QUITE THE TEAM. IN less than ten minutes, the companions ransacked the cart, packed anything of use that could be easily transported and ditched the rest. The tensori lizards were not best impressed to have to carry riders but a quartet of firm hands of instruction from Hazintwine and a meaningful growl or two from Sabline ensured reasonable behaviour.
Allory tweaked Yaarah’s tufted left ear. “What was that look?”
“Which one, mrrr-frrr?”
“The flagrant gawping, Mister Dribbles-Fires.”
“She has a beautiful tail. What’s a fiery beast supposed to do, not look? Grrr-frrrt!”
“I believe your gaze was aimed a little higher than her tail.”
Yaarah bared his fangs and pretended to make a playful pawing motion toward the object of his regard. “Gnarr.”
They both blushed.
Good thing Sabline happened to be looking in the other direction just then, or their lives would not have been worth living.
Harzune split up his Chameleons quickly, a dozen per Felidragon and the same for the two lizards. Ashueli carried Zzuriel in a special cold-resistant protective pouch Yaarah had been working on. Seeing her, Xiximay and Sabline together was a treat, all the dark warriors in one group. When they moved out onto the road again, however, it was in the sure knowledge that many, many enemies hunted this night. Indeed, as they descended the long decline from the hill, orange draconic fire flared intermittently in the distance and in three places, towers of flame roared where entire mushroom villages had been torched. Veils of inky black smoke drifted across Centresky, obscuring any ambient light that might escape around the Shyraiama Dragon screen.
It frightened her to recognise how just minutes before she had been stamping holes in rocks, yet now she had already become accustomed to the new weight. Allory felt as stretched as spider silk, enormously strong yet ultimately, she feared there must come a breaking point.
The Scintillant pulled up with a yelp of astonishment. Had she just thought of herself as strong?
First time for everything.
“Allory, frrr-hssst?”
“Merely an unexpected thought,” said she, explaining.
“Murrr-hurrr-harrr!” the Golden Purrmaine chortled in his husky way, drawing a quelling glare from Sabline. “Do you recall, friend Fae, an early conversation between us?”
Her cheeks heated up. Again! Hot sapphire. “Something about the Felidragon always being right?”
“Indeed, yet I would have you know I have moved beyond such crass and puerile one-upmanship,” he declared loftily. “Now, I shall express it thus: I had a whiskers-sense about you from the first, Allory Fae. However insignificant you may think you are, I see you. Middlesun itself sees you and delights in the doings of your tiny sapphire hands –”
“Yaarah, purrr-trrr, over this way.”
He glanced up in surprise as Sabline veered off. “Oh, I say! It appears that Hazintwine has decided to go cross-country.”
She pointed ahead to their new trajectory. “That’s because the road switches back – several times, I see. Why should any winged creature follow an actual road?”
“Indeed. On that note, why should any Scintillant Fae fear to fly beneath Centresky?”
“Oh. Oh, suggids!”
“You do not fear it as before, true?”
“I’m a little nervous. Respectfully nervous, I suppose – but look at my poor sisfae there beside Hazintwine – um, Hazintwine … number two, that is.”
“She has her eyes shut.”
“We were always taught to hide and hide deep. Let me go over and speak with her and the other Scintillants.”
How could the timidest of all hope to reassure her fellow sparklers?
Could Yaarah be right about this change within her? If so, was it all for good? And if it was good, then why did it scare the living sap out of her bones?
The older Elf had an excellent eye for terrain even in the darkness, Sabline observed lightly as they charged pell-mell down a seventy-degree slope and swerved the pair of lizards to avoid a small cliff. She and Yaarah winged overhead, resting their outspread wings during this initial descent. Harzune, standing comfortably upon the sable Felidragon’s shoulder, most likely with the intent of keeping close to his Diamond Fae muse, scanned the terrain alertly but appeared content with their direction and progress. To their left hands and paws, the unnatural dark storm steadily ate up the sky. More smoke than clouds in that central section, Allory thought, the unimaginable power of its flame clearly visible in the ominous backlighting of the sooty billows. The wind blew steadily from that direction, bringing the acrid scents of sulphur, charred green wood and a faint, eerie tingle of magic to her senses.
She touched her antennae. Yaarah had his infallible whiskers. A Faerie had these beauties.
Was this the genocidal signature of Farzuli, or Wraêthu … or perhaps many other creatures who could all be the Wraith in one form or another? How many innocent – or not so innocent – creatures had it parasitized over the centuries?
To her surprise, her eyes turned slowly toward the long road leading to the city. By tilting her antennae and engaging in a touch of tentative magical experimentation, Allory found she could pinpoint the direction from which the sensation teased her most – well, should she call it an antennae-sense? Scintillant teachings had barely mentioned the idea but when it quivered right above her nose, so to speak, a girlfae ought to pay attention.
Raising her hand to point, Allory whispered, “I sense Fae out … there.”
The other five Scintillants gasped as one.
Izrimy said, “Sickening how she does that. Go on, glow it up, sisfae.”
Allory winced and dropped her gaze. In the flick of the smallest wingtip, all her old feelings were back and it was impossible for her not to let them pierce through and through, until her heart seemed riddled by daggers of malicious frost and she felt smaller than ever before.
“Keep the illusions strong, Chameleons,” Varzune said at once, fixing a level stare upon Izrimy. “Allory, by way of covering up your sparkle, may I offer a leather pouch, a nice dark bottle or the Princess’ perfumed undies?”
She mock-glared at him. “Hilarious.”
The Jokerbro was quick to share this new intelligence with the warriors of their group, however. The swarming Dragons and Fire Raptors had begun to move off toward the far side of the city, but the attacks showed no sign of abating. Fire raged in dozens of locations, now. Allory wondered if people would even dare to flee along this road, or whether they’d head away from the storm to the sun-spinward direction. That question was soon answered in part as they encountered increasing numbers of smoke-blackened refugees stumbling up the road, coughing nonstop and rubbing their grimy, weeping eyes.
My heart beats lumpy rocks for these Slavers.
Most probably, ninety-nine percent of Marakusians had nothing to do with the slave trade. Narked by the darksap anger she sensed swirling in her breast, Allory swatted this inconvenient truth aside. What if her boneyard contained the bones of these Slavers? Would she raise such virulent scum back to life? Ignore that! Sap of her ancestors, she had bigger issues to worry about – yet a niggle lodged in her brain. If indeed she carried souls in her locket, would she presume to judge them too? Was there any entity, any numinous force beyond Spheris that judged those who entered the afterlife, or could they rest peacefully forever despite the evil they might have perpetrated during their living years?
Sobering questions.
The city turned out to be far farther than Allory had estimated. They ran and flew for over four hours across undulating grasslands, detouring to avoid the raging bonfires, before finally nearing the tall, tan battlements. Did she remember the Wraith granting its allied Dragons new strength, new powers to take the battle to Human cities? Their defences, despite spitting powerful javelins, did not appear to the untrained eye to be terribly effective – but the weighted nets were, entangling and downing even the most massive Raptors or Dragons so that they could be dealt with in what Yaarah had once called the old-fashioned way. The way that Humans used to hunt draconic creatures for protection and sport.
Allory knew she would never forget the smells and sights of this night. Most of the companions had to cover their mouths and noses with cloths against the stench of burning mushrooms and … other things. The bonfires burned so heatedly that they scorched the grass in a radius of dozens of feet around each village.
Thousands of bodies lay strewn across the grasslands, stung, burned and cut down by talon or fang. No discrimination. From infants to elders, every last Marakusian had been slaughtered mercilessly.
What was the point? Except, to collect souls …
The Wraith must be planning something. Something big.
When they approached the city, they found that the great white gates stood shut. Perhaps the decision had been that the citizens must be kept inside for their safety, but if so, it was not a popular one. Considering the bedlam rising from within, Allory assumed that a full-blown riot had to be taking place. In her vast experience of the subject, Humans did like to settle their differences with their fists or weapons where yelling purple-faced at one another failed to satisfy.
Harzune raised his finger. “All –”
“Inside,” Allory noted. He cocked his head, a mute question. “I think the Slavers must have made it to this city several hours ago. They’re a little … over that way.”
“Nice sparkles, Sparkles,” said Varzune, flicking wingtips with her.
She rubbed her upper arms self-consciously. “Well, we’re not getting inside in a hurry, are we?”
Sabline snorted, “Winged creatures, gnarrr-frrr?”
Right. As her companions chucked at her expense, she reflected that constant gaffes like this did not help a runt to feel any less diminutive.
Shake it off.
Ash put in, “May I suggest a plan? The Felidragons go up and find those Faerie, taking strong backup. The rest of us should rush around to the far side of the city and find cover. We’ll rendezvous there when the rescue party comes out.”
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“Good plan,” Harzune approved. “I don’t like the idea of splitting up, but we are in a tearing hurry.”
Hazintwine said, “Princess, if you could find an armourer inside to supply a couple of Elven longbows and a stock of arrows, I’d feel more useful to the cause.”
“Supply?” she echoed mildly.
“I’d suggest leaving compensation, but I believe their livelihoods are about to be wrecked anyway,” he pointed out in tandem. “Is royalty above the necessary appropriation of property?”
Four eyebrows challenged her. Elves really did say a great deal with their eyebrows, Allory observed. It must be a whole separate branch of the language. What would she call it, highbrow hairese? Snicker.
Owner of a pair of spiky sapphire brows, she was one to talk.
“Normally, I would be,” Ashueli grinned back, “but if honesty is called for, I’d be forced to admit to having been the unwilling and dumbfounded owner of a Scintillant Faerie in a cage for all of five or ten minutes or thereabouts, so evidently, my reputation is already in tatters. Besides running away from my prenuptial acquisition contract. I’m a very bad Princess.”
“How awful of you,” he chuckled, “and how positively prehistoric of your father.”
“The Synshuviar are nothing but sticklers for the most admirable aspects of our traditions.”
“You’re my kind of Princess,” Varzune claimed meantime, flicking the point of her right ear with his wingtip. Ash hissed in annoyance. He added, “So, warriors, who’s staying behind to help protect our lizards plus cargo?”
Harzune did not miss a beat. “Thanks for volunteering, brofae.”
“Ouch. I flew slap into that one, didn’t I?”
His brofae delivered a playful slap of the real kind to underscore his point. Was this assignment a form of punishment? Xiximay’s reaction suggested satisfaction; Varzune brushed it off, but she thought she saw a glitter in his yellow eyes she did not trust. The Jokerbro hid his feelings well, but he was not devoid of emotional responses or intelligence – except that he and the Phoenix Fae appeared to be bent upon going at each other like needle and unwilling cloth. Plenty of pricking and prickling.
Deep in her sap, she knew it would all explode at some point. The trajectory of their relationship was as inevitable as Middlesun’s daily dawning from behind the Shyraiama Dragons.
After the group split up, Allory flew with the pair of Felidragons up and over the city wall. It was immediately evident that the massive force of larger, scaly Dragons had made merry here in the recent past. Numerous houses had been torched and the marks of battle were everywhere, including several downed Fire Raptors, which must have been struck down by defensive net-catapults and swarmed by bowmen and axemen. Bow shots to the vulnerable eyes. No amount of fancy armour would stop those shots. Axes to the wing joints and necks, to stop them from ever flying again.
The Scintillant averted her eyes, horrified at the destructive capabilities of both Men and Beasts, as the legends would have styled this clash. Probably in prettier, more poetic language. ‘Legions of the fearless fallen,’ and all that. Less emphasis on the blood running foot-deep in the gutters of this town.
They winged quickly into a maze of tall, conical rooftops in no colour other than green. Tiny green tiles laid out in mosaic designs upon every roof, cheerful green patterns beside the windows and even the mats fronting their doorways were green. Allory deliberately squashed the idea that it might all look pretty in the daylight, a kind of Marakusian interpretation of the jungle.
Sabline glanced up alertly. “I sense an active battle on the far side of the city. Be alert.”
Harzune said, “Keep the illusion tight, Chameleons. Allory, point us in the right direction, please. Quick as you can.”
No stress at all. Just make her unreliable scintillance behave itself on command for a change. Nothing, nothing, and more … no, there it was, like the faintest fragrant trail drifting across the rooftops, only she understood this was no physical scent. Could other creatures – darker, malicious creatures – track the Faerie like this? Could that be what had brought those raiders to her colony and spelled her people’s downfall? She turned her neck this way and that, seeking steadily as they drifted silently across the rooftops of Marakore town. It stank worse than Durhelm Castle, a truly worthy achievement. Something about a diet of variegated mushrooms and gaseous digestion, she supposed, trying not to let the epic pong distract her from her purpose.
“Left a touch,” she breathed. “No, more this way … a little farther …”
“I smell a couple of smitheries down below,” Xiximay noted. Probably smelled like the Phoenix Fae did sometimes, Allory mused. Intriguing. Was her magic somehow metallic in nature?
“Yaarah?” Sabline inquired.
He said, “You go in, zrrr-frrr. We’ll watch your tails.”
“Watch this.” That onyx tail flicked saucily, causing the scholar’s belly fires to sough in admiration and immediately again, with embarrassment at the first reaction.
The Sabrefang ghosted down into the faintly firelit gloom. This part of town was not as busy, but heavily armed bands of Marakusians still roamed the streets in great numbers. Allory tracked them with her Faerie night sight. Aha, she should have remembered that wicked Princesses also possessed skills in lockpicking. In they went. Out. In the next. Four doors down. Still no luck.
Yaarah ducked abruptly.
“Eep!” Allory squeaked as a massive set of wings pummelled the air a mere couple of feet overhead. Fire Raptor!
No, it was a draconic creature similar to a Raptor in size and body shape, but this one was a deep burned crimson colour rather than pure onyx. The humongous creature scented the atmosphere as it passed by, drawing huge volumes of air with a rushing sound into its overlarge nostrils. She sang two notes briefly, almost breathlessly.
Nothing here. Just a conical rooftop.
The creature paused, tilted its immense muzzle again and pointed to the smithery their team had just entered. “That onesss, isss sssmelllsss nassstiessss.”
One of the Chameleons twittered a warning birdcall. At the very same instant, four burly grey Dragons hurtled up from the next street over. Blurring into the corner of her vision, a tan Elvish hand scragged Harzune as he darted out between the thick forge doors in search of danger.
Heroic, but completely the wrong move to make just now.
Bang! The doors slammed together.
GRAAABOOMM!! Fire detonated against the building as the foursome let rip with everything they had. Sheets of orange licked hungrily around the wooden structure, already taking hold too quickly to be extinguished, Allory sensed.
Galzune clapped his hand over her mouth as she made an inadvertent squeak of horror. “Shh.”
A sinuous green Dragon had turned up. He snarled in a voice like rusty nails holding an impromptu party, “What’s going on here, Long Nose?”
The Raptor-like creature hissed, “Isss sssmelllsss goodnesss, wantsss feedsss.”
“That is not the Master’s will.”
Allory stared at the hovering, dark burgundy beast in hapless fascination. Its eyes were almost completely black and fireless, its manner eerily calm. She could not help but imagine she stared into the eyes of death itself. There could be no doubt. Every scale of that beast proclaimed him a killer. An executioner among Dragons.
“I FEEDSSS!”
“When you find the Fae shipment! Curse their bones, those sneaky Marakusians –” the green Dragon paused to spit a gobbet of flame across Yaarah’s left wing, but the Felidragon barely twitched despite what must have been searing pain “– withholding the goods for a better price! We’ll teach them! Stop playing about and scent them out, Long Nose. You’ll get your reward, as surely as my fires roar: GRROOOAAARRGGGHH!!”
As he bellowed, the roof of that forge caved in. Ash! Sabline! Pray they had long since bolted to safety while she had been mesmerised by this encounter.
The green gathered his hunting team of greys with a low snarl, “We’re done here. Let’s move. Lead the way, Long Nose.”
Quivering with eagerness, the creature spread its dusky wings and drifted away over the rooftops like a living nightmare.
“Follow them,” Allory breathed into Yaarah’s ear.
“Good idea, mrrr-hrrrm,” he said.
Somewhere at the back of that forge, she heard a clash of weapons and Sabline’s breathy snarl. A man’s scream chopped off almost the instant it began. Much closer to the spot as the Felidragon shifted his position, she overheard Sabline and Ashueli exchanging identical questions, “You alright?” “Yeah.” “You?”
Like they were twins. Hazintwine twins.
“Quick. Get Irmazile to Allory,” the Felidragon growled.
Her heart leaped into her throat. Allory would have fluttered free save for Galzune, who on second thoughts, raced along in tandem with her, one of his strong warrior hands gripping her waist belt. He grunted, “Camouflage. You’re bright.”
“I try not to be – Irmazile, oh no …”
The young female warrior had a long, wickedly serrated dagger embedded in her right thigh – it must have scraped the bone on the way past, even protruding an inch from the back, more down toward the knee. The Chameleon gasped something about being fine. Aye, that typical warrior spirit.
Somehow beautiful and silly at the same time.
Allory began to pull at the dagger’s handle before instinct stopped her. She checked deeper. “That’s hit an artery. I’ll need cloth and a much bigger pair of hands – Harzune? Suggids! This thing’s serrated worse than a Felidragon’s fangs. Not good.”
Everyone clustered about her, arguing about a lack of ready cloth.
Fury bubbled! “Warriors! Follow those Dragons. I’ll deal with this” Allory snapped in her usual miniature fury that everyone appeared to think was too cute for words. She yanked off her semaloon skirt, leaving just her undershorts. Aghast gasps! She hissed, “My modesty or her life? Please. How’s that even a question?”
Allory meant to shame them and did. At once, she chewed on her own lower lip until she tasted Fae blood. All these unpleasant, unwanted darksap emotions consuming her mind – how could she stop them?
Yaarah’s flight bobbed and weaved as they tracked the bigger Dragons toward their goal. Twice, the Scintillant popped her head up and told them her antennae-sense put the trace of Faerie in a different direction; both times, the Long Nose promptly started a booming argument with the other Dragons about how a scent-hunter could possibly track anything through this disgusting cesspit of Human foulness.
Fair point.
Opening her skirt and re-weaving its shape and density with song, meantime, Allory wound the fabric around the injured leg and bade it tighten. “There, that’s stopped most of the bleeding. We’ll treat that when we’ve a better chance to – Harzune! Those two carts. I … it’s them, I’m sure of it.”
She pointed down at a narrow alleyway well-hidden beneath the eaves of the abutting buildings.
The slavers were on the run.
A second later, they were glad not to be too adjacent in the pursuit because several heavy crossbows fired from close range at the grey Dragons, downing one with a ricochet eye shot and fatally injuring another with a powerful strike that plugged directly into the fiery underside of its throat. Must have hit a vulnerable spot. Did the Wraith not want its minions to become too invincible?
Hmm. More grist for the mortal mill of the boneyard? Subtle treachery would be perfectly in keeping with what she understood of the Wraith’s ways.
Yaarah flinched at the ‘thwock’ each arrow made. The surviving threesome, however, swarmed over the cart and returned the favour by tossing one man over the nearest house, trampling another and spearing a third through the chest. Two more tried to flee; they did not make it more than ten steps before the lithe green Dragon slammed a fireball into their backs.
Horror!
Allory knew that the image of those Marakusian men running like mobile torches and the pitch of their screaming would haunt her for the rest of her life.
The Long Nose sniffed hungrily. “Isss whole coloniesss of goodnesss.”
One of the greys flipped back the tarpaulin covering the square cages. Faerie! She muffled a gasp. The cages contained dozens upon dozens of Faerie of an unfamiliar light green, slightly luminescent colouration. Maybe a hundred at first guess. Many were Faelings. They whimpered at the sight of the Dragons. The Dragons grinned back evilly, acting well pleased with their discovery.
No more Scintillants. Sigh. Disappointed as she was that this was not her family either, Allory found herself gritting her teeth. She knew what to do; again, no question about what was right and what she sensed her companions would agree upon with one accord.
Tangentially, she heard Ashueli tensioning what could only be a bowstring. Harzune tersely ordered her to wait.
Pressure built behind her ears. Yaarah and Sabline shook; she did not understand why at first, but then a mental exclamation rolled over her mind like thunder. Both Felidragons staggered drunkenly in the air, but her reflex response, a piping snippet of song, appeared to pierce their mental fog and confusion. They shook their muzzles furiously in response, but thankfully kept silent.
Below, in the alleyway where the carts had stopped, the green Dragon shook his muzzle too, but his eyes had turned wholly black now, like twin graves bracketed by hollow sockets. He rasped, “We must return. The Master has commanded it.”
Suggids, could that be the signature of mental enslavement?
Allory swivelled briefly on Yaarah’s back. Aye. All of the other Fire Raptors and Dragons streamed back toward the towering storm.
There must be something inside. A lair. A place they called home.
Suddenly, from the alleyway, she heard a Dragon scream. The green Dragon and the one called Long Nose clashed briefly but furiously, crashing into the buildings bordering on the alleyway and half-burying one cart in rubble. The fight ended with the green stuck beneath the dark crimson creature’s claws, wriggling helplessly as the muscles bulged and mounded in more powerful creature’s leg and shoulder to lock in a death grip.
The Raptor hissed at the other three, “Goesss. Your Massster callsss.”
One began to respond, “We should –”
The creature’s eyes gleamed with a baleful light. “Yousss should goesss.”
“We should go,” the grey agreed obediently. He and his fellows took off heavily, the gusts of their wingtips knocking more streams of tiles off the nearby rooftops. Abruptly released, the slim green Dragon scrambled to his paws and took off in a flapping hurry that confirmed he knew how narrowly he had escaped with his life.
Allory’s eyes grew huge and round. Now that she had not expected. Maybe magic among the Faerie was not the only kind changing, growing more unpredictable. And in her own mind, why did she suddenly start to recall many visions of different aspects of such powers, almost as if she herself had been schooled to forget all but the present; to revel what was immediate, to be the submissive, accepting, spineless creature she had been before?
What was the matter with her?
I will change this fate. Shape my own melody. Sing a new song of remembering.
Even as these thoughts glimmered afresh in her mind, a set of huge black talons hooked into a couple of the cages, shaking them experimentally. “Foodsss.”
The Faerie cried out in shrill distress.
With that, the hulking creature turned and gazed directly at her! To Allory’s utmost horror, it hissed, “Come out of hidingsss, more tasssty foodsss!”