‘What is it?’ I queried.
‘I just wanted to look upon you,’ he replied. ‘So much has happened recently. We have been very preoccupied, you and I. I just wanted to look upon the human who has changed me so.’
‘For the better, I hope,’ I replied hesitantly.
He dipped his head. ‘We were victorious, weren’t we?’
I relaxed back into the palm of his hand, my helmet tapping against his enormous claws. My concentration was starting to wane, exhaustion taking its toll.
‘A warm bath and private chambers await you,’ Ciera said out loud.
‘Yes, about that—’ I began, but Ciera cut me off.
‘There’s not much I can do to show my appreciation to you, Talon. I know everything you have done for Tanza even if nobody else does. Consider this my gift to you.’
He lowered me slowly. I gave his neck a scratch on my way to the ground. Feeling the sensation through his body on the waves, I realised it was little more than a light tickle.
‘One day I’ll have to get you a rake,’ he jested.
I smiled weakly. ‘One day… when this is all over.’
I walked inside, dragging my feet. Jett ran to meet me and put his arm under my opposite shoulder.
‘Why is it that you always have more energy than me?’ I asked.
‘Because I save some of my strength,’ Jett said. ‘Whereas you give everything and more.’
Chapter Twenty-six—Survival tactics
A
gainst my wishes, I slept for fourteen hours. The peace and warmth in my suite held me in a tight embrace.
When I became awake enough to remember all that had happened, it took still more time to convince my body to start working again. Muscles ached in every limb and my back and neck throbbed with pain. A headache held me in its grip, preventing me from getting a clear sense of the waves. Conversations burbled around me, but I had not the strength to discriminate one from another. Trickles of information still reached me.
Kovain had been taken yesterday afternoon. As many as 13,000 Zeikas had arrived there only to find it shrouded and abandoned. Tanzan spies had intercepted plans from a messenger dragon to the legion at Kovain. They had been ordered to hold their ground, recover and prepare for the ‘final phase’. The hunter skyearls and spies in the area worked tirelessly day and night to prevent the enemy from realising Centan, too, was now abandoned.
Jett confirmed the information as he helped me dress in my battle armour. Afterwards I stuck my head out of the door to my suite. Cots and tables lined the hallway, with scores of Defender warriors sleeping on my very doorstep. I felt ashamed to have a room all to myself, but I didn’t want to gainsay Ciera’s gift. With a nod of thanks to Jett I crept past the sleeping bodies and made my way down to the Vista.
‘Astor Talon,’ King Crystom greeted me. ‘Congratulations on your victory.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. A vision of Sarlice slung across the back of a tyrak assaulted me, but now was not the time to blurt out my concerns.
Most of the strategists were looking at me with newfound respect. Despite what Saned had said last time we’d been here, he greeted me formally with one arm across his chest and offered his praise.
‘Many of our warriors and civilians are gathering loot from the Zeika supply carts still,’ the king said. ‘They came poorly equipped for such a large force, but it will bolster our provisions for a few days.’
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ I said. ‘How is Prince Tyba?’
‘He is resting,’ Crystom replied. ‘He continued to chase down stragglers and coordinate the army throughout the day.’
I looked out the windows at the colour of the sky. We were deep into the night, possibly even past midnight judging by the faint glow on the horizon. My strange sleeping patterns of late were throwing my sense of time out.
How long had Sarlice been a prisoner? Would they do to her what I’d seen them do to other prisoners in the Zeika encampment—what her uncle had done to her when she was a child? My stomach simmered with hate.
‘He is a dedicated leader,’ I affirmed, trying to put aside the agony of my thoughts.
‘Yes,’ Crystom replied, ‘and the other Anzaii have told me how you and Jaalta held them together when you faced a summoned demon.’
I licked my lips. ‘Yes, sire, but it was Jaalta more than I.’
Jaalta stirred at the end of the table. I had not noticed her there before. She was dressed in ornate cream and bronze robes, and a thick blue-grey pelt adorned her shoulders.
‘We have heard about your friend, Sarlice,’ Jaalta broadwaved, sparing me the need to bring it up.
Everybody in the room turned to stare, even people who were not already participating in the conversation.
‘Will you allow me to mount a rescue?’ I asked.
I nodded my thanks to Jaalta. When I reached out to her in the waves, she held her mind tightly closed. I cocked my head at her with a frown. She looked to Crystom.
‘You know we cannot,’ he said simply.
My fists curled into tight balls. ‘Then I shall go alone.’
‘No, you shall not,’ Crystom said firmly. ‘You are an officer in this army and you are needed here.’
My heart thundered. They would stop me from going? Ciera entered the room from the oversized hallway, walking awkwardly on all fours with the splint around one of his forearms.
‘The king is right,’ Ciera said. ‘Do not let your emotions cloud your judgement.’
I stood up and turned to face him. He could understand everything that was going through my mind. Because of this, I could hardly believe he would oppose me.
‘You would only be slain or captured and used as Jaalta was, with a waverade artefact.’
‘I never asked for this gift,’ I railed at him. ‘I never asked for this responsibility.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But you have it. Krii gave it to you. And thus far you have borne your responsibility well. Do not ruin it now.’ Ciera sent Halduronlei through the waves to me, trying to calm me and help me get my breath back. My face was hot, the panic in my chest swelling to breaking point.
There was more to this than I had first realised. There were people in the room just waiting for me to defy the king. I decided that my loyalty to Sarlice was far greater than my loyalty to the king, but that didn’t mean it was right to disobey Crystom. I respected him and I believed in what I was doing as part of Tanza. I had accepted my position in the Tanzan Defender army so I needed to honour that decision, as least for now.
‘If the Zeikas truly want to use you for a waverade artefact, then they will not kill Sarlice,’ Ciera said aloud.
I sat back down and put my head in my hands, murmuring, ‘That’s partly what I’m afraid of. What will they do to her?’
Jaalta came and stood behind my chair, putting her hands on my shoulders.
‘Have patience,’ she said. ‘Have faith.’
Strategist Ervan cleared his throat. ‘Many of us have lost loved ones,’ he began. ‘Let their sacrifices not be in vain.’
I raised both hands in the air in submission.
‘We have three days before 10,000 Zeikas from Lantaid and another 10,000 fresh troops from Fireflow Mountain arrive here in Condii,’ Commander Varal declared. ‘In that time we will build a new sky kingdom to house the civilians within the walls of Condii.’
Crystom gestured at Jaalta and I. ‘Bring the Anzaii artefacts here please. We must converse with the commanders of Tanza.’
I could sense something ominous in his mind. ‘About what,’ I asked.
There were some scowls around the room, but Crystom answered me calmly. ‘The evacuation of Tanza.’
For the next four days Condii was like a kicked anthill. Once Crystom had announced his decision to abandon the realm, there had been a furore on the waves. The King made the controversial declaration that Krii himself had sanctioned the evactuation. Crystom and Em had joined with their prayer warriors and petitioned Krii for guidance. It was agreed that Tanza was no longer the place where Tanzans were called to be.
The sheer number of people crammed into every hallway of every building and every corner of every street made it very difficult to go anywhere or do anything. Food and drink was strictly rationed. With nearly a hundred thousand mouths to feed, the counters were pushed to the limits of their abilities. The Defender soldiers who were assigned to supply-duty for the civilians were some of our gruffest, meanest looking warriors.
‘It’s for the best,’ Tyba told me.
We had made our way down Inner Spiral Lane to the centre of the city. Representatives from groups of families were queued down the street into the distance, waiting to receive their rations.
At least these people have their freedom, I thought bitterly. Sarlice didn’t have that. Dread was my constant companion as I worried about Sarlice and wished I could go to her. It took every ounce of my self-control not to pester Ciera until he agreed to take me to her. The situation in Condii was desperate and I knew I was needed more than ever now.
The 20,000 Zeikas Commander Varal had predicted would arrive today had been spotted from the western towers. An army of equal size had also stationed itself just south west of Centan on the edge of the watery flats.
Shrouds had been left in the way, in addition to the thick cloaking of the waterfall city itself. The spy-hunters who had remained to protect Centan from prying eyes now came into their element. Using the vast shrouds as cover, they engaged in guerrilla warfare with the enemy.
Uncertain of the numbers they were facing, the Zeikas did not launch an all-out assault against the city. The bulk of their army waited just outside the mists, sending in parties to chase the marauding Tanzans and try to gain intelligence on Centan’s defences. To the Zeikas, this was the most important phase of their incursion and they appeared to be prepared to wait it out.
If the remaining population of Tanza truly had been in Centan, it would only be a matter of weeks before food supplies ran out. Water, of course, would not have been a problem, but with that much mist, the population would also be susceptible to mildew, rot and disease.
Back in Condii, where the population actually was, things were only slightly better. Where Tyba and I now stood, in the centre of the city, we could see and smell the refuse that was piling up. The parade ground was no longer green, having been trampled to dust long ago. Children ran past with dark snot coming from their noses, dark from the dust in the air.
The waterways in Condii had long since become muddy. Even though it was the River Jarvi that passed through the north east corner of the city, each day it seemed to take no time at all for its banks to become slick and treacherous and the water fouled.
The shrouder-skyearls continued to drink it and were busy night and day with building the new sky-kingdom. They had named it Elonavé, which meant ‘spirit away’ in ancient Kaslonican. Elonavé was a multi-layered construction, built for functionality in a compact space. The higher it reached into the sky, the more skyearls were assigned to guard it from foes on high and down low. Being the most experienced shrouder alive, Ciera played an integral role in its formation.
He still grieved for Raer, but it was nothing compared to the devastating realisation that all of Tanza had been lost. Ciera’s disbelief over the evacuation of Tanza had lasted many days. Even now he flew about in a sort of trance, not quite willing to face the reasons why he was building a new sky kingdom.
Elonavé was designed very differently to the sky kingdoms of the past. The king and queen had sat with Ciera for hours designing a multi-tiered structure that could be converted into an immensely long pathway when the time for our evacuation came. At the shrouder-skyearls’ commands, the blocks and sheets that made up Elonavé would slide out and around, forming a snaking platform that would stretch all the way to our border with Ravra.
It was believed the Zeikas would never expect this means of escape, and it would provide the people with the best chance of survival.
Other skyearls shrouded this end of the city, coating it in a bowl of cloud. From inside the bowl, Tanzans could not even see the sky. It meant that very few Zeikas were game enough to fly through the mists, not knowing what awaited them on the other side.
There were squadrons of skyearls both inside and outside the bowl. Even if the Zeikas did catch sight of Elonavé, and lived to tell the tale, it looked nothing like a means of escape.
While Ciera had been occupied, Tyba and I had both flown out to the battlefront on Amadeus’ back. Jaalta and Amril had been right behind us, along with Jett on Ptemais and two dozen other guardians. There were 17,000 Defender warriors here now and about 20,000 of the enemy, but we had the advantage of being the defenders of a great city. In addition to that, there were thousands of civilians learning to use weapons.
Architect Furlorny’s fast repairs had fortified Condii’s walls and towers to something even more formidable than they had been before. Weight and pulley contraptions had been fitted to most of the windows so that rocks and rubble from the previous destruction could be rained upon intruders. Tens of thousands of weapons had been brought across from Centan. Combined with those we had plundered from the Zeika legion we’d defeated, our offensive capabilities were greatly enhanced.
As before, Jaalta and I had spearheaded the efforts of the strike force using the Anzaii artefacts. Countless hundreds of conjurations had fallen before us. Wave after wave would attack—sometimes ten or twenty at once—and we had wiped them all out of the sky. We generally carried one artefact each, using them to augment our own abilities. When necessary, a shroud-skyearl was called in to create a platform for the strike force to gather and combine strengths.
In a war that had gone almost entirely in the Zeikas’ favour, it was liberating to finally feel in control of the battle.
At times I could almost convince myself that we would turn the tide of this war. But by all the reports from survivors in other parts of the realm, the Zeikas had total control of all the other towns. They had obliterated Tanza from the outside in. Centan and Condii were their final targets. When all their armies finally converged here, the battle for Tanza would be lost.