Orlind (50 page)

‘
And
all you have to do is mend the damage that you yourself inflicted
all those years ago!’ she threw back.

His brows came
down, his eyes paling to ice-blue in his fury. ‘That cursed fool!
If he hadn’t involved the draykoni the Library would have been
mine
.’

‘
I
suppose you mean Limbane, in which case I’ve something to thank him
for after all,’ she retorted. ‘The fate of Orlind was sad, but I
can only imagine you as Master Lokantor to be a worse
prospect.’

Krays grinned,
and the column on which Eva stood dissolved into cloud. With a
startled cry, she fell...

... and landed on
a mattress of feathers. Working quickly, she jumped to her feet and
summoned some of that drifting cloud, fashioning it to solidity.
Stepping on, she found it would hold her weight. Her little cloud
levitated beautifully, bringing her back to eye-level with
Krays.

He was busy
fending off a volley of missiles hurled by Ori and Tren. Each one
turned into water before it hit him, so he remained unharmed, but
it took all his concentration to keep up.

‘
Need
to finish him,’ Tren panted. ‘Any ideas?’

She didn’t. They
were holding their own but so was he; so far they had only
succeeded in maintaining a tense stand-off which neither side was
winning or losing. How could they gain an advantage over
him?

The battle raged
on and Eva watched Krays, hoping he would tire. He showed no signs
of it. How strong
was
he? He was old, even ancient, but that
didn’t seem to slow him down. And any hint of awkwardness about his
movements had gone: he had recovered from the surgeries that made a
semi-draykon of him, then, and emerged stronger than
ever.

She, however, did
not possess inexhaustible energy. Her concentration began to fray,
her mental stamina close to exhaustion. Her body ached from being
frozen and thawed and dropped and over-exerted. But she struggled
on. Krays worked a tangling net in the skies and let it drop,
seeking to bind the three of them in its folds. She turned it to
dust and it disintegrated - but already he had another ready, then
a rain of needles, and then a cloud of poisonous gas. He turned
their precarious pedestals to water, and the ground below into
sharp rocks. They countered him at every turn, but rarely did they
gain an opportunity to strike back.

It was his
mental
agility that was the problem. Neither she nor Tren
nor Ori were lacking in intelligence; quite the opposite. But they
weren’t full Lokants either. A Lokant with draykon powers was a
fearsome foe indeed.

She blinked,
then, her attention distracted by the strange antics of the
ceiling. Stone dissipated into mist and streamed away from the
centre, leaving a large hole. A draykon-sized hole, positioned
behind
Krays where he couldn’t see it. Eva’s heart leapt
with hope. Ori couldn’t simply cause the ceiling to vanish but he
could
rearrange it and she was willing to bet that he was
behind this ploy. She averted her gaze from the coruscating mist,
unwilling to alert Krays, and glanced instead at Ori. The grin that
flashed over his face confirmed her hopes: Llandry or Pensould or
both were nearby. All they had to do was keep Krays from realising
it too, or from having time to react if he did.

‘
You
know,’ she said, flicking a drop of acid rain into his face, ‘if
you and Limbane had joined forces you would have overthrown Galywis
easily.’

Krays flinched as
the acid hit him, burning a red mark on his face. ‘Join with that
fool
?’ he growled. ‘And how would we determine who was to
rule?’

‘
Maybe
both of you could have ruled.’

Krays laughed his
derision at that idea. He opened his mouth to say something else,
but at that moment an enraged cloud-grey shape tore through the
opening in the sky and hurled itself at him. Behind Llandry came
Pensould, his blue-green scales luminous in the twilight as he
followed her lead. Krays had time for nothing more than a startled
exclamation as he fell under the combined weight of two
draykoni.

Llan and Pensould
didn’t waste any time: they knew how tricky he was. Two pairs of
heavy jaws snapped down; eight sets of wicked talons set to work to
rend
and
tear
and
shred
; one ancient Lokant
form was torn to pieces, his remains contemptuously dropped to
litter the floor of Orlind’s beleaguered Library.

Nobody spoke for
a full minute. Eva felt numb with shock; Krays’s demise was exactly
what she’d sought but the suddenness and the ferocity of it
appalled her. She stared, revolted, at the pieces of Krays that
lay, still bleeding, around her.

She looked at
Pensould, and swiftly wished she hadn’t. What in the Lowers was
he... that couldn’t be an
arm
he was chewing.

Retching, she
turned away. Tren was beside her in an instant, steadying her,
smoothing her hair. She managed a weak smile for him. ‘I’m all
right.’

‘
Um,
people...’ Ori, somewhere behind her, spoke with suppressed panic.
‘We need to get out of here.’

Eva turned,
alarmed. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘
Amasku’s out of control,’ he said. ‘Feel that?’

Focusing on the
Library, Eva saw what he meant. The distressed building was
quivering with energy only barely contained; the whirling cyclone
of energy had taken its toll, and their strange war with Krays had
damaged it further. The Library flashed through its Changes at the
rate of one every few seconds and the atmosphere shook, an
explosion building up somewhere behind it.

‘
Everyone
out!’
she screamed.

Ori, still
enthroned atop his stony plinth, jumped into the air and changed in
an instant to draykon form. He grabbed Tren, who was closest to
him, and took off, disappearing through the hole he had wrought in
the ceiling.

Llandry-as-draykon was coming for Eva, feet stretched out
ready to close around her. Eva winced: this would hurt.

It
did
hurt. Llandry collided with her at speed, snatching her up and
soaring away. This tilted perspective was too much for Eva’s
strained mind; she lost her grip on herself altogether and her
brain dissolved into helpless confusion.

‘
Don’t
forget
Galywis!’
she managed to scream before sense deserted
her altogether.

She came to
herself an unknowable time later to find she was lying in a field
of grass scattered with tiny flowers. The scent in her nostrils was
fresh and pleasant and the air cool. Twilight still blanketed the
diminished island that comprised the fallen realm of Orlind. Time
seemed unmoved and immeasurable in the chaos of the Seventh
Realm.

Only when she
turned her head, somewhat painfully, to one side did she notice the
empty space that had once held the Library.

‘
She’s
awake,’ Llandry said from somewhere nearby. Strong hands supported
her as she sat up, then Tren sat down behind her, encouraging her
to lean on him.

‘
We’re
still in Orlind,’ she said stupidly.

Llandry appeared
in her field of vision, offering a tentative smile. ‘None of us
were in good shape after all that,’ she said. ‘We didn’t think it
was safe to fly back right away.’

‘
Won’t
delay much longer though,’ Tren said.

‘
And
the Lokants?’ Krays was gone, but he had had allies flying the
machines, and potentially there had been others on the
ground.

‘
What
Lokants?’ Pensould grinned savagely. ‘Llandry and I cleaned them
up.’

Remembering the
image of Krays’s severed arm sticking out of Pensould’s mouth, Eva
decided not to ask how Pense had “cleaned them up.”

‘
Why
was
I
the only one to pass out,’ she muttered, flushed with
embarrassment.

‘
You
weren’t,’ Llandry said, smiling. ‘I came to only a few minutes ago.
Ori had a spell, too.’

‘
Hey,’
Ori said from somewhere behind her. ‘I was hoping to save
face.’

Eva chuckled. ‘So
the Library is gone?’

‘
Quite
gone,’ Llandry said. ‘I can’t decide whether to be sad or
not.’

Eva wasn’t sure
she could, either. The passing of such a remarkable creation was
undeniably sad; but if it was gone, it could no longer serve as a
temptation to the likes of Limbane and Krays. There would be no
more Lokants damaging her world in their bid to restore, and
reclaim, the Library of Orlind.

That thought
reminded her about the former Master of the Library, and she turned
where she sat, looking for him. ‘Did Galywis get out?’

‘
Yep,’
Llandry said. ‘Pensould got him.’

‘
We’ll
have to take him back with us,’ Eva said, frowning. ‘But I can’t
think what to do with him after that. I wonder if he could recover
his sanity, given time?’

Llan was shaking
her head. ‘He doesn’t want to leave. Pensould’s making him a new
house. Galy says he’ll stay and care for the island for a while
longer.’

For a while
longer. Without the Library, of course, his ageing would resume as
normal, and he would die. Possibly soon. That thought saddened her
immeasurably. So much of his potential had been wasted in the
futile guardianship of his beloved “old girl”; now he would spend
his remaining life alone on this isolated rock, his mind
gone.

But it was his
choice. And somehow she felt sure that he knew exactly what he’d
chosen, and welcomed it. He was, after all, a very strange
man.

She spent an hour
or two resting and talking over the recent events with Tren, Ori
and Llandry. Weariness deadened them all, and their speech was
desultory and reluctant. She longed for nothing so much as her bed,
at home in her own house in Glour. With hot bricks under the
blankets, and Rikbeek hiding in the curtains.

And Tren. She
would add him to the familiar picture, too.

When Pensould was
finished, they were all summoned to admire his work. And it was
impressive. He had conjured a comfortable little cottage, with neat
furniture and a vegetable patch and orchard at the back. Galywis
tried to be pleased with it, but palpably failed. She understood
that well enough. Nothing could replace his old girl.

The cottage would
suffice, though, for as long as he needed it. She bade him farewell
with real gratitude, for without his help they might never have
succeeded.

‘
May I
visit?’ she asked impulsively before they left.

‘
Visit?’ he said in surprise, staring at her with round, round
eyes. ‘Why would you want to visit me? Why would you?’

She smiled sadly.
‘Just one of my peculiarities, Galywis.’

He chuckled, and
stood on his head. ‘Visit, then, if you insist!’

Epilogue

‘
I
won’t be coming back.’ Eva stood in the Library, facing down a
reclining Limbane. In her corner she had Tren; in his he had
Andraly. The atmosphere was tense.

The Lokantor’s
response to her statement was a gimlet stare, the sort that
probably had young Lokants quaking in their shoes. On Eva, it had
no effect at all.

‘
You
forsake me, then, after everything I’ve done for you?’ said Limbane
at last.

Eva laughed. She
couldn’t help it. ‘What do you imagine you did for us? You gave us
only as much information as you had to, and kept the rest secret.
You gave me access to your Library, but only so that you could make
use of me and mine. You knew all along what Krays was up to, and
never told us. You were never fully honest, not for a
second.’

Limbane shrugged.
‘Does it matter? The day was won, one way or another.’

Tren snorted. He
stood off to one side, hands in his pockets. He might be leaving
the talking to her, but his stare, fixed on Limbane, was unusually
cold.

‘
Won,’
Eva repeated slowly. ‘For us, yes. Not for you, I think. The idea
was never to
stop
what Krays was doing, was it? In fact you
were in favour of his taking back Orlind, no matter what it did to
our Cluster. You were going to let him do the hard part, then take
the Master Library off him later. Is that not the
truth?’

Limbane’s stare
didn’t let up for a second. ‘Why does this seem to make sense to
you?’

‘
Because you wanted it as badly as he did.
Both
of you
were responsible for the destruction of the Master Library and the
land around it, because you were fighting over it so hard you lost
control of yourselves. Has your desire to be the Master Librarian
faded away over the years? Of course not.’

Limbane shook his
head, a look of contempt on his lined face. ‘And you imagine I
needed Krays to do the work for me? I have more than enough
resources to do it for myself, if I’d wanted to.’

‘
Probably,’ Eva agreed, ‘but why would you waste your time and
resources when you could let him do it? Besides, there was a
complication. You knew that Galywis was still alive.’