A Solitary Journey (47 page)

‘It’s in her papers,’ said Nell. ‘Doctor said so.’

Rees glanced conspiratorially towards the door before she leaned towards Meg. ‘Are you really looking for your children?’

‘A girl and a boy,’ Meg replied. ‘Emma and Treasure.’

Rees looked up at Nell who was nodding slowly. Rees sighed and said to Meg, ‘Now, you never heard anything from me—is that fair?’ Meg nodded. ‘Good,’ said Rees. ‘What does your daughter look like then?’

‘When I look into the hearts of all who would be heroes I find one common element—hope. Without hope, there could never be heroes.’

FROM
O
NE
M
AN’S
J
OURNEY
I
NTO THE
F
ANTASTIC
BY LUCA THE
D
RAGONEER

H
e did not expect to see a town around the base of the vertical finger of rock, but there was a sizeable one called Bretan’s Sword. The flight from Lightsword to this place that he knew as Dragon’s Tooth revealed a world more vastly altered than he imagined. ‘There are no forests,’ he said on the first afternoon of the flight over the old Plains of Ky.

‘It is very bare if you don’t like crops, but there haven’t ever been forests in this area,’ Luca informed him, ‘at least not in recent times. Apparently, in the ancient period before the Bretan kings, a lot of the land
was
forest, especially to the west. Of course, the old tales tell of magical forest-dwelling creatures called the Lendel who were meant to protect the forests from the evil Amuchki, but in the end they failed, and the legend goes that Amuchki had all the Lendel killed and their forests cut down and turned into great ships.’

‘That’s not true,’ A Ahmud Ki asserted.

‘Of course it’s not true,’ said Luca, laughing. ‘The old tales are just old tales. They resurface now when the people who protest against factory owners exploiting the land resources want to make a point. Like a moral against tree-felling.’

The young dragoneer’s dismissal of the ancient past angered A Ahmud Ki, but he couldn’t prove that the Andrak, as they called themselves now, were wrong—totally wrong—about everything, even the names. Only when he retrieved the artefacts of the past that he believed were still buried in the base of Dragon’s Tooth would he be able to show that the past had been real and was still very real, but the closer they came to Bretan’s Sword the less certain he was that what he was hoping to find still existed. Like the castle plateau in Lightsword the dramatic finger of black granite rock jutting from the earth looked smaller and worn down by the centuries.

As the dragon egg descended on the outskirts of the town Luca smiled and said, ‘I hadn’t picked you for a tourist when you wanted a quick ride out of Port River, but you’re certainly choosing to visit all the big places.’

‘Where else do the tourists go?’ A Ahmud Ki asked.

‘There’s plenty of interesting places. Most go to the castle, here, and Anedya in Central Andrak; the Shimmering Dam and Cennednyss in Western Andrak; and the Great Scarp in Northern Andrak.’

‘Cennednyss? The old ruined castle where Abreotan’s sword was hidden?’ A Ahmud Ki asked, his interest aroused.

Luca was puzzled. ‘Cennednyss is a rock where there used to be an old castle, though it’s all collapsed and washed away. There’s only a single turret standing, which is why it fascinates everyone. I’ve never heard of a sword, though.’

‘I read a book once,’ A Ahmud Ki offered to explain the anomaly. ‘It was full of your Andrak tales.’

Luca grinned. ‘That’s how we get the tourists to come.’

When the dragon egg was secured, rooms booked at a stay-house and good food eaten, A Ahmud Ki headed
for Dragon’s Tooth alone—Bretan’s Sword as the local people called it—and as with the castle in Lightsword he found it fenced, guarded by Peacekeepers and an official in a blue uniform demanding payment for a guided tour. ‘Was a fortress for one of the Bretan kings called Draca,’ the official told him with authority. ‘Has underground chambers and some were carved into the granite rock that towers above us. The tour guide will take you through the lower chambers first and then into the upper ones. Marvellous carving effort by the ancients. They cut into pure granite with their primitive tools. Must have taken years to do. You can’t go to the very top because it’s all eroded and collapsed now. They say there used to be ghosts up there.’ He chuckled as if the idea of ghosts was amusing to him. ‘Four notes and you’re in.’

There were no ghosts,
thought A Ahmud Ki.
They were called dracabeorn—undead conjured to life by Dragonlord magic. And there was no king called Draca.
He paid his admission fee and walked through the gate.

There was nothing for him at Bretan’s Sword. The original underground chambers that housed Andrakis’s army of golden warriors and his Dragonlord treasures were intact, but empty, except for one converted into a shop selling souvenirs and another acting as a museum of ancient armour and weaponry. He hoped to find a suit of golden armour among the museum pieces, anything that linked his world to this one, but nothing dated back that far. The world of Andrakis, of Mareg, of King Dylan and himself, the world of the Aelendyell and the Haagii might never have existed.

When he returned from the tour of Bretan’s Sword to his stay-house room he locked himself in and refused to venture out with Luca who invited him to savour the
town’s night-time delights. ‘You have to see the fireworks,’ Luca urged. ‘It’s the Summer Herald Festival. There’ll be plenty to eat and drink and dancing and so many girls!’

‘I’ll come later,’ A Ahmud Ki promised reluctantly.

‘The Democratic Light,’ said Luca, as he was leaving. ‘It’s a drinking-house two streets from here. Ask anyone. They’ll know where it is.’

Left alone, A Ahmud Ki sat on his bed against the wall, gazing out of the tiny window at the fading golden afternoon light playing across the white-rendered walls, red roofs and cloud-speckled sky and wondered what he could do to retrieve his lost power—the power Mareg took from him.
Meg holds the secret,
he told himself.
Her fragment of embedded amber is the only remaining magic left in this world. But how do I get it from her?
He scanned his vast memory—the collected memories of the Dragonlord Andrakis, of the Aelendyell Ieldran and of his personal memories—searching for references to the Genesis Stone and recited what he recalled.

‘In the days before the Elvenaar and men,

When the world was fertile and fresh,

The Alfyn were young and joyful,

From the northern skies came balls of fire,

Dazzling stars that fell to the earth,

Bright and awesome to behold.

To a fallen star the Alfyn came,

The glowing stone, the orb of power,

And sensing then the life it breathed

Named it the Genesis Stone,

And from it brought all five Ki.

And the Alfyn each a sliver took,

And were eternally transformed,

Into the firstborn lore bearers.’

He stopped and reflected on what he’d recited. The source of the verse was the original Aelendyell
Book of Lore
he stole from the Chanter’s Well before he escaped into the wider world of men. He’d delved deep into the lore of his Aelendyell heritage in a determined effort to understand it, but he never saw the truth of the Ki through other eyes until he faced Mareg in the belief that he was the Dragonlord’s equal. He believed he acquired the Ki though his birthright, through his Ithosen training in Ranu Ka Shehaala, through his study in Targa and finally through his absorption of Andrakis’s psyche, but those were mere vehicles of learning, not the answers to the source of power. The power didn’t come from spell books or special words or hand motions or belief in Berak N’eth or being male or female. He was blinded, like everyone in his time, by the teachings of those who misinterpreted what the Alfyn Great Ones had always known. The Alfyn truth wasn’t handed down as it might have been. Magical power came only from the Genesis Stone and anything made from it—fragments of amber. The rings given to every Aelendyell Lore Bearer were made of amber. The figurines of Fareeka worn on necklaces by the Ranu Ithosen had amber gems in their hearts. Even Abreotan’s sword, the Dragonlords’ nemesis—that, too, was amber-encrusted, the slivers of the Genesis Stone adorning it to make it a potent weapon. The truth regarding the source of power had surrounded him throughout his life and not once had he recognised or even guessed at it.

But Mareg must have known—all of the Dragonlords must have known,
he conceded bitterly.
Mareg took my Fareeka symbol and cut off my ring finger to remove my Aelendyell lore ring to steal my magical power. He knew.

The last crimson flash of sunlight erupted along the edge of the purpling clouds, turned amber and
vanished.
Sunrise and sunset are always tinged with amber,
he mused. He finally understood the mystery.

The night sky erupted with thousands of coloured lights and boomed with rolls of thunder, and A Ahmud Ki gazed in awe at the spectacle. The crowd outside the Democratic Light cheered and applauded each new firework display and Luca handed A Ahmud Ki another beer. ‘I’m glad you didn’t miss this!’ he yelled above the din. ‘There are fireworks all over Andrak this night!’

Overhead, the sky erupted in a brilliant burst of light and glittering particles drifted earthwards. ‘How do they do this magic?’ A Ahmud Ki asked.

Luca swallowed a draught of beer and replied, ‘No magic. Magnesium and firepowder. I’ll take you to a fireworks shop tomorrow and we’ll buy some of our own magic! Drink up!’

A Ahmud Ki smiled and lifted his glass to the wonders of the new Andrakis.

‘What about Lake Gnornung?’ A Ahmud Ki asked, gazing west from the dragon egg. ‘Heolstorcofa?’

‘Strange names,’ said Luca as he fired the burner, sending heated air into the heart of the dragon egg. ‘Never heard of either of them.’ He studied the bank of heavy grey clouds blowing in from the south-east, assessing the danger to their flight.

‘They were beyond that mountain range, in the forest to the south-west,’ A Ahmud Ki explained.

‘That’s Western Andrak. You need new papers to go there.’

‘Can’t we just fly over?’

‘Over the mountains in a dragon egg?’ Luca asked, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. He laughed. ‘It’s not impossible. There are dragoneers who think they can fly over anything and go anywhere. They’re adventurers
and quite a few of them are famous—but dead. A couple have apparently made it over the Great Dylan Ranges, but they nearly froze to death. I wouldn’t try it. Besides, there’s just a great big dam that’s flooded all of the valleys between the Great Dylan Ranges and the Bitter Peaks. Maybe there was a forest there once, but it’s drowned under the water.’

‘What’s the dam for?’ A Ahmud Ki asked. His heart ached with disappointment because he hoped there would be fragments of the Genesis Stone in the tombs of the Elvenaar on the island of Heolstorcofa, but if they were drowned deep under water he could never hope to get to them.

‘The inventors are trying to create large sources of an energy they call wire-lightning by using the dam water to spin wheels that drive giant magnets. I don’t understand it, but the inventors think the wire-lightning will be a better energy than burning gas.’ Luca shrugged. ‘Inventors are a crazy lot.’

‘In ancient times they would have been called wizards,’ A Ahmud Ki suggested.

‘Probably,’ Luca half-heartedly replied. ‘I don’t mean to scare you, but see that bank of clouds? If that keeps coming in we’ll have to put down and wait until the weather and wind better suit our needs.’

A Ahmud Ki studied the gathering storm clouds. There was a time when he could have harnessed that storm’s power to smash his enemies. Now the best he could do was run from it as a mortal. His future no longer lay in the world of men. He had to get back to Meg and with her help return to Se’Treya. Mareg had almost certainly hidden his amber possessions in the underground prison chamber and he was sure that was what Mareg had done because he understood Se’Treya’s limitations. When the Dragonlords created the artificial space they agreed to make the surface of grey,
strangling dust desolate of everything, including magic. That way, when they met to fight, as they often did to resolve brotherly arguments, they fought as mortal warriors on even terms without magical power affecting the outcome. But the restriction against magic was superficial. Beneath the grey dusty surface magic functioned normally. How else could Mareg have imprisoned him for so long in the glyph? How else could Mareg’s minions, the blue horsemen, survive? They were, after all, magical constructs—not mortals.

‘No, we’re definitely going to have to run for shelter,’ Luca announced as a breeze hit the dragon egg and swung the basket dangerously, forcing both passengers to grab for the ropes. ‘Sorry. We might be waiting for a couple of days for the wind to bear around enough before we can make our way back to Lightsword.’

‘We do what we must,’ A Ahmud Ki replied stoically, and wondered how Meg was faring in her search for her children. He missed being with her, but, like her, he also had to find what was his.

M
eg hurried along the gas-lit street towards Mother’s, her heart pounding with excitement because Rees had rekindled her hope that she would find her children. Rees’s sister lived on a farm three days’ journey from Lightsword at the foot of the Great Dylan Ranges. Because she and her husband were childless he’d bought two slave children to raise as their own. ‘Neither could speak Andrak when he bought them a year ago,’ Rees explained to Meg before she left the care-house. ‘The girl is about eight years old, with sandy hair, like you described. Bright little thing. And the boy is a couple of years younger, with darker hair and freckles. They don’t like people to know in case the government comes to take the children back now that the law’s been changed. They’ll hate me for telling you this, but children should be with their mother, I say.’ So Rees arranged to meet her at the city outskirts with the details of how to get to the farm. ‘Ask a conveyer to take you to the Mountainview. It’s a fancy stay-house on the Western Way. I’ll be waiting there for you.’

She should have caught a conveyer to Mother’s, but excitement drove her to walk from the care-house. Only when she noticed men lurking in the shadow of a
building on a street corner did she remember that she had just escaped being killed, and for the first time she wondered if the killer had been trying to shoot her instead of the man who died. The idea was absurd. Who would know her in this city? Nevertheless, she walked briskly after spotting the men, alert to the people around her, keen to reach Mother’s quickly. In the southern sky lightning flashed across the gathering storm clouds.

The stay-house foyer was lit and Shar was waiting at the desk when Meg reached it. She greeted Shar and hurried past, but Shar called her back, shaking her head. ‘There are Peacekeepers looking for you,’ she whispered. ‘What have you done?’

Meg smiled grimly. ‘I was shot at this afternoon. Well, not me, but a man I was near.’

‘Oh!’ Shar gasped. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ Meg reassured her. ‘I’ve just had some wonderful news.’

‘What?’

‘My children are safe. They’re on a farm.’

Shar’s face lit up with joy. ‘That
is
wonderful news! Where? When do you go to them?’

Meg was about to answer when a man’s voice interrupted. ‘Meg Farmer?’

She turned to see two Peacekeepers descending the last three steps of the stairs. ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Is this about the shooting?’

The Peacekeepers glanced at each other. One said, ‘No. This concerns a matter in Port River several days ago.’

Meg’s skin went cold and she caught her breath. ‘Are you all right?’ Shar asked, seeing Meg suddenly lose colour in the gas-lantern light.

The Peacekeepers stood before her. The speaker was her height, broad-shouldered, with a clean-shaven face,
and his companion was taller and slimmer, but a telltale lump bulged in his green coat. ‘Meg Farmer, we arrest you for the murder of Theo Hawker the rat-catcher, of the southern sector of Port River.’ The taller man produced a metallic device and reached for Meg’s right arm, but she pulled away and glared. ‘You can choose to be nice or we can make you be nice,’ the shorter man warned.

‘What is that?’ she asked, pointing at the device.

‘A restrainer,’ the Peacekeeper answered. ‘It’s for your safety as well as ours. I advise you to let Jak put it on you.’

Jak reached for her arm again and this time she let him slide the cold, hard restrainer onto her wrist. He took her other arm to repeat the procedure, finishing by locking the restrainer with a small key that he slipped back into his pocket. He picked up her discarded bag and blood-stained clothes.

‘Did you
really
kill someone?’ Shar asked, her expression begging Meg to deny it.

Meg looked at her, tears trickling down her cheeks. ‘I—’ but the words wouldn’t come. Shar stared in shock.

‘Come on,’ the shorter Peacekeeper ordered and Jak steered Meg towards the door. ‘You’d better look to your rooms, girl,’ he told Shar as he followed his companion and the prisoner. ‘We saw a big black rat upstairs earlier.’

She sat in the small, dull grey windowless room listening to the rain on the tiles as the man who interrogated her closed the door, leaving her alone at last. The restrainer was uncomfortable on her wrists, but her mind was steadily clearing. She didn’t have to sit there. A simple spell would relieve her of the restrainer. Perhaps a portal would take her back to the
stay-house room and Whisper. What was Whisper doing? The stay-house wasn’t where she needed to go. Whatever her decision she had to meet Rees at the Mountainview stay-house to start the journey towards her children. That was all that mattered now—finding Emma and Treasure. A Ahmud Ki was days away and she couldn’t wait for him any longer.

The door reopened, admitting three men. A balding, overweight individual in a pale green shirt and cream trousers pulled up a chair to sit opposite her, while the two Peacekeepers who’d arrested her stood either side. The seated man was sweating along the ridge of his forehead. ‘I’m Captain Ennaeus,’ he said in a wheezy voice. ‘You’ve been formally charged with the murder of Theo Hawker the rat-catcher and we’re arranging to transport you back to Port River immediately. The authorities there are keen to put you on trial. What do you know of a foreigner named Longarm Birdcatcher?’

Meg shook her head. ‘I don’t know him.’

‘And Denys Ardin?’

‘I don’t know him,’ she repeated.

‘You were involved in a shooting this afternoon in the north-western sector?’

‘Yes.’

‘Denys Ardin was the man who was shot. He was a local greengrocer. The man who shot him was Longarm Birdcatcher. He came from the same region overseas as you. It seems a strange coincidence that a man from your country would shoot a man from mine while you just happen to be standing right beside him, don’t you think?’

So I
was
the target,
Meg realised.
The Seers chased me this far.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

Captain Ennaeus squinted accusingly. ‘And what do you know about a fire at the Andrak Central Cottonworks?’

So they know,
she thought.
What don’t these people know?
‘I don’t know,’ she repeated.

Ennaeus winced and looked up at the man to his left. ‘See that she is ready to be loaded in a prison carriage. Organise a five-man escort and get her on the road immediately.’ He stood and left the room.

‘Looks like you get a free trip courtesy of the government,’ the shorter Peacekeeper remarked. ‘We’ll be back shortly with a change of clothes and your tickets.’ He winked at Jak and they walked out.

The instant she heard the lock click on the far side of the door she focussed on the restrainers until there was a tingle and they slid open. She placed them quietly on the wooden floor. The room was bare except for two chairs and the locked door, and forming a portal to escape would be almost impossible without a clear frame to encompass it.
There must be another way,
she mused. So many discussions with A Ahmud Ki before the escape from Shess came to mind. He told her once how he could use a spell to pass through walls. She studied the stone wall and recalled what she knew of the building. They had brought her through a front door, past a foyer and three offices, along a narrow hall with doors either side to this room on the left of the hall. It didn’t feel like this would be the last room in the building so whichever wall she went through there would be another space beyond. Remembering there were Peacekeepers along the hall and in the offices she decided to chance the back wall. She focussed on walking harmlessly through the stone wall and approached it, but when she held out a tentative finger and pressed against the stone her finger did not penetrate it.
I can’t do this,
she lamented. There was no tingling in her spine. She focussed and pressed her hand against the wall with force, but the wall was solid.
I know I can do this,
she said.
I
can
walk through.
Again
she focussed, this time suppressing her doubts.
I can walk through,
she repeated. She gritted her teeth and walked through the stone.

The space was dark. She shivered from the sensation of having moved through a solid object before she created a tiny light sphere and discovered she was in a small storage room of boxes and shelves. On a box by the door she saw her bag and her government clothes and smiled at her good fortune. She tried the door handle, found it was unlocked and very cautiously opened it. The room beyond was an office, but her luck held as it was vacant except for the furniture. She grabbed her bag and crept into the room, listening. She discovered that the office window overlooked an alley so she opened it and climbed into the rain and freedom.

A sudden thought popped into her mind—
Found—
and she looked down at Whisper sitting up on her haunches.

How?
Meg asked, astonished at the rat’s uncanny reappearance.

Smell,
Whisper replied.
Followed. Easy.

The spare clothes she was given at the care-house were poor protection from the rain and the wind, especially the dress, so she huddled under a bridge, focussing on a warming spell until she drifted into sleep. Then she dreamed that A Ahmud Ki was searching for her and he needed her help, but it was a vague dream, lacking in details beyond the emotions. Later, she dreamed that she was sitting in a small room with Whisper on her lap. When she looked down, her wrinkled hands rested on a leather-bound book and she knew she was old. She looked out of a small window at a blue sky and felt that the world was changing and that she had to act, but she didn’t know what to do. Through her window came a child, a girl in rags, and she knew the child because she
looked like she could be her daughter. The girl was in trouble and Meg knew that she was the only one who could help her, except she didn’t know what to do.

She woke in the pre-dawn, conscious of Whisper’s weight on her chest and the dream fragments sparkling like crystal shards in her memory. The storm had passed, leaving the world refreshed, and the river bubbled as it bounded over the stones in its course. ‘We have to hurry,’ she said as she went to scoop up Whisper, but the rat slipped away.

Run,
Whisper told her.
Safer.

‘I’m getting a conveyer,’ she said and wondered how she could explain that concept to a rat. She tried forming an image of a conveyer horse and carriage and projected it to Whisper.

Follow,
Whisper replied.
Easy.

Meg shrugged. ‘Everything is easy to you,’ she muttered and grinned.

She climbed the riverbank, slipping occasionally on the muddied earth and wet grass. The streets were empty of people and still lit by gas lanterns, but the sky was already light grey, heralding the approaching sun. Unable to sight a conveyer, she started walking briskly, heading west. The river ran through the city closer to the western than eastern perimeter, but she estimated she had a sizeable walk to the Mountainview stay-house and wasn’t likely to arrive there until midmorning. By then Rees may not be waiting so she walked on, keeping a watchful eye open for a conveyer. Whisper followed, staying to the walls and shadows and rubbish to remain out of sight as much as she could.

A short distance along the street Meg slid into an alley and waited for a pair of mounted Peacekeepers to trot across an intersection. She expected them to be out searching for her. What hope did she have in this new
land if already she was a hunted person? Wherever she went in her life she seemed destined to be hunted because she was different. The Conduit was not a Blessing—it was a curse. If she could get rid of it she would.
I was a fool to embed it in myself,
she chastised herself.

Two streets on she spotted a conveyer, but as she headed towards the driver who stood beside his red carriage waiting patiently for customers two Peacekeepers appeared, riding strange two-wheeled rattling contraptions along the cobbles, pedalling the vehicles in the same manner as the sailors had pedalled to drive the windwheel on the dragon ship. Meg slipped into a doorway alcove, hoping the Peacekeepers wouldn’t notice her if they came past, and Whisper disappeared into a drainpipe. The Peacekeepers talked briefly to the driver before they turned their vehicles and pedalled back along the street while Meg waited in the alcove, wondering if they had warned the driver not to offer a ride to a foreign woman with red hair. The sun’s first golden rays were streaking across the sky, too high yet to touch the rooftops, and the dull grey rain clouds were turning amber along their edges. Rees would be waiting. She stepped out of the alcove and hurried up to the driver. ‘Morning,’ he said and smiled. ‘Where can I take you?’

‘Mountainview stay-house,’ she replied, watching his face for signs of recognition or concern.

‘No problem, lady,’ he said, grinning. ‘Hop in and we’ll be there quicker than an inventor’s idea.’

She sighed with relief, sinking into the green leather conveyer seat as the driver urged his horse into a trot. She glanced back to see if Whisper was following, but was disappointed that she couldn’t see the rat. Then again it was Whisper’s intention not to be seen. She relaxed into the seat, her mind filled with anxiety for Whisper, anticipation at finding her children and spinning fragments of her dreams.