Orlind (2 page)

And he would save
the realm. He was determined. He would save it for Ynara and for
Llandry, and
hope
that they would recover enough to enjoy
it.

The sounds of
on-going battle continued unabated as his team strove to build
Aysun’s new machine. They were all trying to ignore the conflict,
but he could see that the strain wore on them. They all had more
than enough imagination to guess what was occurring outside, and
the work could never progress quickly enough.

‘
Calm
down, Ays,’ came Rufin’s voice. ‘Strutting about like a frenzied
bokren-bird isn’t going to get it done faster.’

Aysun scowled at
his friend. Rufin - another Irbellian citizen - was no engineer,
but he was something of a weapons expert. At least, he knew more
about guns than anyone else Aysun knew, and as such his presence
was necessary. But his acerbic comments didn’t help any more than
Aysun’s pacing did.

‘
How
are the bullets coming?’ he asked.

‘
Fine,’ Rufin grunted. He was seated at a bench with two
assistants under his command, the three of them fashioning Aysun’s
newly-designed bullets as fast as possible. He’d managed to alter
the design of a couple of manufactory gadgets to help them; the
machine did the hard work of producing the raw object, and Rufin
and his team refined them by hand. It was a dull, thankless task,
but to their credit the three kept up the pace without
complaint.

Aysun clapped him
on the back. ‘If there are problems, let me know. Otherwise, keep
it up.’

Rufin merely
grunted again in reply. Aysun made his way back to where the first
machine was being assembled, judging it about time for the next
phase of construction. He was right: his engineers had just
finished putting the frame together, and now it was time to fit the
parts. Aysun had already wrought the new fittings and he remained
in attendance while they were put in place, ensuring that
everything went together as planned.

When the group
finished, somewhat less than an hour later, Aysun surveyed the
machine. A huge wood-and-metal frame supported an even larger gun,
modified on Rufin’s advice. The weapon was designed to be fairly
flexible in its movements, allowing the person who operated the gun
to aim it accurately at moving targets.

The thing would
take Rufin’s enormous, hide-piercing bullets in strings and fire
them in a ceaseless barrage, and at a much longer range than any
hand weapon. If it worked, it would satisfy all of Aysun’s
criteria. Instead of one enormous missile, they would have many
smaller ones, most of which had a fair chance of hitting the target
and piercing the thick, scaled hide. If they could get enough of
those bullets into a draykon, the beast would probably
fall.

Failing that,
they could at least shoot the wings to shreds and ground the beast,
in which position the troops would have a much easier time of
finishing it off.

‘
Time
to test,’ Aysun ordered. The engineers backed away from the
machine, leaving Aysun to operate it.

He did so with
enormous trepidation. This was the best effort his team could make.
He had no more ideas, and they had no more time. If they couldn’t
make it work
now
, they were out of options.

He powered it up,
turning the crank as fast as he could. A stream of bullets shot
from the weapon and thudded into the far wall with enough force to
tear a large hole in the woodwork. He angled it up and down and it
responded with ease.

By the time he’d
finished, most of the wall was gone.

A cheer went up
around him, and Aysun allowed himself to join in for a time. Then
he sobered. That it worked in the workshop was fantastic, but they
still had to test it against a real moving target.

‘
Right, get it out there,’ he barked. He wanted to operate it
himself, but he couldn’t; he was needed to oversee the construction
of as many more of these things as his team could possibly produce.
They would be handing this machine over to the army.

But for the first
time today, he felt a touch of hope. They were no longer helpless
against the draykoni.

The machine was
wheeled out of the workshop and, cheered by their success, the
engineers fell to work on the next with renewed enthusiasm. But the
buoyant atmosphere didn’t last long. Half an hour later, a
messenger came tearing into the building, shouting at Aysun to be
heard over the noise of construction.

‘
Sir,’
yelled the messenger. ‘The draykoni are gone.’

For a moment
Aysun could only blink stupidly at the man. ‘Gone?’ he managed.
‘What do you mean, gone?’

‘
They’re just gone! Ten minutes ago they all turned about and
flew off together, like there was some signal they all heard but we
didn’t. And that’s it. They’re gone.’

Some of the
engineers had heard the messenger’s words and stopped work. Aysun
halted the rest, and silence fell in the workshop.

True silence, for
there was little sound either inside or outside of the building.
The noises of battle had entirely died away. The man was right: the
draykons had left.

The news ought to
have cheered him, he knew. It meant his team had an unexpected
reprieve, more time to prepare their new weapon against the next
attack. But the draykoni’s sudden departure troubled him too
much.

The enemy had
been winning, decisively. Had Aysun’s new gun alarmed them that
much? He doubted it. He hoped it would prove a potent weapon, but
he had no illusions that twenty or thirty draykoni would flee the
field on the mere appearance of one machine. There had to be some
other explanation.

But what could it
be? They might have taken their attack somewhere else; another city
in Glinnery, perhaps, or even Glour. But all their might had so far
been levelled at Waeverleyne. Why would they leave that conquest
unfinished, and move on to another?

Aysun feared that
this sudden departure was bad news indeed, far worse than any of
them knew. But it was impossible to guess what might have motivated
their enemy.

‘
Right,’ he said. ‘We make the most of this time. We’ll start
working in shifts, so some of us can sleep, but I want at least ten
of those machines ready before the draykoni come back.’

‘
But
they could come back at any time,’ somebody said, in a voice of
bewilderment.

‘
Yes,’
Aysun said. ‘I know. We’d better work fast, hm?’

Chapter Two

Trapped somewhere
under the weight of her dreams, Llandry Sanfaer was unable to wake.
Her conscious mind had been thoroughly subdued and her dream-self
refused to release it.

This fact did not
trouble Llandry overmuch. In fact, she had never felt less troubled
in her life. It seemed to her that she occupied a perfect world,
her dreams so full of tranquil colour that she never wished to
leave. Her mamma was there, healed and well and restored to her
usual beloved self. Papa was with her as well, and Sigwide of
course. Their house had become an island, floating high over the
glittering glissenwol forests of her home, the realm of Glinnery.
Up there the weather was always beautiful and the air sweet, and no
hint of trouble could reach them.

Some small part
of her knew that her mind lied. She felt the perilous weight of
care and trouble and harm that hung poised over her life, felt it
as a distant shadow that threatened her perfect happiness. All her
strength of will was gone, drained away while she lay insensate day
after day. There was only the weak and frightened part of her soul,
and that part of her only fled harder from the threat of
disaster.

And so she
floated quietly along in her beautiful dream and time wandered
past. She felt that she had a guardian, some silent but immoveable
presence that watched over her idyllic existence and kept all
dangers far from her. This presence had never said a word, and she
had never seen the particular form that it took; but she knew that
it - he - was always there.

Only one day the
presence developed a voice. It whispered her name, over and over
again until she wanted to scream. The voice grew steadily louder
and more insistent, shattering her peace. Then her guardian began
to pull at her, tugging with invisible hands, bruising her skin in
his eagerness to tear her away from her parents. She felt he would
cast her over the edge of her island paradise and she would fall so
many miles to the ground. There, of course, she would die. Hurt and
bewildered and frightened by her guardian’s betrayal, she
fought.

But he was much
stronger than she. She had known it all along: therein lay the
reason for her profound feeling of safety. As long as her guardian
watched over her, all would be well. But when his strength and
power were turned against her, she could not long resist. She tried
to cling to the soft summer sun that shone on her little island,
the clear skies and gentle breeze, her smiling parents and Sigwide
asleep in her lap. She screamed her fury as she was dragged
inexorably backwards, away from the parents who continued to smile,
oblivious, as she was brought to the edge of the precipice and then
cast, still screaming, over the side.

She fell, a long,
long way. Her precious island receded rapidly until it dwindled to
a mere speck in the endless skies. She continued to fall for so
long she began to wonder if she would do so forever; perhaps there
was no ground in this strange place. And so the impact, when it
finally came, took her by surprise.

Agony flared, for
a brief, searing instant, and then all awareness faded.

When she opened
her eyes once more, she had the sensation that eternity had passed.
Relief flooded her at finding herself alive; but that feeling faded
when she realised that her perfect world was gone. No soft sunshine
met her frightened gaze. The warmth and fragrance of summer was
absent. Worse, no Mamma waited to greet her.

Instead, she was
in a small, unfamiliar room. She lay in bed, virtually smothered
under the weight of several heavy blankets. Armchairs and bookcases
and cupboards met her wandering gaze: all mundane, and
frighteningly alien. This was not her island, nor was it her
home.

Growing
frightened, she tried to sit up, but she was swaddled so tightly in
her blankets that she could barely move. She tried to speak, but
nothing emerged from her raw throat save a faint, and to her ears
pathetic, whimper.

Suddenly the
blankets were ripped away from her and she was grabbed, dragged
into a pair of strong arms and alternately shaken and embraced with
crushing force. Somebody was saying something, but it took some
moments for her confused brain to let go of its tranquil dream and
focus on the reality.

It was Pensould
who embraced her, of course. He was apparently torn between relief
and anger, for he was scolding her in a stream of words even as he
held her to him with enough force to knock all the breath out of
her.

‘
Who
could have guessed that I had saddled myself with such a lazy and
indolent
minchu?
’ he was saying. ‘You will sleep your life
away, little idiot, and never spare a thought for those unfortunate
beings you leave behind. What of your parents, hm? Will you go into
the Long Sleep without even
me?’

‘
Pensould,’ she managed at last in a dry croak.
‘Stop.’

‘
Stop?’
he raged. ‘Is that all you’ve to say to me,
wretched one? You ought to be eaten for your laziness. That is what
should be done with lazy children like yourself. What more have you
to say?’

‘
You’re...
killing me,
’ she gasped.

His arms loosed
their choking grip and he sat back a little.

‘
It
would serve you right, my wicked Minchu, if I did squeeze you to
death,’ he retorted. ‘Tis undoubtedly what you deserve for the
many, many hours of painful anticipation you’ve given
me.’

‘
That’s harsh,’ she objected. She might have said more, but she
was occupied with replenishing her supply of air.

‘
Is
it?’ Pensould demanded. ‘Do you deny that you’ve been living in a
most-happy dream world while the rest of us fret and worry out our
hearts over you?’

‘
I
don’t deny it,’ she said crossly. ‘It was nice up
there.’

He snorted. ‘Of
course it was. What you were doing, disgraceful one, was wandering
off, merry as a lamb, into your Long Sleep. That is, death, in your
terms. Of course it was pleasant.’

He sounded so
grumpy that Llan’s heart sank. She had been ripped from her
comfortable world and restored, most abruptly, to a reality that
offered only disaster and despair. She was distraught enough
without suffering such severe disapproval from him as
well.

‘
I
don’t understand,’ she said, easing her weakened body into a
sitting position and crossing her legs. ‘I wasn’t
dying.’

‘
Yes,’
he corrected. ‘You were. That state is precisely the state I placed
myself into when I wished to stop living. Its eventual result is
the slowing of all bodily processes until they cease, after which
the body itself decays. It is a most pleasant way to pass
on.’