The Sylph Hunter (30 page)

Despite Airi’s efforts to get him to sleep, Devon stayed awake long past when he should have, thinking.

They were going to survive this, they really were. Between the hive and this place, as well as all the food stored here, they’d have enough to outlast the Hunter. Not that they’d even have to anymore. With the human ability to
see
the monster, the battle sylphs would be able to destroy it. It wouldn’t be easy to approach them, but Devon wasn’t so much of a coward that he wouldn’t say anything, and if he had to, he’d prove it to them. The Hunter would be dead by the day’s end and everyone would be able to reunite with their families. The stupidity of the last few days wouldn’t be repeated.

It amazed him how much difference a single woman could make, though he supposed it shouldn’t, given how he’d seen Solie take on her responsibilities and how she ran the Valley. Eapha wasn’t Solie though, and Meridal was a very different kind of world. He’d have to help her, he thought with an exhalation of breath. This was what Leon had sent him for, and if he had to ask Airi to carry him back up to that floating palace and force his way into her throne room through a hundred battle sylphs, he would. He’d probably piss himself a few times, but he’d do it. He’d grown too, he supposed. There were hundreds of men safe now because he’d stopped letting himself get crippled by his own doubts. He was trained for this. He’d do it and stop letting himself think he couldn’t. He’d just do it and let the doubts bother him later, after it was done. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but if he pretended it was, maybe in the long run it would be.

Devon sighed, lying there in the darkness of his little alcove on top of a pile of cushions that had been used by concubines and battlers for purposes he did
not
want to think about, and listened to the sounds of the men and boys all around him. It was mostly quiet, nearly everyone asleep, but the sounds were still there. The muttering, the snoring, and sometimes the weeping. He tried not to listen to it. If it had been him, he wouldn’t have wanted anyone paying attention to his grief.

In the morning, he’d be able to tell them all that they’d be reunited with their women again, that there would be a passageway linking them, and that the Hunter would soon be dead. He’d probably have a hundred volunteers to lead the battlers after the thing.

Most of all, he’d see Zalia again. Despite everything else, he kept coming back to that fact. She’d done so much more than he’d dreamed he’d ever be able to, and he was so proud of her. More, he missed her. He hadn’t yet told her father that they were betrothed. He was waiting for Zalia to be with him in order to do that, and to make sure that she hadn’t chosen a battle sylph instead.

Devon closed his eyes, forcing himself to think positively, to imagine the best happening and ignore his doubts. Tomorrow. Everything would wait until tomorrow.

Eventually, he slept.

The sylphs were talking, planning the process of joining the two hives into one, and the Hunter listened.

It didn’t matter to it what they did, not really. It would be in the main hive soon anyway. If they’d had the passageway they talked about made already, some of the food would flee down it and it could only reach so far after them, but they didn’t have it dug yet. They’d start come the morning, but that would be too late.

With a final, massive effort, it heaved up a tentacle high enough to latch on to the side of the palace and heard the air sylphs who held it complain in confusion about the sudden extra weight. They weren’t inventive thinkers, so it didn’t worry about them guessing what was going on, but there wasn’t much time to waste. It didn’t have the strength to hold its tentacles over its head for long and it needed to get this done before it used up too much of its food stores.

Using the one heavy tentacle as a brace, it reached up with more tentacles, anchoring them on to the palace and using them to hold itself as it wormed its way inside, digging deep in search of its target. It would like to suck the entire palace clean and get the queen, causing complete chaos in the hive, but it would settle for its most immediate target—the air sylphs who kept the hundreds of tons of rock from plunging down on the egg-like hive below.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

T
here were three air sylphs holding up the palace. In actuality, there were twelve who took turns teaming up to support it, but at the moment there were only three, nestled in chambers created for them at different points underneath the palace. Not able to see each other, they still chattered endlessly, holding the palace in place with experienced ease while they talked about the day to come, inadvertently telling the Hunter outside exactly what was happening among the hives. Old and powerful, they were happy where they were, even as they talked about finishing their shifts and returning to their masters, as well as what the hives would be like with the passageway connecting them.

Since they weren’t aware of it, none of them talked about how humans would help the battle sylphs destroy the Hunter.

The Hunter carefully reached in, stretching with tendrils only a few inches wide and worming them along the vents that pockmarked the underside of the palace. It reached the air sylph on the westernmost side of the palace first, dangling down out of a crack in the stone above her as she talked about her master’s various ambitions. The tentacle hesitated a moment, shrugging itself to get a bit more length into the crack, and dropped down right into the center of her.

She died instantly, the energy that formed her pattern immediately breaking down and sucking up into the tentacle, racing along its length to feed the main body. Her hive mates didn’t even feel her death, though they did feel the absence of her power and screamed as the entire palace suddenly lurched to one side. They scrambled to right it and hold it up as the Hunter grabbed a better hold and forced more of itself in, now that the edge was closer to it. Invigorated by the taste of the sylph, it went hunting for her sisters.

Eapha pitched off the bed and onto the floor when the palace lurched. Startled out of a sound sleep, she screeched in surprise, followed by a yelp of pain that turned into a wail of terror as she slid across the suddenly angled floor toward the wall, the bed and everything else in the room scraping uncontrollably after her.

Tooie rolled off the bed after her, putting himself between her and the sliding bed and bracing his feet against it as it continued to slide forward. Raking his fingers against the floor for leverage, he kicked outward and the bed flew backward up the slope, smashing into the cabinet and vanity that were trying to come after it. An instant later, the entire collection exploded as he destroyed it and put up a shield around both of them. Bits of wood scattered against it and flew past.

The floor abruptly righted itself, throwing Eapha back against Tooie as it settled, not quite as level as before, but much better than the sudden slope it had become.

Thanks to Tooie’s proximity, Eapha could feel the emotions of everyone close by in the palace. Terror, horror, rage, and the roaring of the battlers as they rose to defend against a threat she couldn’t immediately identify.

“What’s going on?” she shouted, so he could hear her over the thunderous noise.

Tooie hadn’t joined them, his head cocked to one side while he listened. “One of the air sylphs is gone,” he told her.

“Gone?” she shrilled, suddenly terrified. Where? How? None of them would ever abandon a duty. It was too ingrained in them, even without orders.

The floor dropped out from under them, Eapha suddenly too breathless to scream as it dropped no less than five feet before it stopped again, the palace trembling as if it were a live thing as frightened as her.

“Another air sylph is gone!” Tooie shouted. His own terror was tempered by his growing rage as he grabbed her arm, somehow getting to his feet and pulling her up as well. Eapha clung to him, afraid of the floor dropping away again, or of the entire palace falling. How many sylphs were supposed to be holding it up right now? She couldn’t remember. Where did they
go
?

They weren’t gone, they were dead. The epiphany hit her with perfect clarity, bringing with it a calmness she was pretty sure would turn back into uncontrollable terror in a heartbeat if she let it. Tooie stared at her, picking up on her emotions but not understanding them. Of course he wouldn’t, she thought. He wasn’t an intuitive thinker. The whole reason she had to be the queen was because the sylphs weren’t shrewd, only she’d been so stupid and convinced of her own inadequacy that she hadn’t let herself
be
the queen until it was too late, and it definitely was too late.

“Get me out of here,” she told her battler, her voice clear even over the screaming of the women in the palace and that endless, growing roar of almost seven hundred battle sylphs all rising at once. “No matter what, get me out of here.”

So she could salvage this, if there was anything left to salvage once it was over. She knew what was happening, even if Tooie didn’t, and she knew he didn’t. The confusion in him was obvious to her, along with the absolute trust he had in her to understand what was happening and figure out how to deal with it. Eapha hoped he was right in his faith, but like Devon only a few hours before, though in far more desperate circumstances, she put her doubts aside for the needs of the moment, the first of which was her own survival.

Tooie grabbed her up in his arms, holding her against his chest for a moment before he shifted to his cloud form and darted outside, Eapha cushioned on blackness that surrounded her as she felt him arch up, heading into the sky above the palace.

“I need to see!” she told him.

He shifted a bit, the part of his belly closest to her eyes turning translucent. Eapha stared down, feeling vertigo swamp over her as she looked down through the darkness at the palace, lurching and trembling in place. Below it, the hive was a rounded shape covered even more than the rest of the night-darkened city by the palace’s shadow, and from the main gate and every suddenly opened vent, battle sylphs rose, lifting in a cloud of black rage she couldn’t see save where it was sparked with lightning, rising to defend against the impossible.

The Hunter?
Tooie asked her.

Eapha nodded slowly, though she thought he couldn’t see, until a tendril formed inside the space where she lay to wipe her cheek of tears. “Yes,” she whispered. She almost imagined she could see it right against the palace, looming like the jellyfish she remembered from the harbor waters when she played on the docks during her childhood, before she was a slave. Only no jellyfish was ever this large and it was only shadows she saw.

Why is it doing this?
he asked.
Hunters only ever attack along the ground. How is it even doing this?
Battle sylphs were swarming, circling the palace and firing off blasts of energy that exploded in midair or on the ground, doing nothing.

Eapha looked down at the palace, floating above the hive, right where the sylphs moved it when the palace was first made, and knew exactly what it was after.

Zalia went off the bed with a shriek the same way that Eapha had, the bed itself flipping over and landing on her. Luckily, it was mostly straw, cushioning her from bruises even as she yelped, caught under it. The floor sloped farther and it rolled off her, skidding down to the far wall. The lamp she’d left burning by the bed rolled after it and shattered, catching fire, and Zalia pressed her hands against the floor, desperate not to go rolling right after it.

One-Eleven grabbed her arm, yanking her up onto her feet as the floor releveled itself with a lurch. Zalia clung to him, utterly terrified. “What’s happening?” she gasped.

One-Eleven stared toward the window, where already she could see the lightning flashes of battle sylphs in their natural form. “We’re under attack.”

He sounded almost gleeful at the thought. “By what?” Zalia gasped, though of course, there was only one thing she could think of that would be attacking them now.

The floor dropped under them. Zalia screamed, but One-Eleven kept both his own feet and hers as it stopped again five feet lower down. Zalia felt like throwing up, but he looked at her, his eyes gleaming. “We’re going to go and kill it,” he told her. “Stay here, you’ll be safe.”

Safe? she wanted to scream. How could she possibly be safe here? She could hear other women screaming, barely audible above the roaring of the battlers, and grabbed his shirt. “You have to get me out of here!”

“Why?” he asked. “I might miss the fighting.”

She stared at him, suddenly cold. “You’re going to leave me? But you promised!”

The battler roaring grew louder, the storm outside the window larger and closer. She was hearing explosions as well, horrifically close. If the palace didn’t fall first, they could destroy the building themselves. “One-Eleven!” She should have named him; then she could have ordered him to get her out. Instead she had to rely on his inhuman sensibilities.

“I’ll be back,” he assured her, pulling her hands free. Ducking in, he kissed her as if he were just going to the gladiator ring for some pretend sport, and turned, diving through the window, changing shape as he went.

“One-Eleven!” she screamed, running after him and leaning out, heedless of the broken glass that cut into her hands. He was already gone, roaring with exhilaration and rage as he joined the others. He’d left her, he really had. Zalia looked down at her hands, lifting them to see the cuts on her palms. The sight of them just made her sad. For everything he’d said and all the things he’d promised, One-Eleven didn’t put her first, not even as a friend. He didn’t even put her high enough to rescue her before he ran off to be the hero.

How long would the palace stay up? One-Eleven’s trust in it could get her killed. Zalia looked down at the darkened hive, the growing fire behind her demanding that she get moving, and froze.

Tendrils, some as thin as her own hair but others as thick as her finger, and in one case her arm, were crawling up the side of the palace, waving in the air. They were next to invisible, so translucent she could see through them, but their edges gleamed in the firelight. Zalia sucked in her breath, knowing there was no use in screaming for One-Eleven, but damn him, why didn’t he wait just one more minute? And then she turned and ran. Fleeing past the fire that used to be the bed she’d been sleeping in, she ran out into the hall, already filling with women who’d either been abandoned by their own battlers or were still trying to find them.

Devon woke to the sound of every sylph in the men’s hive screaming.

He lurched to his feet, stumbling almost drunkenly out of the alcove. He had no idea what time it was. The harem was still dark, men turning up the wicks on lanterns to provide more light. Then a fire sylph flared and he had to duck his head, his arm up to protect his stinging eyes.