Survivors: Book 4 Circles of Light series (65 page)

‘It’s back again,’ he
said tersely and examined the ground around him. ‘Can’t see the
star cursed stuff anywhere, but I can smell it.’

‘Zerran said it was a
sign of something benign.’ Tika was also poking among the tangled
grass. Akomi sneezed and both Sket and Tika stared at him. He
sneezed again.

‘Don’t tell me you can
smell mint?’ she mind spoke the old cat.

‘I don’t know what mint
is, but there is a smell here, a sharp and ticklish
smell.’

Tika laughed at his
description, picking him up and rubbing her cheek against his
whiskery face. Ren and Navan joined them. ‘You’ll never guess,’ Ren
began.

‘That you smelt mint,’
Tika grinned at him. She sniffed. ‘It’s gone again now, but we
smelt it here. And so did Akomi.’

‘They’ve stopped,’
Maressa interrupted. ‘Orla and the tribesmen. A cave or something I
think. Everything is concentrated on a very small area.’ Her eyes
met Tika’s and Tika smiled affectionately.

‘Then now is the time
we approach closer. Can you keep close watch while we travel? I
don’t want him to catch any hint of my mind until it’s too late for
him to do anything unpleasant.’

Maressa swallowed. ‘Of
course I can.’

She turned to stuff her
blanket into her pack to hide her face from the others, especially
Tika. She had a very bad feeling inside her this time, far, far
worse than when they knew Tika would have to face down
Valesh.

Brin led them
eastwards. He flew low, hugging the hilltops, and kept their pace
much slower than usual.

‘There.’ Maressa mind
spoke them all. ‘The hill to the right with a sort of step on its
top.’

They peered through a
persistent drizzle to the hill Maressa indicated.

‘Land us on the hill
behind,’ Tika directed Brin.

When the Dragons set
down, the companions dismounted and huddled close together. Tika
wanted as little use of mind speech as possible lest Qwah pick up
the faintest hint there might be danger close by.

‘Well, I must take my
chance now.’

Tika studied each face
around her and knew just how much she had come to love every one.
‘You will wait here, although I’d prefer you to move further away.
I will go onto that hill, the cave is close to the top I judge,
from Maressa’s picture of it.

‘I will take you.’
Farn’s voice was soft, perfectly calm, and his eyes gleamed pearl
and sapphire in the grey gloom soaking them all.

Without a word, Sket
climbed onto Farn’s back, his expression set like stone. Akomi
leaped up Sket’s leg and glared balefully down at the companions as
though daring them to make him move. Tika took Maressa’s hands in
hers.

‘Stars bless you and
guard your heart,’ she murmured.

Maressa choked back her
tears and hugged Tika’s small body fiercely against her own. Tika
freed herself gently and moved to Ren, to Navan, to Jakri and
Khosa. Khosa’s turquoise eyes burned into Tika’s but she said not a
word. Tika hugged Storm and then stood before Gan’s towering
figure. He bent down to her, pushing her unruly curls off her
forehead as he’d done so very many times before. Somehow he managed
a smile.

‘Stars guard you,
little one.’

Tika’s throat ached
with tears but if Gan could smile, well so could she.

‘Family,
Gan?’

‘Always family
Tika.’

She nodded, hugged him
hard and lurched away towards Brin. She leaned against his broad
chest for an instant and then moved quickly to mount
Farn.

‘Shield your minds
now,’ she ordered as Farn lifted away.

Tika did not look back,
instead she forced all thought of those friends from her mind,
centering her concentration as Iska had taught in her first lessons
in the use of power. Farn landed as gently as thistledown on the
oddly stepped hilltop and Tika slid from his back. Her pendant hung
at her chest, free of it leather cover. She nearly jumped out of
her skin as claws dug in the top of her shoulder. She bit back an
exclamation; she need to focus her attention on what she must do,
not yell at a mottled old cat.

Sket moved to her right
side and she was distantly aware of him hooking the remaining
fingers of his left hand firmly under the back of her belt. Tika’s
mind sank into the bare rock beneath her feet, filtering through
the ancient layers until she knew she approached air once more. The
grey dimness of the rock gave way to sudden firelight and Orla’s
corpse.

Above on the hilltop,
Tika’s body went rigid and Sket tensed, murmuring prayers his
grandmother had taught him and which he’d not repeated for years.
While Tika’s mind watched, she saw the misshapen child lap at
Orla’s blood and then turn its head towards the cave wall opposite
Tika. For one heartbeat, Tika saw the thing that was Qwah, then it
disintegrated in a mass of nothingness and diminishing screams. Her
attention snapped back to the thing which still squatted in Orla’s
gore. Tika gathered every scrap of concentration before her heart
could beat again but the thing laughed, staring straight at her.
She heard thunder, the hiss of lightning far overhead, then
something tore within her mind and she fell.

As she fell she caught
the briefest glimpse of Brin, his great wings outstretched, trying
to cover the companions as lightning, thick and solid as real
spears, plunged among them. Beyond the protection of those massive
wings, impaled and unmoving lay Maressa and Gan. Tika’s ears were
filled with the sound of Farn screaming in pain and anger. She
fell, a weight at her back and the faintest smell of mint in her
nose. She fell unendingly it seemed, but then she landed with a
thump that completely winded her. She lay, breath whooping into her
battered lungs.

She opened her eyes and
found Sket wheezing beside her. Akomi was squeezed between them,
every hair on his body on end. He stared into her face, whiskers
bristling forward around his nose.

‘Where are we?’ He
spoke in her mind, his tone offended, aggrieved and
frightened.

Tika’s breathing was
coming under control and Sket was peering around them. She
struggled up, wincing as her ribs protested. She stared at the
jagged dark stone walls and her heart sank even further. She
touched her pendant and found it was cold as any inanimate lump of
stone.

‘I’m afraid we’re in a
place Between,’ she said aloud, her words sounding weak and
small.

She stared at Akomi,
then at Sket. She reached to touch them and felt her own legs and
arms while Sket watched her warily.

‘We’re here
completely,’ she said. ‘Not just our minds.’

‘Is that good or bad?’
Sket asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Her
voice wobbled treacherously. ‘Did you – did you see anything – just
as we fell?’

Sket’s eyes narrowed.
‘No. What do you think you saw then?’

Tika grasped at the
thin excuse Sket offered. ‘Nothing really – we weren’t even looking
in Brin’s direction, were we?’

But she knew in her
heart that she’d seen true. Maressa, the beautiful Vagrantian air
mage, pierced, pinned to the rock with a spear of flame. And Gan.
But no, she mustn’t, she couldn’t think of that now. Somehow she
got herself to her knees, then to her feet, helping Sket as much as
he was helping her. She looked around. It was dark but she could
see and she knew Sket and Akomi could too.

Briefly, Tika sent her
mind questing outwards for Farn. Nothing. It was like a mirror –
her probing mind simply rebounded on her.

‘I’ll try and explain,’
she told Sket, lifting Akomi to her shoulder. ‘I was in a place
like this after we faced Valesh. Seela explained a
little.’

‘Seela?’ Sket touched
the strap of his pack and Tika remembered he still had four of
Seela’s purple scales tucked in there.

Before she could
describe the place Between life and death, Akomi sneezed. Sket and
Tika sniffed at the same instant. The very faintest fragrance of
mint. Tika felt hope surge through her and she tugged Sket along
the passage in pursuit of that elusive scent. They had taken half a
dozen shaky steps when laughter echoed down the tunnel. A voice
neither of them recognised said something in a language they
couldn’t understand. The laugh rang out again and the voice spoke
in the common tongue.

‘Gotcha, meddlesome
brat! Gotcha!’

###

Now read 'Dark Realm',
the fifth book in the 'Circles Of Light' series.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/149325

Circles Of Light series
available at smashwords.com

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/dragonhame

Circles Of Light
series

1 Soul Bonds

2 Vagrants

3 Drogoya

4 Survivors

5 Dark Realm

6 Perilous
Shadows

Coming Soon - ‘Tilliat’
- 1000 years after the events in ‘Circles Of Light’.

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online:

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in print from
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