

They started to surge forward, but by now Nandi's underwater battle with the makara churned the lake so that it resembled a giant pot of soup coming to a boil, and another rogue wave smacked against them.

When the butterflies lost speed once more, Leech kicked himself upward above the waves. Alone of the group, he was used to flying on his own so he would have to take the lead. “We have to go higher,” he instructed the others.

As they picked up speed again, the rifle cracked a second time. But this time the shot hit several yards behind him.

As the wind began to brush his face from the speed of his passage, for an instant, he forgot about his worries for Bayang and his own fears. Nothing could beat flying. This would always be his first love.

“Oh, no,” Scirye said as she bobbed up beside him. “They'll kill Bayang now that they know we're attacking the island.”

“Is that what we're doing?” Koko said, rising next to them. “You could have fooled me. I thought we were rushing into a trap like we usually do.”