Perilous Shadows: Book 6 Circles of Light (46 page)

The floor tilted first
one way, then another. The walls bowed inwards, then straightened.
Sket shoved into the room to reach Tika. Everything became still
again and several people helped each other back to their feet with
sighs of relief. Then there came a crashing roar, they heard a
Dragon’s scream of rage and fear. Rhaki’s light globe winked out,
plunging them into total blackness. When the roar faded, all that
could be heard was the sound of their breathing.

‘Was that just one of
those ground shake things?’ Onion enquired.

‘No it
wasn’t.’

Tika blinked when Rhaki
conjured another light ball above them.

‘It’s all dark out
here,’ Onion reported from outside the room.

‘Sure you haven’t got
your patch over the wrong eye?’ Dog drawled, and Shea
giggled.

‘Are you going to tell
us where we are Tika, or shall we guess?’ Shivan sounded cheerful
at least.

‘Did everyone bring all
their gear in here with them?’ Navan’s voice was calm. ‘And I mean
food packs too.’

There was a muted
chorus of assent.

‘If we’ve vanished,
like all the others did, why am I still with you?’ Dromi
asked.

‘Ask the Crazed One
when we get to meet him,’ Essa suggested.

‘Khosa?’ Tika
called.

‘She’s here, in her
sack,’ replied Konya, squeezing past Shivan.

Khosa’s face peeked out
of the top of her carry sack and she yawned. ‘The picture’s
gone.’

Tika stared at the
walls. Grey stone surrounded them, not the slightest flake of paint
anywhere.

‘Let’s try and go back,
towards the ledge.’ Tika spoke as calmly as she could
manage.

She didn’t think for
one moment that the ledge would be where they’d last seen it. Or
rather, they were no longer in the same Oblaka as they had been.
This version was somehow within the Splintered Kingdom. Shivan
walked a pace in front of Tika now, hand on sword hilt, like
everyone else. Rhaki had formed another light globe so that one
floated above the companions, the other several paces ahead of
Shivan.

‘Too far,’ said Sket.
‘We’ve walked much farther back now than when we came in
here.’

As he spoke, Rhaki’s
light globe stopped moving. Shivan too came to a halt. The passage
they’d been travelling along had met another which crossed in front
of them. Shivan stepped aside.

‘Do you think it
matters which way we go?’ he asked Tika as she drew
level.

Before she could reply,
the ceiling to the right began to glow with the same pale light
they had become accustomed to earlier. Rhaki reclaimed his light
globes and gave Tika a resigned smile.

‘It looks as though we
are being given hints about our direction.’

Tika mind spoke Khosa.
‘You don’t seem too bothered. Do you understand what’s
happening?’

Khosa had retreated
deep into her travelling sack but she did reply. ‘There is no point
panicking. We’re here. All you have to do is get us out
again.’

Tika snarled, somewhat
to Shivan’s surprise, but without explanation she stalked past him,
along the lighted corridor. Again, they walked for a considerable
time, with no apparent change in the walls on either side. They
only paused when Fedran commented on the walls.

‘These walls are
smooth, Lady Tika. They were rough stone before, and now they’re
smooth and curving. And the floor.’

Navan ran a hand over
one wall. ‘He’s right. It’s as smooth as if it has been formed by
water.’

The thought of water
surging down on them caused mutters.

‘This is silly.’ Tika
suddenly decided. ‘Let’s call a halt here and I’ll try to seek. If
we are deep inside the Kingdom, I doubt I will get past these
bloody walls. If we are only on the edge, I might find something,
some clue, or even reach Farn.’

She was unaware that
the pain she felt, just speaking the name of her soul bond, was
clear under her words. But this relatively new company had learned
quickly, and now they made no more comments, just settled on the
floor and waited.

‘Rhaki? Will you be my
anchor?’ she asked softly.

He nodded, sliding down
the wall to sit beside her. Tika centred her thoughts, just as Iska
had taught her, and let her mind float free. She looked down and
saw her company, all watching her body. A thread far thinner than a
spider could produce, led from her body up to her floating mind. A
much thicker strand from Rhaki was twisted around hers where it
seemed to emerge from her head.

Cautiously, she moved
higher, to the ceiling, and pressed against it. But only briefly.
Something snapped and sizzled as she touched the stone and she
moved lower to try the same thing against the wall. Again, she was
pushed away, a threat of serious pain if she should persist. She
had the same reaction from the opposite wall and then she let
herself sink to the floor.

Without warning, her
mind slipped through, down through stone, which gave her a
distinctly unpleasant, sticky sort of feeling. Tika wondered if
she’d made a serious mistake when the nasty sensation continued
rather longer than she’d hoped, but then she popped out of the
stone. It was dark, very dark, and she wished she knew how to
conjure light as Rhaki did so easily. Even as the thought moved
through her mind, she felt Rhaki. He felt a long way away but he
pushed at her and there was a tiny flicker of light in front of
her.

Tika almost wished the
light away when she saw what it revealed. Three bodies, maybe four,
so badly rotted she had no desire to look too closely. But
obviously they’d lain there for some time. She forced herself to
focus on just the one she was closest to and noticed it had only
one foot protruding from an unpleasantly soiled trouser leg. A
piece of wood emerged from the other. She knew him. He worked in
the common room, a man with a wooden peg for a leg and a blind
wife. It seemed suddenly important to remember his name, but she
couldn’t.

She turned from the
tumbled corpses and saw she was in a long narrow room. Then she
decided it was simply a section of passageway, sealed off at either
side. Tika held her mind steady in the centre of the space and
attempted to seek outwards, a rippling movement, like that caused
by a pebble thrown into a pool. She sensed resistance, in varying
degrees and from various directions. One way seemed wide open, but
she was hesitant to follow it. It was far too obvious.

She tested around her
again and chose a point opposite the temptingly clear one. Tika
steadied herself and then shot forward, visualising herself as an
arrow and the rock wall to which she was heading as merely water.
She was astounded therefore to find herself actually in water once
she was through the stone. Her tiny light had come with her, tied
to her power, and it shook and shivered in the eddying water. To
her alarm she realised she was completely surrounded by water, with
no way of telling just how much was either above or below her.
Struggling to contain a rising panic, she swept the area around her
yet again and found no barriers.

But which way to go?
She thought momentarily of her frightening fall into the Dark, of
being too disorientated to be able to distinguish up from down, but
she repressed the thought as firmly as she could. Where? Where
should she go? Another roaring sound. The water around her seeking
mind began to heave and swirl and Tika gave up. Her mind snapped
back to her body in an instant and she found herself shivering,
more from fear than from cold. She also realised she was as
breathless as if she’d really been submerged for too long under
water.

Slowly the shivering
eased, her breathing slowed, but before she could speak, the roar
came again. It reverberated and thundered through the passage,
accompanied by a powerful gusting wind. Essa braced herself, with
Shivan, across the passage, their backs to the gale. The rest of
the company cowered before them, clinging to their boots, legs,
clothes and hands. As suddenly as it had arisen, the wind ceased
and the companions untangled themselves from each other. Navan
checked that his precious scroll case was still firmly fixed to the
outside of his pack, then gave Tika a genuine smile.

‘Well, life is never
dull when you’re around, is it Tika?’

He looked around at the
other members of the company and nodded solemnly. ‘And who should
know better than I, my friends? I’ve known her since she was new
born. My great grandmother told everyone that she would be
trouble.’

Essa laughed and smiles
slowly began to replace apprehension on other faces. Navan looked
indignant.

‘Laugh all you want. I
speak only the truth.’

Tika was grateful for
the space Navan had given her to gather her own wits, and for so
simply soothing her friends.

‘Shall we walk on for a
while?’ she suggested. ‘I will far seek when we stop again, but I
found nothing helpful this time.’

And, she realised as
they started to walk along the passage, she had made no attempt to
seek the Dragons. Something told her they were beyond her reach.
There had been no hint of change in the pendant’s temperature,
she’d noted, which was more a reason to worry than not. Or did it
just mean that in the pendant’s opinion, she’d not been in such
great danger? Konya was the one to call a halt. Somehow, the healer
had an inner sense of time.

‘It’s after dark
outside Tika,’ she said, over the sound of booted feet. ‘I suggest
it is best if we try to keep to a normal sort of day.’

Tika stopped
immediately. ‘As you say, Konya.’

Navan and Sket began to
ready a cold meal, Sket bemoaning the lack of his desperately
needed hot tea. Rhaki leaned over Tika.

‘Could I not be the one
to seek this time, my dear?’

She gave him a smile,
grateful for the offer. ‘I prefer to have you act as my link,
Rhaki. I know your seeking ability is strong, but even I don’t yet
know how much more strength I have now. I do know it is more than
yours, so I will be the one to seek.’

Tika ate very little,
as her company noticed, and drank sparingly from her water flask.
Then, without comment, she leaned back and sent her mind seeking
once more. She was instantly suspicious: there were no barriers
around her, none at all. Rather than penetrating the stone, Tika
sent her mind at some speed, straight on along in the direction
they were travelling. As soon as she was beyond sight of the
company, following the slightly curving passage, she found the glow
from the ceiling was extinguished.

She paused, long enough
to make her own tiny flicker of light reappear, and then she
hurried on. She wished she had Konya’s sense of time but she
couldn’t tell how long she sped through the winding tunnel. Then it
forked. Tika halted, hovering uncertainly in the original passage.
Only then did she see how the walls had contracted. It was much
more obviously a narrowing tunnel now than a corridor made for or
by humans. She studied the divided path in front of her closely.
There was nothing whatsoever different between them to give her a
hint as to which one she should take. Then she heard a faint
scraping noise.

Tika floated just
inside the left hand passage. Silence. She moved to the right one
and heard the noise again. Briefly she wished someone else could at
least see or hear what she could, but Rhaki was only able to tether
her life thread. He had only brief glimpses of what she was
experiencing. She drifted tentatively forward, a little deeper into
the right hand tunnel, constantly scanning the area immediately
around her. The noise grew louder, a grinding scrunch, then a faint
sighing sound.

Tika moved ever slower,
aware that her tiny glowing light betrayed her presence but knowing
she would be totally blind without it. The tunnel was definitely
smaller: perhaps most of her companions would be able to walk
upright, but both Shivan and Essa would need to stoop to travel it.
Her little light stopped. A spiral shape protruded directly ahead,
taking up the entire diameter of the tunnel. As she watched, the
scrunch sound came again, then the spiral juddered away from her a
handspan.

She probed the spiral,
letting her light go close to it, almost touching it. Tika saw it
was many coloured, not the solid pale grey she’d thought at first.
Tiny flecks of colours were dotted along the line of the spiral and
its tip, nearest her, was a deep dark green. Tika could feel no
threat from this thing, stuck like a stopper in a pot in the tunnel
before her. She was also conscious that the pendant lay quiescent
against her chest, many miles back.

Tika wound a net of
power around herself before sending a tendril directly towards the
thing. It felt rather as though she had stepped into a pleasantly
warm bath, but then a voice whispered to her.

‘Who? What? Why
here?’

Tika’s first instinct
was to pull free at once, but she held steady.

‘Who are you?’ she sent
back along her probing tendril.

She was aware of
another scrunching noise, outside her mind, then the voice came
again.

‘I Corax. You
who?’