The Red Queen (69 page)

‘The horses . . .’ I said, fascinated even in those moments to hear the certainty and authority in her voice. ‘They will be defenceless if the horde gets in.’

‘Elspeth, I will defend them with my life. But you are the one that matters.’

I ground my teeth together, wanting to argue, loathing the idea of others sacrificing themselves for me.

‘Do not be a fool, ElspethInnle. Why are we all here, if not to keep you safe so that you may do what no other can?’ Maruman sent, surprisingly kindly.

‘Go, dear heart,’ sent the Daywatcher.

With a sob of fury and despair, I went to the steps at the end of the hold,

‘Wait,’ Swallow said, and there was something in his tone that made me turn. Dragon had just joined the other two at the hold door.

I hesitated, curious and indecisive, and then Dragon looked back over her shoulder and called to me to come. I ran back and looked out past them to see that the glide hangar was now flooded with light. It was impossible to tell if it was coming from the vessel or the chamber.

‘They are not attacking,’ Ana said, and I looked up to see the air so thick with flying
rhenlings
that they moved like a swirl of syrup. But though they were chittering loudly enough to be audible even above the keening of the siren, they were not attacking. It was as if some force held them high above the ground.

‘Gavyn,’ I said, and at that same moment the sound the glide was making changed, becoming stronger and somehow thicker. Then I saw him.

Gavyn looked a good deal taller and older than I remembered, for a year changes a child a great deal more than an adult. He was coming slowly towards the glide, Rasial at his side, gazing with fascinated, untroubled interest at the roil of
rhenlings
overhead. I saw that he had on the same clothes, reduced to a tattered loincloth and a flapping bit of shirt as thin as cobweb, two bulging hempen forage sacks hanging at his hip and something large in his arms. His fine blond hair was long and matted into thick lumpen braids that hung or stuck out at mad angles from his head. They contrasted strangely with his skin, which had darkened so that he might have passed for a Sadorian tribesman, save for his blue eyes.

‘It is him doing it,’ Dragon said. ‘He is holding them off, just as you said he did in the
graag
before I woke.’

‘I believe you are right,’ Swallow said. ‘Ye gods, Elspeth, I may be wrong, but I think he is also carrying the stone sword!’

I gaped to see that he was right.

Suddenly, to our horror, the ramp began to rise. Ana cried out for Gavyn to run but he seemed not to hear. He was watching the coiling of the
rhenlings
with fascination, and to my dismay his steps slowed.

‘Rasial, get in, bring him quickly, for we cannot open this door once it closes!’ I sent desperately, for the ramp was beginning to fold back into place.

Without warning, Rasial nipped Gavyn hard on the leg and then bolted towards us. I was astounded that she would abandon the lad, but evidently she was simply relying upon the bond between them, for Gavyn broke into a trot, though his face was serenely untroubled. He was smiling slightly in his loose, sweet way even as he ran, and then he held out the sword. With a curse, Swallow reached through the narrowing gap and took it, almost hurling it at me as he turned back, but Gavyn was already leaping through the narrowing gap, twisting his body lithely and high, so that he passed through moments before the door clamped shut on the tip of one of his foraging bags, tearing it so that its contents spilled over the floor.

This seemed truly to distress him, and to be his sole concern as he scrambled about feeling for the bits and pieces that had fallen. We all looked at him in wonderment. Then I stared down at the sword, unable to believe he had brought it to me, and only now realising how devastated I had been by its loss. The only answer to how he had got hold of it was that he must have returned to our empty camp before Ahmedri did. But what had made him take it, for it was no small burden?

‘I near died of fright,’ Ana gasped, unnocking her arrow.

‘I was tempted to leap out and carry him into the hold the moment I set eyes on him, except I was afraid it would stop him thralling the
rhenlings
,’ Swallow said, picking up the blade he had thrown aside to take the sword from Gavyn. He slipped the long blade through his belt and I wondered what I had done with mine. I remembered carrying it, but I had no memory of dropping it.

‘Let’s go up,’ Dragon said eagerly. ‘God said we ought to be sitting when the glide flies.’

Watching them climb the steps into the main part of the glide, I stood unmoving as my stomach did a slow, queasy roll. I wondered, fighting nausea, if it was possible that I was the only one to be afraid of what we were about to do.

Then the glide began to move. At the same time I caught sight of Faraf in her net. The little mare was wild-eyed and trembling from mane to hoof. Before I could beastspeak her, Gahltha, whose head was facing hers, reached out to nuzzle her gently, and she seemed to settle. I looked at Sendari who stood netted on the other side of the hold. He appeared calmer than Faraf, though the twitches and shivers along his flank told me he was not as easy as he looked. I went to him and laid a hand on his neck lightly for a moment, bidding all the equines be calm and safe. I would return as soon as ever I could.

Then, overhead, someone screamed.

I raced up the steps behind the others to find Dragon and Swallow staring in dismay and pity at Ana, who was sitting on the floor cradling one of the half-grown cubs. Its fur was saturated with bright blood, and she was weeping. My senses told me the pulse of life was fading in the young wolf as Swallow explained soberly that two
rhenlings
they had not noticed in a niche above the stairwell had dropped from the roof to fasten onto the young wolf. Ana had thrown herself at it without hesitation, literally tearing the creatures from it, but the
rhenlings
had immediately turned on her. Swallow had managed to kill one with a slash of his blade and Gobor had leapt out to snap the other from the air. But the young wolf had been bitten in the neck and there was no way to save it.

Gobor prowled forward, sniffed at the young male and then pronounced it meat. My senses told me the cub had died, and I felt a stab of sorrow for the young beast. Gobor looked into Ana’s eyes for a long moment before reaching forward to lick her forehead. Then he went into the opening beside the stairwell. A doorway, I realised. It was hard to see anything much because, while there was light, none of it seemed to be direct.

Ana laid the dead wolf gently down, and let Swallow help her to her feet. ‘What . . . Why did he do that?’

‘I think you have just been made an honorary pack member,’ I said. ‘He called you a brave she-wolf.’

Ana looked down at the dead wolf. ‘If only I had moved faster,’ she said.

The roaring noise of the glide changed again, and Ana brushed the tears away and hurried towards the front of the glide. The chamber we were in was dark, but we passed some rows of chairs and, ahead of us, I could see Hendon seated at a high bench facing a great wide window that glowed with light. It took me a moment to realise the entire front of the glide was a vast window looking out on the now brightly lit glide chamber. The light was clearly coming from the glide, I thought now, realising it must have a light similar to, but far more powerful than, Hendon’s headlight.

‘Hendon said to sit down,’ Ana shouted back to us. ‘Elspeth, can you beastspeak the wolves to lie down close together against the walls in the chamber we have prepared for them. Gobor knows, for I have shown him, but it will be better if you tell them to get into the cupboards we prepared now, so they won’t be thrown around.’

I obeyed, my stomach rolling again at the thought of the glide moving in such a way as to cause anything to be thrown around. The others were taking seats in the rows of chairs and I wondered aloud why it was so dark inside the glide.

‘Ana said glides always go dark inside when they are about to fly,’ Dragon said, urging me to sit and use the belts attached to the chairs to secure myself if I did not want to find my head bumped on the roof. ‘And a bump might be the least of it,’ she added ominously, though in fact the roof was rather low.

I took my seat, and realised in doing so that it was attached to the floor.

‘Everything is fastened down or locked away,’ Dragon said, ‘to stop it flying around.’

Maruman calmly shifted from my neck to my lap, needling me somewhat to make himself comfortable, before at the last minute leaping onto Dragon’s lap. As he circled and clawed to make her comfortable for him, Dragon and I exchanged an amused look. But Ana spoiled the moment of comforting normalcy by shouting back for us to keep a tight hold on the beasts, before she went back to the front of the glide, saying she would keep Hendon company.

I looked past Dragon at Dameon and Swallow, who had just taken his own seat, wondering where Gavyn was, but there was no real possibility of talk, given the noise the glide was making, not to mention the siren that was still wailing. I was sure the flying vessels in my Beforetime dreams had not been so terrifically loud, but I did not want to think there was something wrong with the glide we were in, although it seemed all too likely. I clung to the fact that Hannah had gone to special lengths to ensure we took
this
glide, telling myself she would never have done that unless she was sure I would be safe in it.

For once I was content to have my future cast for me.

The glide at last ceased its forward motion, and I looked ahead and saw that a long slot of daylight had opened in the darkness. This must be the opening Swallow had cleared of
rhenling
bones, yet how could I be looking at the light of dusk when we were under the earth? All at once the glide rose swiftly. The sensation was exactly like being in an elevating chamber. It stopped and now I saw the opening was directly in front of us.

At the same time, we were enveloped in a maelstrom of
rhenlings
, their pale eyes glowing with malevolence whenever they came close enough to be fleetingly illuminated by the dim mantel of light that the glide itself must be casting. The earlier, flooding brightness had been quenched and I guessed that was because there was no need for it with the dusk flooding in.

The glide gave a shudder, much as a horse about to buck would do.

‘Ye gods,’ I muttered, thinking this was truly the maddest, strangest moment of my life.

All the noise within suddenly was muffled to a soft hum and then the glide surged forward. The sensation was like a combination of floating on water and sliding forward on ice as we approached the opening and passed through it. The glide turned at once, and I had a fleeting glimpse of
rhenlings
boiling out of a dark opening like thick coils of smoke. Then we were moving at terrifying speed along what seemed to be a trench, open to the sky above. The glide tilted its nose and we cleared the trench, flying straight up towards the red-tinged clouds. Then the glide flattened out and I cried out in fright and astonishment to see we were flying straight towards a scraper. The glide veered past it, close enough that I saw the shadow of the glide on its dull surface. It seemed to me that it had somehow drawn its three legs up under the hull, like a bird folds its legs up under it when it flies. Then the glide turned and we passed the tower I had seen from afar, with its queer bulbous tip. We were flying north, very quickly, and yet nowhere near as fast as we had risen out of the trench.

Ana called out over her shoulder to say that Hendon said we could walk around now if we wanted, for we had passed beyond Northport and would be travelling steadily now. The thought of strolling around while we flew above the earth at an unthinkable height was so ludicrous that at first I supposed she must be joking. But then Swallow disentangled himself from the seat bindings, and Dragon gently lifted a disgruntled and perfectly calm Maruman carefully onto the seat beside her and began to do the same. The old cat gave her a coldly affronted look, and then came to sit on my lap.

I was glad of an excuse not to move, as I felt the full weight of what we were doing.

‘Elspeth?’ Dameon asked gently.

I turned to see that the empath had released his binding and now he shifted to the seat beside me. I realised with a flash of shame that he could feel my fear. In fact he must have been enduring what would feel to him like loud and terrified jabbering for some time.

‘Do not be ashamed of being frightened, dear one,’ he said.

The glide tilted slightly and I gasped in fright. I saw the empath wince and then I felt myself being firmly empathised. I could hardly protest after bludgeoning Dameon with my emotions. I closed my eyes and surrendered to his talent, dimly conscious that Maruman was decamping. My emotions were discomforting him, though it had always seemed to me that fear and anger bothered him less than joy or simple fretting. I chided myself for being so rattled. Had not the Agyllians carried me to the ken in their nets?

‘This is . . . is . . . extraordinary,’ Swallow said exultantly.

My eyes flew open to see him beaming at Dragon. They were both standing at the window beside the rows of seats gazing out.

I forced myself to look around. The inside of the glide was now glowing with a soft, yellowish light, and the walls were bare and probably white, although I wondered if they would offer pictures if I were to ask Hendon. The main part of the glide was essentially a single large chamber with a low slightly stepped roof and a narrow band of small windows running around the whole vessel, save for the front, where the window was enormous. The rows of seats were in the middle of the chamber facing the front, and the bench behind which the androne stood. I frowned, realising now that I could see properly, that Hendon was not standing
behind
the bench as I had thought, but was somehow within it.

Between the front bench and the ranks of seats, running lengthwise along the right side of the chamber, was another bench. Behind it there was a gap and then the wall of the glide was covered in boxes and cupboards. I recognised one of them as a cooking box, from Kelver Rhonin’s apartment, and wondered if it was possible that there was a kitchen in a flying ship. As if in answer to my question, Dragon moved between the bench and the wall and opened one of the cupboards to look into it, just as she had last done under the earth at Midland, only now we were miles above the earth in a moving glide! And what would happen to us if the directions given to the androne did not bring us to land, but to some place that no longer existed in the middle of the ocean; or to a place that was fiercely tainted? We had already been told that the glide’s course could not be altered, and once it landed, it would not be able to go anywhere else.