‘…not do anything unwise,’ Ciera was saying.
I panted over Corypha’s face, enjoying the fear that filled his eyes. My finger-length fangs brushed against his cheek, threatening to lay him open.
‘You dare to show yourself here,’ Tyba roared at him. ‘Murderer! Betrayer of the crown!’
‘But not a betrayer of Krii,’ Corypha sputtered, trying to shove me off.
The crowd in the room seemed to have thickened. I could not see a path out of there. I had decided… whatever these people might say… the right course of action was not to kill Jaalta. It was to rescue her and destroy those oil barrels. I could do both.
I clenched my claws even tighter into Corypha’s flesh. He sobbed in pain. But it was nothing compared to the pain in which many of the strike force Anzaii had died. The pain that assailed me now. It was suffocating. My chest ached and stung… it burned… and a terrible weight pressed down upon me. It dawned on me that I was sensing my enemy’s pain. I slowly released Corypha. I did not enjoy being the author of that sensation after all.
Ciera cocked his head at me. Something important had just happened, but at the moment I could not bring myself to think about it. What now would we do with the traitor? I morphed slowly back into my human form and unbent from a crouching position to stand over him. Corypha remained on the floor, pressing his hands against the gouges in his chest. They weren’t serious.
Nobody spoke.
All eyes were on Tyba and myself.
Even Amadeus, who was usually so quick to speak, remained silent, waiting.
‘It was you who poisoned the food supplies of the strike force,’ I accused Corypha. ‘You will tell these people everything you have set in motion, who you were working with and for how long.’
Tyba nodded at me. Behind him, High Commander Varal made a dismissive gesture as if he knew there was no stopping me.
‘I am leaving now,’ I said to the crowd, turning my back on Corypha. ‘To rescue Jaalta and prevent the Zeikas from invading our lines of communication and forging ones of their own.’
The Tanzans parted before me and someone ran from the back of the room carrying a set of Zeika armour for me. I glanced at Tyba and Amadeus.
‘Krii go with you,’ Tyba said.
‘Our aims are much the same,’ Corypha stammered desperately.
I turned to him with a glare of such loathing that several people drew their breath and looked away.
‘But where you give deceit and death, I will risk everything to save her.’
‘You will be captured along with her,’ Corypha shouted maniacally. He had crawled to a sitting position. ‘Stop him!’ Two guards stepped in to lift him to his feet and hold him still. ‘Then where will we be?’ he cried desperately.
‘You live in fear,’ I retorted. ‘Fear is from Zeidarb. I serve Krii. We will make light.’
With his lips curled up in a snarl, Ciera shook his head at the cowardly traitor and followed me out of the room.
Chapter Eighteen—Infiltration
A
fter the encounter with Corypha in the Vista, Ciera and I made contact with a group of citizens in Condii city who had a lone conjurer trapped inside a house. His death hawk was wreaking havoc inside, but so far the Condiites had managed to board up all the windows and keep them both contained.
A handful of Defender warriors and civilians made way for Jett and I after Ciera and Ptemais touched down. I strode into the house in full Zeika garb, including a faceless, green helm. My features were deliberately obscured by two shallow scratches over one eye, which had dribbled blood down over the right side of my face.
The conjurer screwed his ugly face up at me when I appeared. He garbled something at me in Reltic, which I ignored. He didn’t realise I was a Kriite until the moment I interrogated the connection between him and his conjuration.
My confuse ability made it seem as if I stood on the bank of a river holding the Zeika’s hand in one of mine, and on the other bank was the death hawk. As long as I held tightly to the Zeika’s hand, he could neither control nor dismiss his conjuration.
With the death hawk in tow, Ciera and I flew with all speed toward the Egg Basket Range and the closest promontory he could get to without being spotted from the Zeika encampment. Despite his anxiety, his thoughts toward me were suffused with an air of pride I had not sensed before.
It took all of my concentration to know what I was doing in the waking world as well as keeping hold of the Zeika in the spirit realm. Every now and then the death hawk veered sharply towards me, snapping its jaws. The black eyes glinted fiercely, as if the demons inside were ready for the slightest lapse in my concentration.
Tiaro fortified me with all her strength. In the spirit realm she no longer seemed to take the form of a cat. Rather her spirit seemed layered over my own, a second hand reaching out with my own hand to clench the Zeika tightly. There was an unspoken agreement between us that Tiaro’s concentration would not waver from holding the Zeika for even an instant. This would leave me somewhat more able to deal with whatever happened in the waking world.
Jett and Ptemais agreed, reluctantly, to wait by the promontory with Ciera. If there was anything they could do to help me they would be there, with a moment’s notice. We all knew that, in this instance, there would be nothing they could do. It was the first time, since before I had become bonded with Rekala, that I’d had such a heavy responsibility to bear alone.
In some ways it felt like a test. After having kindred for so long, could I truly do anything useful without anyone by my side? Well, not entirely… Tiaro was still right there on my ear. And a Radakin that spoke Reltic was ready to join with me in the waves and translate anything that was said. I had been warned not to say much or else my pronunciation and accent would give me away.
I squared my shoulders, tried to assume an air of superiority, and stalked down the gravelly hillside. Ciera’s feelings of helplessness followed me down the dark trail. I tried hard to lend a bit of my strength to Tiaro who was struggling to hold onto the Zeika. She was praying non-stop in all kinds of tongues I didn’t understand. The words of angels.
The death hawk followed me obediently. All I had to do was think a specific action towards it and it would do it. Fly in a circle. Turn around. Fly backwards. Perform a somersault and swoop upwards…
I was moving uphill, through a small forest when the faint smell of a Zeika’s herb-washed body came to me. I could wait until he passed, but with daylight swiftly approaching, I needed to keep moving. It would be so much harder to light those oil barrels in the open light of day. I proceeded out of the forest with a supercilious demeanour. A dark figure stepped out from behind a boulder.
‘Identify yourself,’ the voice was harsh, but young.
The death hawk soared back down out of the sky and I made it circle the speaker three times. He had drawn his sword several paces away and stood at the ready.
‘Underling,’ I spat, in Reltic. ‘You will not address me so.’
The Zeika took one look at the death hawk and bowed low. ‘Apologies, Master Conjurer. I am on scout patrol and I did not expect anyone to come from this direction.’
‘Nay, you would not. It is often those who don’t expect the unexpected who end up dead.’
I knew death was a sore point for most Zeikas, who strived to prolong their lives through sorcery.
‘Yes, Master.’
‘Continue,’ I said, hoping he would carry on. Instead he turned to follow me.
Now I’d better not make a wrong turn or he would know I didn’t know where I was going.
‘If I may, Master,’ the Zeika began, ‘what is happening on the front lines?’
I clenched my teeth. The Rada-kin who spoke Reltic was with me in the waves, giving me the words I needed to speak.
‘We are pushing through their pitiful defences even now. It is only a matter of time before Condii falls.’
The death hawk sailed low over my head, missing me by mere inches. I pretended not to be surprised. My fists were clenched tightly by my sides and sweat beaded around the blood on my face.
‘Praise Zei,’ said the boy. I did not echo him, as was expected.
That could be a problem.
‘Just say it,’ the Rada-kin advised me. ‘If it does not come from your heart then Krii will not abandon you.’
‘Not unless I have to,’ I replied stubbornly.
The hawk cawed angrily, flying in tighter and tighter circles.
‘Your conjuration is most restless,’ the boy observed.
I cut him off with a sharp gesture of my hand. ‘That’s because I am in no mood for diversions, boy.’
A wooden palisade came into view, with orange torches gleaming at intervals along it. The front gate was manned by two guards with melee weapons. On either side was a skinny tower with a single bowman in each. The large doorway was recessed with hanging leather instead of a real, fortified gate. They obviously weren’t expecting any enemies to get this close.
I forced myself not to look up and around as I approached the gate. I’ve seen this many times before, I tried to tell myself. I am bored by it. I am tired and angry from battle.
The boy who had been following me kept marching straight past the gate to continue his rounds. He spoke not another word to me, for which I was grateful. The less talking I had to do, the better. The guards sneered as I passed through. The death hawk flitted this way and that, coming very close to one of their heads. He swore at me and made a shooing gesture.
Inside I beheld a clearing directly ahead and a large wooden tower about two thirds as tall as Ciera. A set of stairs lead up the front of the tower and its roof was made of multi-coloured oiled skyearl pelts, drawn to a point at the top to allow water to run off. There were barrels piled up on either side of it—oil barrels? Noticing a reed-strewn pathway to my left and right, I turned left and strode purposefully along the path. A guard passed me with no comment. To my right were two tents that rung with cries and wails—an infirmary perhaps. Further on were piles of logs, stacked as high as myself, and an open-sided tent for cutting and shaping the wood.
I rounded a U-shaped bend and witnessed the takeoff and landing of at least six squadrons of dragons—ten per squadron. There was a huge oval-shaped clearing for this purpose marked out by dragon-head totems in the ground. A small pile of oil barrels had been stacked ready for the dragons to pick up. Another guard passed me and I tried to look both arrogant and annoyed, as if I was doing some kind of inspection and I didn’t like what I saw. The Zeika bowed to me, saying ‘Praise be to Zei.’
‘Praise be to Zei,’ I replied smoothly. And when he was out of earshot I added, ‘Over my dead body.’
‘I will most certainly praise Zei over your dead body,’ the real Zeika conjurer, back in Condii, told me. I stumbled at the sound of his voice in the waves. I could sense Tiaro losing her grip on him, or rather he had tightened his grip on her and was using her to communicate with and try to distract me.
‘How fortuitous it will be if they take you alive, however.’
The death hawk floating above me swooped down, claws outstretched.
‘Get out evil one,’ I sent a mental shove back at the Zeika and walled myself in. The death hawk shrieked and whipped upwards again, flying out over the general area as if scouting. The battering the far-conjurer gave me was enough to make my head spin. I blinked and tried to steady myself, failing to walk straight. Several Zeikas turned to look at me. I scowled at them and continued doggedly on.
Having come nearly in a full circle, I passed close by the stairs to the great tower and entered the other side of the camp. Perhaps Jaalta would be somewhere here. But where should I start looking?
I stopped when I reached a tent with an immense wall of crates and barrels outside it. Many of the barrels were marked with the Reltic symbol for oil. I pretended to inspect one.
‘Do you require aid, Master?’ An older voice.
‘No,’ I replied in Reltic. Then, thinking quickly and waiting for the Rada-kin to translate, I added, ‘that is unless you can tell me where the Anzaii prisoner was taken.’
‘She is in the harledo, of course,’ he replied. The Rada-kin took a moment to determine the meaning of ‘harledo’.
‘There is no Telbion-Tanzan language equivalent,’ it said. ‘Seems like “pleasure-tent”.’
‘That one is not for pleasure,’ I said. ‘She is to be waveraded.’
The Zeika spat. ‘She is old. Old and ugly… and mute. It is hard to believe she’ll be any use to us at all.’
‘She will,’ I replied.
The Zeika looked a bit more closely at me. ‘You appear to be injured.’
I fingered my forehead. It really was starting to hurt now.
‘It’s only a scratch,’ I said.
‘As you say,’ he replied, slouching away.
I continued on my way, scanning for the harledo. The piles of barrels and crates continued much further than the first tent I had seen. Yet another tent appeared in the background; this one about twice the size of the other. A number of fireplaces were set up outside the tent with Zeikas in various positions around them. Most had a pipe, a drink, a whore or a combination of the three. It took every ounce of willpower not to turn my head away from their open debauchery.
I grinned my most lecherous grin and resented the part deep inside me that was curious about what they were doing. I continued past the opening to the great tent. The two guards at the doorway ignored me as I entered, but I caught them glance oddly at the conjuration that followed me. The squawking death hawk had served its purpose of helping me get into the camp and it no longer seemed logical for me to have it out.
I made a flicking gesture with my wrist and, at the same time, called upon Krii to deal with the Zeika conjurer back in Condii. With a blood-curdling cry, the death hawk faded to nothingness. I paused as I witnessed the far-conjurer’s confrontation with the white wolf. Although his body was far away, the vision I saw in the waves made it seem like it was happening right in front of me.
‘I would rather die than be ‘ forgiven’ by you,’ the Zeika sneered.
The wolf whined once, cocked his head then lowered it and snarled. He rushed at the conjurer, a blur of white fur and red gums. A scream echoed through the waves and I stumbled. Several groans and angry mutters came to me from the shadows within the tent, but it wasn’t until I trod on somebody’s arm that I realised this was their sleeping quarters.