Perilous Shadows: Book 6 Circles of Light (22 page)

Kazbeck led quickly to
the western edge of the black paved square. There was no moon
tonight, which was an added advantage. They paused, crouching in
the dark. Corim leaned close to murmur in Kazbeck’s ear.

‘You thinking of the
back?’

Kazbeck’s teeth
glimmered white as he grinned. ‘Seem to remember there were fewer
windows on that side.’

Both men held long
knives in their left hands and, ignoring the great flight of steps,
now ran fast for the side of the Menedula. They’d already noted
there were no windows at ground level, and only the large main door
at the front. The door Ren had taken them through at the back, had
been not much wider than an average door, but they found that was
securely bolted against intruders.

Silently they worked
their way along the wall until they came to another door, much
narrower than normal. Corim felt around the outline of the door and
ran his hand across its surface. He nudged Kazbeck and guided his
hand to a place, waist high, on the door. The wood seemed indented.
There was no latch or handle, just a small thumb sized dip in the
surface. They turned to each other in the faint starlight and
nodded. Corim pushed his thumb against the dip. Without warning his
thumb seemed to go much farther into the wood. The door swung
inwards without a hint of sound.

The two guards stood
for a moment, not having expected such an easy entrance, then Corim
took a cautious step forward. While he tried to work out whether he
was in a room or a passage, Kazbeck felt over the inside of the
door. He found a short but thick cord hanging down and realised
that was how this door was opened from within. Corim touched his
arm.

‘Stairs. No other doors
here, just stairs up.’

Kazbeck gently let the
door close and moved behind Corim. Corim was grateful the stairs
were stone, no creaking wood to betray their presence. The stairs
zigzagged and by counting each flight, they assumed they’d climbed
seven floors. At no point had there been a window or door, just the
stairs rising between two smooth walls. Corim stopped and eased to
one side. Kazbeck saw a door directly ahead, perhaps two paces from
the top of the stairs. Light glowed in a line beneath the door and
the two guards crept closer, listening for any sound from the room
or passage which might lie beyond.

They heard nothing but
Corim suddenly shivered and spun back to the stairs, his long knife
raised. His vision, accustomed as it had become to the dark, had
been ruined by that bright sliver of light from under the door and
he could see absolutely nothing. He braced his feet but something
grabbed his upper arms in an agonising grip that made his arms numb
in heartbeats. His knife clattered to the stone floor but Corim
didn’t hear it. His throat was torn out, his head nearly severed
from his body, and he was dead before his knife landed.

Kazbeck had only time
to half turn when the door flew open. He squinted against the blaze
of light and just made out the figure of the child he’d seen in the
Oblaka: Mena. Kazbeck looked back at the small dark landing and saw
Corim’s sprawled body, his head at such an angle that Kazbeck knew
his friend was dead. He could see no one else. Who could have
attacked Corim so swiftly and silently, and then vanished? He drew
his sword and again turned to the girl.

Huge violet eyes,
surrounded with silver, watched him with an expression of
boredom.

‘Oh do put those toys
down.’

She moved further back
into the room, which Kazbeck thought was the room he’d entered
before, with all the company. Keeping sword and knife at the ready,
he took one step into the room. He saw no one else, only the girl.
Mena sat down in a straight backed chair and gave Kazbeck a glance
altogether too knowing and adult for one of her years. She smiled,
and it was neither a pleasant nor childish smile.

‘I wondered how long it
would take one of you to find that door. It’s a pity you didn’t
bring your friends, especially that gross woman with the awful
teeth. Never mind. You’ll just have to be the example.’

The creature that
appeared behind Kazbeck was misshapen and foul, but it received a
genuine smile from Mena. Before Kazbeck could turn, claws raked
down his back, shredding his shirt and the flesh beneath. A narrow,
rat like head lowered and teeth snapped through Kazbeck’s spine.
The last thing Kazbeck heard was the girl’s laughter. His last
thought a silent scream of warning to Essa and Lady
Tika.

Kija and Storm were
already on their way from the cabin as Tika shot upright in her
blankets. She focused her mind on Essa and concentrated a line of
thought. But her thought collided with Essa’s: clearly Essa too had
been roused by Kazbeck’s death cry. Sket poked the fire up to a
blaze and turned to look at Tika. He saw Dromi sitting up watching
Tika too. Rhaki was propped on an elbow, clutching his head, and
Shivan’s bright yellow eyes were wide with horror. Most of the
others were waking and looking to Tika for explanation.

Tika swallowed.
‘Kazbeck is dead.’ Her gaze found Kazmat and she sent a mental
pulse of sympathy towards the guard. ‘I think Corim is also dead.
Somehow Kazbeck sent a call to me, and to Essa I’d guess, but it
was the only thing he could do. It was very quick
Kazmat.’

Kazmat laid his arms
across his drawn up knees and rested his head on them in silence.
Konya joined Sket by the fire and swung their kettle over the
flames. Tika saw Shea move a little closer to Dog and the engineer
slid an arm across the girl’s shoulders. Finally she looked at
Dromi.

‘I have not asked or
attempted to find out – and I could – if you have mind powers
Dromi. But I must ask you now.’

The Old Blood shook his
head. ‘Very few of us do, not as you mean anyway,’ he amended. ‘My
mind has been rigorously trained in memory and recall; that is
all.’

‘I must know how “a few
of you” can use power,’ Tika persisted.

Dromi clasped his long
fingered hands on top of the blanket and contemplated them briefly.
Then he sighed and lifted his head.

‘When we change to our
beast form, we are different from the ordinary beasts. We can speak
to those of our beast kindred, make them obey us. And we can move
much faster than they can.’ He paused. ‘Volk for instance. He
changes to a bear, but he is like a king of bears. Other true bears
will submit to him. If he called the ordinary bears in this area,
they would come. If he commanded those beasts to march on a farm, a
village, or even the Menedula, they would do so.’

He gazed back down at
his hands. ‘In beast form and in human form, we can reach each
other mentally, but only in a very basic way. I could send out a
call to Beela saying watch/fire/from the east/danger. That is
all.’

Tika nodded. ‘Thank you
Dromi. So you did not hear Kazbeck’s call?’

Dromi shook his head
and gave her a sad smile. ‘I heard you move. My people have
learned, over many centuries, to sleep lightly. Danger often comes
to us in the night.’

Kija’s voice spoke in
all their minds. ‘We are above the building and I can sense very
few life signs within. Essa says that she fears Kazbeck and Corim
found some way inside. She instructed them not to enter, but holds
herself responsible that they must have disobeyed that
order.’

‘Tell Essa to get back
here. I don’t want her trying anything stupid. I know she is very
angry but don’t let her get near that place Kija. I will far
seek.’

Tika pushed her
blankets back to the wall and settled cross legged. She looked at
Shivan.

‘Can you follow
me?’

He nodded. She turned
to Rhaki.

‘Are you all
right?’

‘That cry hurt my head.
It feels split in two.’

Tika called to both
Farn and Brin in mind speech. ‘Follow my mind my dears. I must try
to see what happened.’

Her mind was within the
Menedula in an eye blink, in the highest room, that had been Cho
Petak’s private domain. She saw only the child Mena, sitting
stiffly in a straight backed chair, staring blankly at the wall
ahead of her. Cautiously, Tika probed the girl’s mind and body. She
was not surprised now to find the body was still living while the
mind was very nearly empty.

She slid out of the
room, down to the hall, a place she was coming to abhor. Her mind
moved rapidly along the rows of bodies, flinching from Elyssa’s but
forcing herself on. There was no sign of her two guards in the
hall. The shadows were at their ceaseless ebb and flow but Tika
noted they faltered when her mind drew near them. She sensed no
specific intelligence within the shadows, but there was a
deliberation to their movement.

Tika rose to the
landing and let a slender tendril of thought spin out through the
building, seeking any life sign she could. She found two, and
followed the thread towards those signs. They were on the same
level as the landing and, pushing herself through another door, she
found herself in a dimly lit bed chamber. Finn Rah lay propped on
pillows, more sitting up than lying. But her face wore an
expression Tika had not seen on it before: terror.

Finn Rah was staring
towards the further side of the room as if she dare not let her
gaze relax. Tika drifted to Finn Rah’s bedside, trying to sense
what the woman could see. A part of the shadow in the corner seemed
to detach itself and came further into the frail light of the lamp
by the bed. It took an enormous effort of will for Tika to force
her mind to remain where it was.

Ren advanced to the end
of the bed. The only familiar thing about his face were his eyes,
the brown surrounded by silver. But their shape had changed, as had
the angle at which they were set. Tusks grew to the length of a
finger joint from his lower jaw. The jaw had stretched forwards far
too far for a human face, and his skin seemed to have thickened. He
moved round the side of the bed and Tika realised his grimace was
in fact a smile.

He ran the back of his
knuckles down the side of Finn Rah’s face and the smile became a
snarl. But then he froze, spinning round to glare about the room.
He tilted his head to one side and sniffed the air. His gaze slid
past Tika’s mind then was drawn back. He was staring hard at a spot
a little to Tika’s left but there was no mistaking the fact that he
was aware of something. If he wasn’t aware it was Tika’s mind, he
knew there was some unwanted presence in this room.

Tika withdrew, fleeing
to her body a league away. She drew a shuddering breath and opened
her eyes. She saw the faces watching her, all except Kazmat, and
knew that Farn had shown them all that she had seen. Tika let her
head rest back on the wall, thoughts racing in all directions but
unable to follow any coherently right now.

‘Ren is not of the
Dark,’ Shivan said angrily. ‘And I don’t believe he is of
Shadow.’

Dromi cleared his
throat and eyes turned to him. ‘I would have to agree. He is
neither Dark nor Shadow.’

‘But he looks so like
the First Daughter did, when she descended,’ Tika
objected.

Dromi shook his head.
‘That may be so, but I am sure he is being influenced by the
Splintered Kingdom. I would also suggest that the manifestation
which appeared as the great Raven came from the same source – not
from Shadow.’

His words rang with
conviction, but before anymore could be said, Kija mind spoke them
again.

‘Storm and I have
spoken with Essa. We have landed a little way into the town and I
am shielding us. Tika, Essa insists she will stay here until she
knows what has happened to the bodies of Kazbeck and Corim. It
seems very important to her.’

Tika chewed her lip.
‘Let Essa choose for now, but if there is danger, Kija, I want her
and the others out of there.’

‘As you will my
child.’

Konya had brewed a
strong tea and handed round the bowls. Now she sat beside Kazmat,
her hand on his back, murmuring softly to him. Sket pushed a bowl
of tea into Tika’s hands.

‘Drink,’ he
ordered.

He squatted beside her.
‘Tika, what are we doing here? When we hunted for Namolos, and
faced that Qwah creature, they were hard enough to track down. But
this – this is like trying to fight smoke.’

Green eyes regarded him
over the rim of the bowl cupped in her hands. Sket
sighed.

‘I know. We owe the
First Daughter, we owe Lady Emla. I know.’

‘They are my debts,
Sket.’

He glared at her. ‘They
are our debts,’ he snapped, and then was flustered when she leaned
over and kissed his cheek.

She settled against his
shoulder, as she had a hundred times before.

‘We’ll think of
something, Sket.’

Sket’s only reply was a
grunt.

Tika watched Khosa step
daintily over various legs until she reached Kazmat. With
determination, she wriggled her way under his arm and between his
legs and his chest, where she clamped herself, purring
steadily.

Sergeant Essa, Fedran,
Darrick and Onion were at the edge of the great square well before
dawn. As the sky lightened revealing pearly grey clouds from
horizon to horizon, two figures became visible, laid neatly in the
centre of the square. Kija, resting with Storm against a still
intact wall near one of Syet’s smaller market squares, watched
through Essa’s eyes.