Perilous Shadows: Book 6 Circles of Light (52 page)

Tika stared at Essa,
then nodded. ‘I think you’re right.’

‘Can we get our weapons
back?’ asked Sket.

‘Of course you may,’
Konrik spoke from the inner door. ‘Collect them as we
leave.’

Tika noticed again that
the Second Son slid a casual arm through his Chancellor’s and, as
she followed them through the labyrinthine corridors, she studied
the old scar on the back of Konrik’s leg. She used the lightest
touch to sense what she could of the injury and stumbled
momentarily. Konrik had received that wound more than a thousand
years ago! She could not repair something that had been damaged
further by so much passing time. It was beyond her power to restore
muscle and tissue that was so far atrophied. But she could
strengthen muscles around it, and definitely she could ease the
pain.

She didn’t notice that
they were already beginning to walk down the wider road between the
ranks of houses as she concentrated on Konrik’s leg. Konrik
stopped, gently disengaged himself from his master’s arm, and
turned to look back at her. He said nothing, only turned again and
resumed his walk with Darallax. But his head bent closer to his
master’s, and they spoke quietly together. Tika hid a smile of
satisfaction. Konrik’s leg looked no different, but she could see
by the way he moved, that it was far more bearable. Halfway down
the gentle slope, Tika saw the river, an amazing iridescence of
greeny blues winding between the two parts of the town.

The five grey stone
bridges sparkled where the sun and water shot light up to their
arches. It was an idyllic view and Tika couldn’t find it in her to
blame Darallax for hiding here for countless centuries. She saw the
people waving to the Shadow Lord, some stopping for a brief word,
with no hint that he was their Lord. He was just a man in the road
who they were free to acknowledge or not, as they chose.

Darallax was leading
them to the largest bridge, not the one Tika and her friends had
crossed when they arrived. This was the middle bridge, whose
central arch rose higher than any of the others. Clearly Darallax
had told the people he’d met what was planned and a crowd of
several hundred were filling the grassy area of the riverbank
around both ends of the bridge. The thought went quickly through
Tika’s head: how had the people across the river known? She was
convinced that some at least of Darallax’s folk used mind speech,
but she still hadn’t felt that familiar buzzing tingle she usually
felt when mind speech was in use near her.

Now Darallax, Konrik
and Subaken were nearing the middle of the bridge, Tika and her
companions perhaps twenty paces behind. Someone brushed her arm and
she glanced up at Essa who had moved beside her.

‘The
pendant.’

Essa’s words were
barely audible but Tika heard, and realised her own pendant felt
warm. Not yet hot, but definitely warm. Tika grunted in annoyance,
anticipating Essa’s next words. ‘I’ve no idea why. Get mine off if
I can’t, will you?’

She saw Essa roll her
eyes and she grinned, then they were level with Darallax. The beat
of heavy wings approached and both Farn and Kija landed further on
and while Kija reclined, Farn paced closer to settled near Tika.
Tika regarded Darallax steadily.

‘I have no idea if what
I plan will work. If it does work, I’ve even less idea of the
outcome. It won’t be pleasant if even a young Chyliax lands on
anyone.’

‘Hold my thread Kija.’
She sent the thought to the gold Dragon who replied with a pulse of
deep affection.

Tika sat against Farn’s
chest and sought Rhaki and Shivan among her friends. She nodded,
and they came closer, sitting within reach of her. Tika centred her
thoughts, closed her eyes and summoned the brief vision of Corax,
deep within the Splintered Kingdom. Using a huge amount of her, as
yet untried, new power, she called to the Chyliax.

She felt Kija’s mind
braced behind hers as she sent the call again and again. She was
about to give up when, faintly, a voice whispered through the
air.

‘The Tika?’

‘Marax.’ Tika spoke
aloud for the first time, although her throat felt as raw as if
she’d been screaming for an age. She was aware of someone clinging
to her hands and she gripped them in return. Breath shuddered
through her.

‘Marax,’ she repeated.
‘Come to me now, with your families.’

Her mind clung to the
tenuous link she had with Marax and her breath came faster. Tika
slumped back against Farn, Essa, Rhaki and Sket immediately tending
her. Darallax, his daughter Subaken and his Chancellor watched
Tika’s collapse in dismay, then a Dragon bugled.

Heads turned to the sky
and a huge crimson Dragon arrowed down towards the bridge, followed
closely by a much smaller grey Dragon. They landed behind Kija,
clearly both much agitated. They stared back up at the sky, their
prismed eyes flashing with bright colours. Specks appeared; tiny,
then larger, then huge. Like boulders, Chyliax splashed into the
river. Amazingly, they missed the bridges and the land.

He felt them leaving,
but he could do absolutely nothing to stop them. His body now was
an amorphous lump. The pain from constantly breaking bones had sent
him into this shape, a shape he usually used only when enduring the
immense stresses of escaping the pull of star systems. His
consciousness rested in the depths of the jelly like substance and
he experienced the briefest period of peace.

The worms with the
shells had gone from his Kingdom. He didn’t know how they had gone,
or where they might be. Indeed, he had little true idea of where he
was. His species was, perhaps fortuitously for all others, very few
in number. They roamed endlessly through star fields, rarely
encountering another of their kind. They were meant to travel, but
somehow, this one had become entangled in webs of power that he
could neither analyse nor define. The more he struggled to
extricate himself, the more tightly he was bound.

And he had struggled
hard at first, unwittingly causing chaos among the people of this
planet. Only when he had nearly exhausted himself the first time
had he realised there were life forms here with markers indicating
a miniscule level of intelligence. He had drawn many of them within
the strange intangible bulk of his space craft, but he could find
nothing in them of interest. His species absorbed both nutrients
and certain types of information from the stars and planets they
passed.

Quite unaware they left
some worlds dead husks, having taken from a world what its
inhabitants depended upon themselves. Things such as a certain mix
of gases in an atmosphere, or minerals from deep within the world
whose extraction caused that world to implode. But although it was
impossible for him to comprehend the form intelligence took upon
this planet, he had absorbed a twisted sense of how some of its
inhabitants thought.

He had no appreciation
of what could be called right or wrong. To him, there was simply
life, and his was curtailed, delayed, by his too long entrapment
here. A few of the creatures here had impinged on his awareness,
like that one who dared visit him. He was like, yet unlike, those
he watched from his windows. He had given himself form and
substance to match those, yet he could not control that appearance
and cope with their confused mental processes.

He had thought the
female he’d seen might help free him, but the male told him she
wanted only to destroy him and his craft. He was failing, he knew
that; there was nothing on this world which he could use to sustain
and regenerate himself. He had to get free of these weird nets and
tangles which held him so fast. The jelly quivered with the Crazed
One’s increasing agitation and fury.

The people of Shadow
surged onto the bridges over the river Skara, calling to the
Chyliax in the water below. Darallax and Subaken hung over the
parapet, watching as one huge Chyliax surfaced, lying on its side,
tentacles moving in both water and air. It was more than twice
Sergeant Essa’s length, four or five times bigger than the Shadow
Lord, from spiral tip to wide base.

‘Where is the
Tika?’

The voice was clearer,
but still quiet.

Darallax looked over
his shoulder and was alarmed to see Tika’s companions working over
her unconscious form.

‘She used great power,
Marax,’ Darallax said to the creature below him. ‘I fear she
suffers.’

‘She does,’ Marax
agreed. ‘To bring one of us would have taken great strength, but to
bring all of us.’

A spiral bobbed up
beside Marax, barely a quarter of Marax’s size.

‘The Tika will be well
soon?’

Marax’s tentacles slid
over the smaller Chyliax’s shell. ‘Hush Corax. She is far from us,
but I sense she is safe. We will sing, until she
returns.’

There was a stir on the
bridge and Darallax saw the elderly woman, the healer of Tika’s
company he thought, pushing her way to reach the Lady. Darallax was
torn, desperate to renew his long lost friendship with the Chyliax,
but worried by the state of the woman who had given him the
opportunity to do so. Marax solved the dilemma by sinking his shell
beneath the water and beginning to make music with his tentacles.
After a rather strange droning gurgle and splutter, astonishingly
pure notes rose from the Chyliax. Gradually others clustered near
the central bridge and joined with Marax. To Tika’s companions, who
were only peripherally aware of anything other than their Lady, the
music seemed at first very strange: oddly prolonged single notes
slowly engulfed by many harmonies.

Reluctantly the Shadow
Lord turned away from the sight of so many golden brown shells just
below the surface of the river and approached the young blue
Dragon, Farn.

‘She is gone.’ Farn
mind spoke Darallax and his people. The Dragon sounded puzzled
rather than distressed. ‘She is safe somewhere, but I don’t know
where. Not in the Dark, nor in the Splintered Kingdom.’

A small orange cat
squirmed between people’s feet and sniffed Tika’s face.

‘She will rest. Then
she’ll be back.’

Khosa settled down to a
thorough wash, ignoring the glares directed at her by virtually
everyone.

‘Will you bring her
back Home? Anything you need for her care is yours.’

Sket shared a glance
with Konya and Rhaki and nodded. He scooped Tika into his arms and
began to descend from the bridge. Farn pressed close behind, his
head above Sket’s, his eyes on Tika’s face.

‘I will have rooms
prepared,’ Darallax began when they drew near the two large
buildings above the town.

Farn reared up,
towering over the Second Son. ‘Take her to the garden.’ His eyes
blazed. ‘I must be near her.’

Darallax nodded. ‘As
you wish.’

Chancellor Konrik again
led them through the many passages until they came to the room
which opened onto the courtyard. Darallax watched Sket lay Tika on
a pile of cushions Shea scattered on the ground just beyond the
doors. He saw Farn pace through the foliage towards them, and
carefully curve his body around his soul bond. Rueshen arrived and
without fuss offered her services. Even here, above the town and
perhaps half a mile distant from the river, the music of the
Chyliax drifted through the air. Rueshen and two blue gowned women
brought lamps and set them in niches around the walls and only then
did Sket realise it was growing late in the day. He was secretly
relieved when Rueshen and Subaken bade them good night and left the
company alone at last.

Tika was not cold, as
she often became when she’d been far seeking for instance, but her
skin was cooler than it should be. When she’d collapsed on the
bridge, Sket had pulled open her shirt, but the pendant had caused
no damage. Now, Sket sat beside Tika and knew they just had to
wait.

‘The pendant began to
warm as we approached the bridge,’ Essa said softly.

Rhaki sighed. ‘Mine
too. But it didn’t get uncomfortable and then it just cooled again
– when Tika actually called Marax’s name.’

‘Where is Khosa?’ Shea
asked. She was curled in a chair just inside the door, trying to
stifle her yawns.

‘She is upstairs, with
the Shadow man and with Dromi,’ Farn replied calmly.

Faces turned towards
him, where his bulk practically blocked the way into the
garden.

‘Is he in man shape?’
asked Shivan.

‘Yes.’

‘Are the Old Bloods
people of Shadow?’ Navan strolled over to lean against the wall
nearest Farn as he spoke.

Farn’s eyes whirred
softly. ‘They are the ones left behind when Darallax fled, and who
mated with humans.’

Essa swore. ‘I knew
that name was familiar. Darallax said his city was named Steadfast,
and Dromi said his Brotherhood dwelt at a place called Steadfast
Rock.’

‘Home,’ said Kazmat
unexpectedly. ‘Didn’t the Shadow Lord tell us to bring Lady Tika
home? And wasn’t that the name of the house at Blue
Mirror?’

Rhaki nodded. ‘There
are connections and links throughout this business.’ He looked down
at Tika’s motionless body. ‘Perhaps only she can undo the knots and
tangles and explain it all.’