Ciera struck out with his horns, gashing the hovering dragon’s neck. It did not react to the injury even when black and green liquid oozed out. Instead it reared back and tore at his face with all four legs. Sharp claws drove through the bridge of Ciera’s nose. My Sleffion-kin’s head jerked back in pain, but it was a feint. A split second later, his teeth snapped down, chopping off the dragon’s forelegs completely. He spat them onto the parapet where they fizzled and vanished.
Bal Harar’s voice called out incoherent words and forelegs started to reform on the tyrak’s body. I had never seen a Zeika with such power before. Only an Anzaii could defeat him, that much was clear. Riftweaver stepped forward, holding out her hands to dispel the Bal’s dragon. More Tanzans came to my side, lifting me off the ground.
Realising his chance to snatch me had passed, Bal Harar made his dragon fly up in an angry spiral. Other dragons joined him. To my blurred vision, they were little more than a dark mass against the even darker backdrop of the livid clouds. It was my wave senses that told me exactly how many were there.
Riftweaver was struggling to affect the Zeika leader’s conjuration. I presumed he had a more advanced hold upon it than lesser Zeikas did. I lacked the concentration to lend my wave-strength to hers. Get it together, I told myself. Now is the time.
‘I had hoped to preserve your life, Theon Kerrason,’ Bal Harar shouted at me. ‘Instead you will most likely die along with the rest of these scum, but I will return to Feladaire with my prize. The female you call Sarlice will be fine sport for our arcane arena and a ready breeder should you fail to retrieve her. Between hers and the offspring of the princess, I will have the power to enslave all Kriites. Pleasure meeting you.’
Roaring unintelligibly I struggled to rise. Many hands prevented me from getting to my feet. The troop of dragons flapped once more in a menacing circle above us. As Ciera and a dozen other skyearls took flight to attack them, the Zeikas flew away in a downward path over the walls of Condii. I blasted the dragons I could still see with a dispel attack that evaporated them mid-flight. Five or six Zeikas fell to their deaths.
‘Let me go!’ I shouted, my voice breaking with emotion. It was still difficult to breathe. My chest ached from the fireball blast and Bal Harar’s kick. In the back of my mind, I could hear Amadeus speaking to Ciera through a direct wave.
‘Tyba thinks he has combat fatigue,’ Amadeus said. ‘We will send him back to the fortress to rest. There are not so many people there now. It will be quiet for him.’
I struggled, shoving the hands off me. Tyba and Amadeus approached. At Tyba’s signal, the Tanzans holding me lifted me to my feet. Bal Harar and his troop had disappeared into the night.
‘Split it!’ I growled vehemently at the Tanzans around me. ‘We should have killed him.’
Dizziness made me stagger against one of them. His look of shock and concern told me how out-of-control I seemed.
Elsewhere, the battle continued. Skyearls and dragons fought all over Condii. A terrible crash sounded beneath us and hundreds of Zeika ground troops threw down the gates and clattered into the city.
‘Get him back to the fortress,’ Tyba said to those who were holding me up.
Still unable to stand unaided, let alone hold myself on Ciera’s back, I allowed myself to be pulled up onto a Sleffion-kin and held in place by a Tanzan warrior.
‘I’ve got you, Astor,’ he said.
Even with my head pounding, and barely able to hold my eyes open, my wave senses told me the names of both man and skyearl. This was Commander Saige, the military leader of Kovain who had fled here only recently. His Sleffion-kin was named Ayrae and was one of the largest skyearls in the realm aside from Ciera.
The skyearl spread her wings and launched off the gatehouse. Crashes and booms sounded above and below us. The roars of pain and anger from the many thousands of skyearls around us were drowned out by increasingly frequent claps of thunder, but I still heard them through the waves. It was harder to hold it all back now. Fire and lightning lit the buildings below us, many of which had been burnt out. Some of those that were still intact now served as military stations or cover for either Zeikas or Tanzans.
‘You must take me to Sarlice,’ I said to Ciera, who had remained behind to fight, despite his injuries.
‘Nay,’ he replied. ‘You would only be captured. Then what would all this have been for?’
‘Sarlice needs us!’ I shouted back angrily. I shook my head, trying to clear it.
‘You already knew she’d been taken,’ Ciera said.
‘Bal Harar, himself, has targeted her. They’re going to torture her,’ I cried.
Commander Saige’s arms held me tightly against his chest. The gouges in my sides were being pinched, sending sparks of agony, and anger, through my entire body. The pain helped me to come more fully awake.
‘There is more at stake here,’ Ciera argued. ‘You know that as well as I do.’
‘Curse Corypha!’ I railed. ‘It’s his splittin fault.’
Chapter Twenty-nine—Catharsis
A
s soon as Ayrae touched down, I struggled from Saige’s bear-hug and slid down the skyearl’s side to a crouching position on the ground. I took a few moments to gather my strength and still my spinning head. Disregarding the blood spots I left behind me, I marched straight on in to the fortress. Saige and the other Tanzans Tyba had sent back exchanged glances and followed me.
‘Let us attend to your wounds,’ they said. ‘What are you doing?’, ‘Where are you going’, ‘Astor… please…’
Ignoring them, I made my way through the now-familiar halls of Condii Fortress. The sounds of the storm and the fighting were audible even inside the thick walls. Very few people remained within, most of whom were racing around with last-minute supplies and valuables. The majority of the Condiites were already up on the Elonavé path, or were helping to organise those still waiting in line. The civilians from Centan and Kovain were the last to make it inside the city and many of them were yet to be herded inside the lower parts of the Elonavé sky kingdom.
I pulled off my gloves, letting them fall to the floor as I entered the prison-sector. Corypha had been left unattended. He had managed to pull the guard table up against his cell and pinch some food and a wooden baton. Bread and fruit were stockpiled inside his cell along with a clay pitcher of water. Pieces of wood had broken off inside the lock of his cell door.
Without bothering to find the key, I marched straight up to the bars, reached in and grabbed Corypha by the neck. Pulling him up against the bars I noticed the bruising on his chin from our last meeting.
‘To whom did you send that missive?’ I demanded.
The bones of his neck creaked beneath my fingers and his unwashed body stunk of sweat and fear.
‘I will not tell you,’ he spat.
I blinked, feeling the cold spittle slide down my hot cheek. ‘They have taken her.’
Despite his predicament, Corypha sneered. Is this all a joke to him? ‘Give yourself up and they’ll let her go.’
‘Not the Wavekeepers, you half-wit,’ I interrupted, pulling him closer against the bars. His face turned to the side, one eye squished shut. ‘The Zeikas. You gave the information to them that lead to her capture.’
‘Impossible,’ he sputtered. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about, you animal! Let me go.’ He looked to the others trying to crowd in behind me. ‘Someone get him off me!’
I gripped him even tighter, teeth clenched so hard that the ache in my skull threatened to tear through my very flesh.
‘You gave Sarlice to the Zeikas,’ I accused him, pushing him away and then pulling him back against the bars, ‘to be tortured and used. How else could they have known her whereabouts? How else could Bal Harar himself have realised her importance to me?’
He pulled feebly against me, trying to pry my hands off his neck with dirty, nail-bitten fingers.
‘I don’t know how,’ he replied, letting go of my wrists, ‘but we are in a war you imbecile. If they have her then you must forget about her.’
He must have seen the look of refusal in my eyes.
‘She’s dead,’ he whispered. ‘If you go after her, the rest of us will be too.’
‘No.’
I pressed my thumbs into the soft part of his throat. He coughed and gagged. Commander Saige’s hands were on my arms, trying to pull me away.
‘That’s enough now. Come along now. You’re tired from battle, Specialist.’
The sound of a loud explosion reached us from outside the fortress. Easing off Corypha’s throat momentarily I said, ‘Do you hear that? That is the sound of our defeat.’
‘What little good you and your fancy wave tricks did,’ he replied. ‘You’re nothing but a danger to us all.’
‘If it weren’t for you,’ I shouted, ‘the strike force might have saved Condii. Condii might have saved Tanza.’
‘That’s unlikely, Talon,’ Commander Saige said from behind.
The Commander’s grip tightened on my arms and I had to struggle against both him and Corypha to maintain my hold on the remorseless prisoner.
‘Let go,’ said Commander Saige.
‘Not until he tells me who he gave the missive to,’ I replied. ‘There are others of his traitorous kind among us.’
‘I will not tell you,’ Corypha said, reaching one hand up to grip my arm with surprising strength. Had his earlier weakness been a feint? I glanced down and caught sight of a sharpened stick he had brought from underneath his prison robe. He’s going to kill me! I was affronted more than afraid. Even in the face of his own stupidity and betrayal—giving the Zeikas information they could use to enslave me—his focus remained on finding a way to kill me.
‘If my fellow Kriites will not stop you, I will,’ he ranted. We gripped each other tighter, a deadly embrace with prison bars in between. My energy was ebbing, but Corypha seemed to be gaining strength. ‘Your behaviour only demonstrates how dangerous and unpredictable Astors can be. I hear you can even control Zeika monsters. Only a Zeika can do that.’ He looked around to make sure there were plenty of people to hear his words, then he whispered so only I could hear, ‘I am glad that the Anzaii were poisoned. None of you can be trusted. You are—’
The sharpened stick darted upwards. Talons sprouted from my fingertips and disappeared into his neck. My hard black claws pierced the tender skin and spilled his lifeblood over the both of us.
Commander Saige hauled me back with all his strength and we fell against the desk and chairs, snapping wood and bruising our backs. Corypha sagged against the wall of his cell, dazed.
‘What have you done?’ Commander Saige demanded.
He and the other Tanzans who had accompanied us struggled to clear the wood from the lock and open Corypha’s cell. His blood flowed out between the fingers he pressed against his neck. The look in his eyes was smug.
Commander Saige went to him and pressed torn fabric against the wounds in his neck. My own injuries continued to bleed and waves of dizziness threatened to overwhelm me. The waves?
Shock reopened my senses to the waves and a flood of questions rushed in from Ciera and Tiaro. Halduronlei floated between us, but, realising what I had done, Ciera allowed the song to slowly fade away.
‘You nearly killed Corypha…’ he stammered, barely believing it.
‘It was not my intention,’ I replied.
‘You were in a rage,’ Tiaro said hesitantly, ‘like Ciera was a while ago. We could not reach you.’
‘The Zeikas have overrun most of the city,’ Ciera told me. ‘You must come to Elonavé. We will sort this out later.’
Saige and the Tanzans glared at me as they lifted Corypha’s limp body. They did not see the piece of wood with a wicked end lying on the floor.
‘Ciera says the Zeikas are upon us,’ I told them. ‘If we do not reach Elonavé, we will die here.’
I climbed to my feet, glanced at Corypha one last time and walked out of the room.
Ayrae was somewhat hesitant as I went to climb onto his back. His neck curved in a threatening arc and his eyes bored into me, searching. I held myself back from him in the waves, preferring to be alone to figure out what had just happened. A sinking weight inside said it wasn’t right. Commander Saige got up behind me, leaving the other skyearls and their humans to carry Corypha.
Dragons clamoured close by and the storm was closing in.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
The other Tanzans and their skyearls followed us up into the sky. Dragons massed in the skies around us, flying between the shrouds blasting stray skyearls and people with green fire. The enormous, white mass that was Elonavé was surrounded by billowing clouds. The air was thick with moisture from the gathering storm.
Lighting struck the top of Elonavé, nearly hitting some of the beings that ducked and dashed across it. The civilians were screaming and running, jostling against those in front on the Elonavé path. Most of the people clutched a survival pouch, food supplies and their own belongings. Anything extra was loaded onto animals or left behind.
Thousands of skyearls were flying in circles around the spongy pathway, ensuring no humans were attacked or fell off. Shrouds had been created right underneath the Elonavé path to catch any who fell.
Squadrons of Defender warriors and Zeikas battled along the lower shrouds. More dragons were flying in all the time, their Zeika riders realising we were going to escape.
Flying archers and spear skyearls chased them down, often never reappearing. As Ayrae flew us over the pathway, I noticed Ciera down below. He and only a handful of others were fighting a group of ten or twenty dragons. The point of one of his purple horns had broken off and there were burn-marks and bloody wounds all over his body. His skin gaped in places and the dragons were quick to target those unprotected patches.
Streams of green fire were blasted at him from five directions. He spiralled upwards, flying towards me. Gripping my belt in one hand, I confused three of the dragons and closed my eyes. Seeing through the eyes of the dragons, I caused their bodies to turn about and crash into the other dragons nearby. Leaving behind a trail of shroud, Ciera shot upwards. He hovered in front of Ayrae for a while, conversing privately through the waves.