Orlind (49 page)

She woke Rikbeek
and tossed him into the air. Fortunately for her he had already
seen Krays more than once; it was a simple matter to place the
Lokantor’s image in her gwaystrel’s mind and send him out in the
direction she had last seen her enemy. For once, Rikbeek did not
protest. Perhaps he sensed her urgency.

To her relief, he
located Krays within a few minutes and launched himself in pursuit.
Locking part of her mind to her companion’s, Eva was able to follow
his movements even without being able to see him in the
twilight.

That reminded
her. ‘Tren, could you get a Cloak on Rikbeek?’ she
whispered.

‘
I
can’t see him.’

Cursing inwardly,
she called Rikbeek back long enough for Tren to bind an
invisibility enchantment on him. Then she sent the gwaystrel
streaking away again, waiting only until he’d settled himself in
pursuit of the Lokantor.

‘
Ori,’
she said. ‘Please take my left hand and Tren’s right. Don’t let go
of us, no matter what happens!’

‘
Right,’ he whispered back, and a moment later his smooth young
fingers clutched hers. Ori was her substitute for draykon bone; his
flesh contained the same vitality, was composed of the same
amasku-drenched matter. As long as she kept a link with him, her
own, weaker draykon powers would be amplified.

She just hoped
that the three of them would be a match for Krays.

‘
What’s he doing?’ Tren murmured in her ear.

‘
Still
working at the construct,’ she replied. ‘No movement
yet.’

‘
Shouldn’t we attack him now, before he’s got time to do any
more damage?’

She bit her lip.
‘I’m not sure. We’re still working off speculation, and I want to
be sure we haven’t misunderstood something.’

‘
Would
it matter? Krays is the problem; remove him and whatever he’s doing
goes away.’

She sighed. ‘In
theory, but we don’t know who is helping him, if anyone. It doesn’t
seem that he has any assistance on the ground, but someone is
flying those machines. And... to tell the truth, I’m worried about
Limbane’s part in all of this. I don’t want to remove Krays only to
clear the way for Limbane to do exactly the same thing in his
stead.’

She wondered,
then, what had become of Galywis. She’d have given much to be able
to consult with him at that moment. Wherever he was, she hoped he
was both safe and doing something helpful.

Ori’s grip
suddenly tightened on her hand. ‘He’s activated something,’ he
muttered. ‘Those things are functional.’

‘
What?
But more than half of the components were destroyed.’

Ori shrugged.
‘Apparently he’s got enough to do something.’ He drew in a laboured
breath and Eva felt him beginning to tremble. ‘I do wish he
wouldn’t shake things up like this,’ he said lightly. ‘It’s so
unpleasant.’

Eva felt it too,
a pulsing thrum of energy that shot through her body, setting her
bones humming. The effect on her mind was even worse; all the
dizzying confusion that she fought so hard to subdue came rushing
back and for a moment she forgot who or what or where she
was.

The effect
receded a short time later. She came back to herself to discover
she was lying flat on the ground. Mercifully she had not lost Tren
and Ori; reaching out her hands revealed them both lying on either
side of her.

They were also
visible.

‘
Tren,’ she gasped, shaking him. ‘The Cloak’s gone.’

He didn’t have
time to reply, for another wave of coruscating energy battered them
anew, and Eva’s mind spun off again. This time she gritted her
teeth and fought it back, struggling shakily to her
feet.

‘
We
can’t keep this up,’ she muttered. ‘Forget what I said before. We
need to make an end to this, and soon.’

‘
Right,’ Tren said, back on his feet but swaying alarmingly. He
helped Ori up, then the three of them resumed their former
arrangement with Ori in the middle.

Eva shut her eyes
for a moment, holding tight to Ori’s hand to keep herself upright.
Searching for Rikbeek, she sensed him about fifty feet away, still
in pursuit of Krays. The Lokantor was moving now, though with no
particular speed. What was he doing?

‘
After
him,’ Eva said. ‘This way.’ She set off in Rikbeek’s direction,
grateful that she didn’t have to run. The disturbances came in
regular bursts now, each one threatening to hurl them all back into
head-spinning confusion. Their pace was necessarily slow as they
closed on Krays.

Then Ori stopped.
‘Something’s weird,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t Krays be trying to channel
the energy
out
? Isn’t that what we agreed would make sense?
But it isn’t going out. It isn’t going anywhere. He’s stirring it
up nicely but it’s maintaining the old pattern, round and round the
island.’

Eva fought to
make sense of that. The problem was, it didn’t make sense. She
doubted she could account for it even if her tired brain wasn’t
already fighting a constant battle against the effects the
corrupted amasku had on her.

Unless... a
glimmer of an idea occurred to her.

‘
It
was Galywis who set that up, wasn’t it? The enclosed circuit, I
mean. Do you suppose...?’

‘
Ha!’
Tren laughed. ‘Wily old man. If he’s managed to connect Krays’s
machine up to his own I may just have to hug him when I see him
again. Imagine that.’

Eva could imagine
it very well. If her theory was correct, Galywis had turned Krays’s
machines against him. The devices were causing plentiful
disturbance, but they were working with Galywis’s devices to direct
the amaskan energy in the same whirling circle as before. The
disturbance was severe, but it was - she hoped - still confined to
Orlind.

And Krays might
not even know it. ‘Do you suppose he can sense it?’ she
whispered.

‘
Probably not,’ Ori volunteered. ‘If he’s made himself part
draykon, that puts him on a par with you and Tren. That doesn’t
make him a full-blood draykon.’

And Eva wouldn’t
have known about this development without Ori. She could feel the
increased volatility of the realm, and the whirling amaskan energy
affected her, but more than that she could not see or
sense.

‘
Let’s
hope we’re right,’ she said. ‘Onward now. He’s getting ahead of
us.’

Krays, it
emerged, was making his slow way towards the Orlind Library. Had he
anticipated how much more deeply the corrupted amasku would affect
him, once he had implanted himself with draykon matter? Perhaps
not. It was reassuring to know that the handicap they fought
against also affected their enemy.

Eva kept an eye
out for Galywis as they followed after Krays, gaining on him by
slow degrees. But she saw no sign of the Master
Librarian.

Soon they were
barely ten paces behind Krays, all conversation at a halt as they
strove to reach him. Their predicament struck Eva as faintly
absurd: four people conducting an urgent chase across the island of
Orlind, barely managing more than a slow walking pace between
them... she might have laughed had it not been so
serious.

They’d closed the
distance to only five paces when Krays finally realised he was
being pursued. ‘Who’s that?’ he called, calmly and without a trace
of doubt or fear. He sounded like a man whose project was going
precisely according to plan. Eva hoped he was deceived on that
count.

He did not wait
for a reply. Turning away, he achieved a stumbling run as he raced
for the Library, Rikbeek in close pursuit. Krays’s machines were
having a grave impact on the confused building and it now cycled
through its changes with alarming speed, flashing from shape to
shape approximately once every thirty seconds. Eva, Tren and Ori
picked up their own pace and hastened after him as fast as they
could manage; but still he made it up to the top of the precarious
stairs before they had ascended more than the first few
steps.

This proved to be
a blessing as Krays paused at the base of the building and turned.
Under the influence of his new, stolen draykon abilities, the
staircase disappeared. Eva and her companions fell back to the
ground, a distance that - mercifully - was only a few
feet.

‘
Ouch,’ Eva grumbled anyway. Krays was beginning to annoy her.
Far above, the Lokantor wrought a small door in the face of the
Library and went through it. The door vanished behind
him.

‘
Does
he imagine that will stop us?’ Tren said, picking himself
up.

‘
A
sensible precaution,’ Eva sighed. ‘He still doesn’t know who, or
what we are.’ Ori forged a new set of stairs and they hurried up
them and through a new door that Tren made, trying to ignore the
way the castle hallway warped into a reading room as they did
so.

Krays was nowhere
in sight, but raised voices could be heard coming from beyond an
open door in the far wall. They ran for it, bursting into another
room lined with bookshelves to find Krays - and Galywis. Krays had
the old man by the shoulders and was shaking him.

‘
Why
are you still here!’ Krays was shouting.
‘
How
are you still here! If you’ve interfered with my
constructs...!’

Galywis, oddly,
was howling with laughter. ‘B-beautiful devices!’ he managed around
his mirth. ‘Never saw better!’ He laughed even harder, and Eva felt
a knot of tension ease inside her. Galywis’s amusement suggested
that she’d been right: he had indeed tampered with Krays’s
constructs.

‘
Drop
the invis,’ she said to Tren, not bothering to lower her
voice.

A moment later
Tren and Ori appeared beside her. A glance down told her that she,
too, was visible once again.

‘
Congratulations,’ Tren said lightly to Krays. ‘You broke the
world.’

Krays let go of
Galywis, to Eva’s relief, and spun around.

‘
You again?’
he snarled. ‘But you’re...’

‘
Not a
Lokant, no,’ Tren smiled. ‘Sorry.’

‘
Then
what the...?’ He looked at Eva and then at Ori, his expression
halfway between incredulity and chagrin. ‘More of you out there
hassling my planes, I suppose?’

Eva wasn’t sure
whether “plane” referred to his flying machines or his energy
collectors, but she didn’t let that show. ‘Trying to turn back
time, Krays?’ she said mildly.

His eyes
narrowed, but he didn’t reply. Turning back to Galywis, he smiled.
‘I’ll unseat you yet, Lokantor.’

Then chaos
erupted. The greenhouse had reasserted itself while they had
talked, but now it disappeared and a square, metal-walled room took
its place. Eva barely had time to realise that the walls were
rushing inward at horrific speed before they hit, slamming into
her, squeezing her body like a vice. Heart pounding with fright,
she mustered her will and pushed back, until the crippling pressure
eased. A glance told her that Galywis was compressed into a huddle
with Eva and Ori and Tren, all battered and shaken. Krays had
fashioned a ledge for himself someway above their heads, out of the
way of the crushing walls.

‘
Get
rid of the walls,’ Ori yelled, and she focused again on the
red-tinged metal that formed their prison. Those walls would soon
succumb to their combined will.

Only, they
encountered a problem. The Library may be fluid and changeable but
it was
solid
in some indefinable way, and would not suffer
itself to be outright dissolved. As hard as they pushed, the walls
refused to disappear.

‘
Moss!’ Ori said and Eva instantly changed her approach,
envisioning the metal walls as composed of the soft, spongy red
moss that covered parts of the Orstwych forests. The effect was
muddled; the three of them had imagined different types of moss and
so the walls came out a patchwork of colours and textures. But the
goal was achieved: the soft, yielding surface had no power to crush
them.

There was no time
to celebrate this small victory, however, as the distant ceiling
rumbled and rocks began to fall from above. Instantly Eva threw out
a protective frame of solid metal to enclose the four of them. Her
improvised armour shuddered but held, deflecting the missiles with
alarming clanking sounds. The boys then worked together to redirect
Krays’s rocks, sending them flying at their creator instead. With a
muttered curse, Krays jumped down from his aerial platform and onto
a stair that rose at his feet.

‘
Up,’
Ori said tersely. A column of rock rose under him, elevating him to
Krays’s level. Eva and Tren quickly followed suit, leaving a dazed
Galywis under the protection of her metal shield.

‘
Krays!’ she yelled. ‘What’s the purpose of all this? Leave be
and go home!’

He snarled and a
gun appeared in his hands. He aimed it at her, but before he could
fire it turned into a large and
very
purple fish.

‘
That
one was for Avane,’ Ori panted, grinning as Krays cursed again and
dropped his transformed gun.

‘
You’re a Lokant!’ Krays hurled at her. ‘You ought to
understand. Could you resist the chance to control
all
the
Libraries? No rules but the ones
you
make! No restrictions,
no limits!’