Lokant (4 page)

But taken she had been,
by some means he had been unable to prevent. And whatever had been
done to her afterwards was irreversible. World-changing.

Draykon.
The
word still rang in his thoughts long after he had heard it from
Ynara. He connected it with the images in his memory: of the great,
winged, ghost-grey beast sailing down out of the skies and carrying
him away. At times he concluded he was merely hallucinating again;
in moments of greater clarity he was obliged to dismiss this most
convenient of excuses. But there was no absorbing
that
piece
of information. He had been warned that the furore over Llandry’s
istore stone was a greater matter than he realised, but nothing had
prepared him for this.

Such reflections were
not only unproductive, but outright destructive. Nonetheless, lying
as he was immobile and in constant pain, Devary’s mind refused to
turn on any other topics. It was as he attempted, with the utmost
care, to turn himself slightly in his bed that a man appeared out
of the air.

The man was tall,
looking down on Devary with an imposing air. He wore a slight frown
on his too-white face, and his pale hair looked as though it
wouldn’t dare to drift out of place. His appearance - his strong
features and the pale grey colour of his eyes - belonged to no race
that Devary had ever met; he couldn’t place the man’s nationality
at all. But he addressed Devary in perfect Nimdren.

Devary might wish he
did not know this visitor, but sadly the man was all too
familiar.

‘Clearly there has been
some error,’ he said slowly. ‘None of your reports have been
received by our office. A problem with the postal service, no
doubt, or with our messengers, for I am sure you have sent regular
reports as usual.’ He lifted his brows as he spoke, though his
voice never rose above a moderated tone.

Devary said nothing.
Seeing that man here, standing with casual impunity in the heart of
Ynara Sanfaer’s house, was both deeply wrong and deeply disturbing.
He had never really expected to escape the pressure of his former
employers, but he must have entertained some hopes, for his heart
sank with dismay.

‘No matter,’ the
intruder continued. ‘Your assignment has changed. There is no
further need to maintain surveillance on this house while Llandry
Sanfaer is no longer within it. Find her and bring her to us.’

Devary weakly clenched
his fists, and shook his head. ‘I am no longer your employee. I
accept no further assignments.’

The man lifted his
brows, surveying Devary’s wounds with pointed attention. ‘You do
not appear to be healing very fast. It would be a shame if you were
to suffer a relapse.’

Devary fought down a
flutter of panic. ‘This family above all others will not be
targeted by me. I have won back their trust only recently and I
will not betray them again.’

‘Your proximity to this
family is precisely why you are suited to the task,’ the man
replied relentlessly. ‘Llandry trusts you. When you find her, she
will follow you.’

Devary swallowed his
pain and fixed his unwelcome visitor with a cold stare. ‘Why do you
want her?’

‘That information is
not necessary for you to know.’

‘Then my answer stands.
I will have no part in this.’

The man said nothing
for a moment. Then, ‘You’re a rational being so I’ll make this
plain for you. Your injuries are severe. Your recovery will take
months; months of lying here, useless and in pain. And you may not
recover at all.’ He leaned down towards Devary’s face, his eyes
cold. ‘If you accept the assignment, I will ensure that you
recover. If you do not, I will ensure the opposite.’ He
straightened again and shrugged. ‘And if you persist in refusing my
offer, I will be obliged to send another after Miss Sanfaer.
Someone less sympathetic to her.’

Devary closed his eyes.
He knew the sort of operatives that would be sent after Llandry if
he refused. If she was to be protected, he had no choice but to go
after her himself. Once he found her, he would discover a way to
hide or defend her.

He opened his eyes.
‘Very well,’ he said coldly. ‘But this is to be my last assignment.
I must be allowed to retire.’

‘Agreed,’ said the man,
pleasant now that his purpose was achieved. Devary found his arm
seized in an uncompromising grip, and before he was aware of his
resented employer’s intention his surroundings dissolved into a
mess of colour and they were gone, spinning across the worlds to
the last place that Devary wished to go.

***

‘Aysun, slow down.
You’re going too fast.’

The person speaking
from behind him was out of breath and just a little bit frantic.
Frustrated, Aysun didn’t pause to acknowledge his companion’s
request, but he did slow his pace. A little.

‘Thanks,’ the voice
muttered darkly.

Aysun ignored the
words. Strapped to his wrist was his locator; the device was locked
onto a ring that his daughter wore, and its function was to guide
him to her. As long as he had remained in Glinnery it had displayed
nothing at all, and for a time he had feared that Llandry had lost
her ring. But then a greater fear had occurred to him: perhaps she
had instead gone off-world. Perhaps she was in the perilous
Uppers.

Now he himself stood in
the light-drenched Upper Realm. The moment he had stepped through
the gate, his locator had flashed, and a winking point of light had
appeared on the display. The confirmation of his suspicion had both
relieved and dismayed Aysun: Llandry was alive and still wearing
her ring, so it would be possible to find her. But the longer she
remained in the Uppers the harder that task would be, and the
greater the danger that she would be injured or killed before he
could reach her.

Hence his hurry. His
companions, however, felt differently.

Footsteps beat rapidly
behind him and then Eyas drew level with him, panting and wearing a
scowl on his tanned face.

‘If you want me to keep
you from being eaten, mauled or gored, we’re going to have to work
on this arrangement,’ his friend said. ‘That means I, the trained
and experienced summoner, must be in front, in order to ensure that
our surroundings are clear of dangers before you advance. If you
insist on leading the charge, I can’t answer for the
consequences.’

‘You’re too slow,’ said
Aysun. ‘While you dawdle, she’s moving further away.’

Eyas threw up his
hands. ‘Then I don’t know why you asked the rest of us to
come.’

Aysun glanced over his
shoulder. Behind him walked Nyra, a tall and gloriously winged
citizen of Glinnery. She was a sorceress and a friend of his
wife’s. He had needed a sorcerer to open a gate to the Uppers, and
he would need one again when it was time to return home. Nyra had
insisted on accompanying him in the search for Llandry.

Their other companion,
however, was nowhere in sight.

‘Where’s Rufin?’

Eyas shrugged. ‘He
circled around us a moment ago and went into the trees. He was
loading his gun.’

‘Trouble?’

‘I’m not sensing
anything.’

Aysun nodded. Eyas was
a fellow Irbellian expatriate. He had moved to Glinnery years ago
to train his summoner abilities - for there was little quality
training to be had in Irbel, with its focus locked firmly on
engineering - and he was now one of Glinnery’s best. Which was why
Aysun had chosen him for this expedition. If Eyas’s summoner senses
found nothing to cause alarm, his word was to be trusted.

But that being the
case, why had Rufin left the party, and taken his gun?

A shot rang out off to
the left. Aysun immediately altered his direction, heading towards
the sound; but he’d no sooner drawn his own hand gun out of its
holster than Rufin himself appeared, his weapon slung over his
shoulder and a large, dark object dangling from his free hand.

Eyas halted. ‘Rufin.
Tell me that isn’t a desente bird.’

‘A what? Here.’ Rufin
thrust the dead thing at Eyas, who fumbled it. It fell to the
ground, wings splayed.

‘It is a desente
bird.’

‘Nice.’ Rufin nudged it
with his toe.

‘Nicer when it was
alive,’ Eyas replied. ‘And not dangerous, I might add. They’re
herbivores.’

‘And dinner.’

‘What?’

‘They’re also dinner.’
Rufin allowed his big body to drop into a cross-legged position on
the ground. Deft with his large hands, he began to pluck the
bird.

‘What? No! These birds
are rare, and marvellous. Did you know that a desente can stay
aloft for eighteen hours without-’

‘Who cares?’
interrupted Rufin. ‘All I want to know is whether it tastes
good.’

‘It’s dead already,
Eyas,’ interceded Aysun. ‘Let’s get it over with and move on.’

Rufin’s head came up at
that. ‘Aysun, old friend. You know about sleeping, I presume.’

‘Heard of it.’

‘Weren’t we planning to
do some at some point?’

Aysun shook his head.
‘Got to keep moving. Llan needs us.’

He heard Eyas sigh
faintly. The summoner was younger than both he and Rufin, but he
wasn’t as physically robust as the two older men. To his credit,
though, he didn’t complain.

Nyra, typically, said
nothing at all.

As the bird cooked over
a hastily assembled campfire, Aysun sat by himself to think. He
needed to try to guess where Llandry might be, but that required
some understanding of her motives and in that he was entirely
stumped. He had always taught his daughter to be wary of the
Uppers. He had always feared the possibility that she or his wife
might someday suffer the same fate as his father; his father the
summoner, who had crossed into the Uppers one day many years ago
and never come back. Since then he had lived with the constant fear
that his wife or daughter might be killed up there as well.

Llandry must have been
in peril when she had gone into the Uppers, that he knew: she would
never have done it otherwise. If it had saved her life, he couldn’t
blame her for it. But why hadn’t she returned in the weeks since?
What could she possibly be doing? He couldn’t shake the thought
that she would have returned if she could. Something must have
befallen her, but he couldn’t imagine what.

For it could be
anything in this strange place. Intent as he was on his location
device, he had often been oblivious to the scenery through which
they passed. But he couldn’t entirely ignore the way the landscape
changed subtly, minute by minute, until the apparently vast forest
of tall-stemmed, wide-capped glissenwol trees that stretched before
him faded away and he was striding instead through open hills.
There was nothing abrupt about these changes; it appeared as a
gradual process, so much so that one hardly noticed it
happening.

As he and his
companions ate their meal - with less haste than Aysun would have
preferred - he could feel the grass steadily lengthening underneath
him. That alone was interesting, for an hour previously they had
been sitting on deep blue moss. When Eyas noticed the change he
grew troubled.

‘This may not be a good
time or place to sleep after all,’ he finally announced.

‘Oh?’

Eyas made no immediate
reply. He appeared to be listening; whether with his ears or with
his summoner senses was unclear. Then he rose and walked slowly
around the campfire until he was close to Aysun, and stood staring
into the grass. Aysun had seen him in such a posture before; he was
working his summoner magic, striving to impose his will on a nearby
creature. Aysun stiffened, for if Eyas was so employed it meant
that a dangerous animal had moved up on them without his hearing or
seeing any sign of it.

At last Eyas moved and
took a long breath. Twining around his leg was a snake, its scaled
ivory-coloured hide liberally splotched with vivid purple. Nyra
hissed and backed away from the fire.

‘Don’t leave the fire,
Nyra,’ said Eyas quickly. ‘I can sense six more of these within a
few feet of us.’

Nyra froze.

Aysun stood and
shouldered his pack. ‘Best move on, then.’

Standing, Rufin was a
couple of inches taller than Aysun. He grinned down at his old
friend and unstrapped his shotgun.

‘I’ll take the lead,
shall I?’

A few hours later,
Aysun was close to despair. His device was malfunctioning; it had
to be. According to the display, Llandry was moving far faster than
they were. No matter how quickly he forced his company to move, she
continued to draw further away. He knew she could fly fast with her
Glinnish wings - she and her mother had often outpaced him on the
ground, even when Llandry was a child - but even so, it shouldn’t
be possible for her to put so much distance between them at such a
rate.

A halt was called some
hours after they had encountered the snakes. Eyas at last declared
it safe to rest, but while the others slept Aysun worked on his
location device. He worked relentlessly, ignoring his tiredness,
searching for the fault in the machinery that was causing the
problems with the display.

But all his efforts
only made it worse, for after an hour’s work something remarkably
strange happened. The point of light that represented Llandry’s
position abruptly reversed its direction and began to head back
towards Aysun’s group. He calculated that her position must be more
than fifty miles ahead of them, but she closed that distance with
impossible speed. Over the space of a mere few minutes, her path
traced an arc around them, passing a few miles to the northeast.
Then that taunting dot of light veered away once more.

Aysun was an engineer,
hailing from the realm of Irbel where talent with machinery was
common and highly valued. He was a skilled practitioner of the
mechanical arts himself, and had long worked with the outpost of
Irbellian engineers based in Glinnery. He was aware of several
projects developing vehicles that would move faster than
nivven-drawn carriages, but he had never heard of anything that
would allow the kind of speed his display was showing. It was
unimaginable.