The Sylph Hunter (31 page)

“Airi!”

The palace is under attack,
she told him, her terror beating in his own chest.
The battlers are rising!

Devon spun in terror, looking toward his neighbor’s alcove in fear of seeing the creature leap out, destroying everything in his way as he went to the fight. Instead, he saw the battle sylph lying on his side just inside it, one hand holding the curtain open as he looked out at them, lifting his head to regard Devon. All the spit in Devon’s mouth immediately dried up.

The battle sylph slowly blinked at him. He should talk to him, Devon knew. He should warn him about the Hunter, that humans could see it. He swallowed, working moisture back into his mouth.

The battle sylph stared at him and winced, moving one hand toward his rib cage.

“Are you hurt?” Devon asked instead, surprised.

The battle sylph sighed. “Yes. I can’t rise.” He glanced at the woman sleeping behind him. “I wouldn’t leave her anyway.” He sighed again and looked back at Devon, his eyes so intent that the man’s breath caught again. “You know something. I can feel it.”

Behind Devon, he could hear Gel crying, Shasha trying to comfort him. Xehm was coming toward them from where he’d bedded down for the night, fearfully asking for an explanation of what was happening. Other men were coming closer as well, braving the battler in search of news, even those with sylphs who could tell them what was happening. All of them were staring at him, and Devon took a deep, terrified breath.

“I can see the Hunter,” he said. “All humans can,” he added belatedly, feeling stupid.

The battler’s eyebrows shot up. “What?” He sounded as if he felt as stupid as Devon. Certainly his expression was now one of shock. Xehm arrived at Devon’s side, the old man looking up at him in confusion.

We saw it,
Airi told him, her voice as clear to the battler as it was to Devon. He looked at her.
I mean, my master saw it.

“We all did,” Devon admitted, suddenly weary beyond belief and not sure the creature would even believe him.

He did. He stared at Devon, his mouth hanging open in a surprise that would have been comical if Devon wasn’t so afraid. “You can…” The battler closed his eyes and groaned, trying to sit up farther and wincing before he sank back down. “You have to tell them,” he said.

“Me?” Devon squeaked. Wasn’t it enough that he’d forced himself to tell this one?

The battler looked at him with irritation. “You think too little of yourself, human. Tell them. Go to one of the battlers up there and scream it into his face, if you can get him to stop for you long enough.”

“Why can’t you tell them?” Devon asked. “I know you can talk mind to mind.”

It was Airi who answered.
They’ve risen, Devon. They won’t hear anything he sends to them through the roaring.

The battler nodded. “I can’t warn them and even if I got to the surface, I’d be running the risk of getting caught up in their rage. I can’t leave Fareeda. I promised her and the queen gave me leave. You have to go.”

Devon closed his eyes, feeling cold and terrified. “Gods…”

Xehm put a hand on his shoulder and Devon looked over at the old man, whose face was pale and lined. “It has to be someone who can do it,” he said and paused before adding, “My daughter is out there.”

That was really all that mattered. Devon nodded shortly, surrounded on all sides by men he’d led down here to try and save their lives, men who were afraid that the women who’d been stolen to keep them safe were now in greater danger. He thought for a moment that he’d never get through them, but they parted for him, humans and sylphs alike, and left him a pathway out.

“Right,” he muttered, squared himself, and ran down it, Airi at his back.

The battle sylphs were rising. All over the city, they rose, taking to the air and their natural shapes as they roared in rage, the hatred consuming them. Their queen was in danger, the floating palace she lived on wavering in the air, held up now by only one desperately laboring air sylph. None of them could see what was attacking. They could only see the palace itself shaking, dropping a dozen or more feet before stopping and listing increasingly to one side even while it tried to stay in the air. Below it, the dome of the hive stretched, clean and untouched by anything in the early dawn light except the shadow of the palace above it.

They saw nothing else.

Because of that, they attacked randomly and the ground all around the hive exploded, rock erupting everywhere as they turned the buildings to rubble, the sound of it echoing even through the thick walls of the hive. They sent explosions through the air as well, creating shockwaves that carried waves of dust outward from the center hive, filling the streets as surely as the earlier storm had. The Hunter was untouched by it all, clinging to the side of the floating palace to keep itself from being blown away by the unnatural winds, or worse, getting caught in one of those explosions. Its body was higher than any of the detonations and they wouldn’t target the palace itself. Even in their madness, they wouldn’t do that, not so long as the queen was at risk.

As the battlers continued to throw their energy everywhere, hoping desperately to catch
something
, the Hunter readjusted its grip and delved deeper into the palace’s underbelly, searching for that last air sylph.

Eapha looked down at it all, half-blinded by the dust, and coughing, held in Tooie’s mantle as she felt him tremble with the need to attack. She just dug her fingers into his body, afraid that if she let go, he’d dive into that madness, for it was madness. She felt near total insanity from the battle sylphs as they tried to defend against something that couldn’t be fought, and as their madness grew, they forgot the most important things.

Eapha didn’t. She couldn’t hear anything other than the roar of the battle sylphs or feel more than their swamping hate auras, but she knew she hadn’t been the only one in the palace.

“Save the women!” she screamed, her voice almost hoarse from dust but her mental cry as loud as Tooie could project it. The voice of a queen who couldn’t be denied.
Save the women in the palace!

Hearing her cry, everywhere around the palace, battle sylphs dived, heading for entrances, some of them dying unheeded when they flew straight into the Hunter’s tentacles, and with a hum of satisfaction, the Hunter speared into the final air sylph’s chamber and found its prize.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

T
he palace fell.

Zalia screamed, her stomach rising as she was suddenly weightless, everything in her pressing upward as the floor beneath her fell.

Then the battlers were there, streaking into the hallway where the women were, coming through windows that they smashed open, the lightning inside them roiling faster than the most violent of storms. They snatched the women up and Zalia was caught with them, surrounded by warm blackness. The feeling that she was falling down was replaced by an even more sickening one of racing forward while darting side to side, as though avoiding a great many things, until suddenly they looped up in a steady arc. Finally, they leveled off and immediately began to drop again. The drop wasn’t so abrupt this time and slowed nearly to a stop before the darkness around her changed, turning into a tall, beautiful man holding her in the middle of a street where other women wept in the arms of other beautiful men.

“Are you all right?” One-Eleven asked her.

Zalia stared at him, her lungs only just starting to work again, and then looked over his shoulder and forgot how to breathe again.

The palace fell onto the hive, the pointed bottom of it slamming into it like a hammer against a glass jar. The sound of it hitting the stone of the hive punched her like a wave, so loud it hurt, and the side of the dome where the palace hit crumbled wide open.

“Oh gods,” Zalia whispered, though she wasn’t sure if she said the words aloud.

Still holding her by her arms, One-Eleven stared back over his shoulder at the devastation, his grip tightening until it began to hurt. The roar of the battle sylphs changed with the breach in the hive and after a moment, Zalia realized that she was hearing screams from that direction, coming from inside the hive. She shouldn’t have heard them over the battle sylphs, except there were so many people screaming.

“What’s happening!” she shouted at One-Eleven. He didn’t seem to hear her, still staring. The other battlers who’d rescued the women were rising, very few of them staying with their women unless they were ordered to. Zalia saw Kiala, her feet dangling off the ground as she kept her arms around Yahe’s neck, desperately clinging to him while he tried to get her to let go. “One-Eleven!”

He looked at her, his eyes glazed and wild.

“Zalia!”

Hearing the voice behind her, Zalia turned, the air whooshing out of her and back in as she started to breathe again. Devon was running toward her, his face frantic and his hair sticking out in all directions.

“Devon!” she shouted and One-Eleven yanked her to him, his grip suddenly possessive as he hissed at the man.

Devon skidded to a halt so fast that it was as though he’d run into a wall. He stared at One-Eleven, his face ashen white and his mouth a terrified little O. Zalia thought for a moment that he’d run, and she pulled herself free of One-Eleven’s embrace, taking a step toward him. In that moment, Devon swallowed and managed to find his voice.

“I can see the Hunter,” he said.

Both of them stared at him, Zalia standing in front of One-Eleven and feeling almost as confused as she was sure One-Eleven was.

One-Eleven’s face twisted. “That’s stupid.”

“It’s not,” Devon whispered, his voice so low Zalia wasn’t sure she heard it over the roaring of the battle sylphs. “I can see it.”

Zalia turned back toward One-Eleven, staring up into his beautiful face and not knowing what to think. The other battle sylphs were continuing their roar, a note of desperation in it now as they hurled explosions at the area around the mouth of the gaping hole into the open hive. Even the sound of it shattering didn’t dampen the echoes of the screams inside, shrieks of pain that had nothing to do with the damage caused by the broken stone. Women were being devoured inside the hive, Zalia knew it. She still couldn’t see any Hunter, just streaks of dust blown by the winds of the explosions that could have been massive swinging ropes if she let herself believe it.

Just like what she’d seen reaching up to her window at the palace, right before it fell.

“One-Eleven,” she started to say.

He didn’t hear her, or perhaps chose not to. “You’re a liar!’ he shouted at Devon. “You just want
her
!”

“No!” Devon gasped. “I mean yes. I mean—”

“Go away,” the battler snarled. “Coward. You’re just a coward. You’re nothing but fear. Go away. I’ll show you what real heroes do.”

He leaned forward and kissed Zalia, firm and hard on the mouth. She gasped, rising up on her toes as his kiss overwhelmed her despite herself with promise and something more. Something like madness.

“We battlers will stop the Hunter,” he whispered to her, pulling his mouth away. “We have it now. That coward just doesn’t have the courage to do it.”

What did he mean? Zalia wondered, suddenly terrified. There was something final in his tone, and proud, and utterly insane, as irrational as the roar of the battle sylphs was becoming.

“Don’t go!” Kiala was shouting at her battle sylph, her arms still locked around his neck. “I’m ordering you not to go! Don’t go!” Yahe looked crazed, trembling as he held his master, his eyes turned toward the three of them.

Don’t go where? Zalia wondered, staring up at One-Eleven, seeing something in his eyes that suddenly made her wish that she had agreed to become his master. Only that, she understood, would have been enough for her to stop what was about to come. Now it was too late to stop him at all.

One-Eleven gave Devon a look that could only have been triumph and kissed Zalia again. A moment later he was in the air, shifting to his cloud form as he raced to join the mass cloud that was forming in the air next to the hive, so dense that nothing could be seen through it. Dozens of battlers were joining it, hundreds, until the only ones that remained on the ground seemed to be those with screaming women hanging on to them. Knocked to the ground by the force of One-Eleven’s departure, Zalia stared up at them in confusion, her reeling mind not understanding, or not wanting to understand, for when it started, she wasn’t actually surprised.

The battle sylphs started to dive at the entrance to the hive, throwing themselves not into it, but at the invisible creature they knew was there. Dozens of them at a time, they fed it with their own bodies, drawing it away from the women and sylphs inside the only way they could. Zalia barely realized she was screaming, knowing that One-Eleven was in that suicidal cloud, perhaps even already dead, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“By the gods,” Devon groaned behind her. “Why didn’t you listen to me? Why didn’t you damn well listen?” A moment later, he grabbed Zalia, manhandling her roughly to her feet, and pulled her against him. “Look!” he shouted. “Look at it!”

She looked, watching as battle sylphs died at the gaping hole into the hive, screaming and vanishing in sparks of energy. They shrieked in agony as they died, but still more dived to replace the ones gone, suiciding en masse.

“Not there!” Devon shouted, grabbing her chin and forcing her gaze up. “LOOK AT IT!”

Zalia looked and suddenly she saw. Above the cloud, above where the palace used to be, there floated a flattened oval shape, hundreds of tentacles hanging from its body, all of it so faint that it could have just been dust if he hadn’t told her it was there, if Devon hadn’t forced her to look. The Hunter hung over its feeding ground, devouring the battle sylphs who sacrificed themselves on its tentacles so willingly, none of them able to see its actual body as it floated safe above them.

“Oh gods,” she whispered. It was nearly a hundred feet across, obvious to her now and horrible.

“I have to stop it,” Devon whispered. “Airi, I have to stop it and I need you to help me. Zalia, if I don’t, you have to tell them where it is, what it is.”

“How?” she gasped, turning to face him as he let her go and drew his sword, the first time she’d seen him even touch it though it had always been at his side. “How can you stop it?” Then he lifted into the air, carried by his air sylph, and she knew what he was going to do. “NO!” she screamed, though she couldn’t stop him any more than she could have stopped One-Eleven.

All she could do was watch.

Devon realized just as Zalia did what the battle sylphs were doing and why. It was utter insanity, but how much saner was what he was considering? He had no choice. They wouldn’t listen to him; it took all the courage he’d been able to gather to go up to Zalia’s battle sylph and try to talk to him. Now they were all insane and he felt like he had no courage left.

Why are we doing this?
Airi shrieked, her terror beating at him as she carried him awkwardly up and over the buildings of the city, fighting to lift him above the battle sylphs and the Hunter.
This is battler work!

“There aren’t going to be any battlers left in a few minutes,” Devon told her, clutching his sword hilt with sweaty hands as he tried not to look down. Airi did her best to carry him, but as always, the ride was rough. He desperately hung on to the sword.

Why us?
she wailed.

Because there was no one else. Because he had to. Because if he stopped to think about it, he’d take Zalia and her father and run, and he’d never be able to live with himself. Of course, if he got Airi hurt, he’d definitely never be able to live with himself. There was just no other way up to the body of the Hunter. All he could do was pray he was right and that it was vulnerable there.

“Go right,” he told Airi, knowing she couldn’t see anything ahead of them except dying battlers flickering into oblivion in midair. She jerked them both to the right, making Devon want to vomit but keeping them clear of a massively thick tentacle that swung almost lazily, impacting against three battle sylphs who flashed and were gone, leaving only faintly glowing afterimages being sucked up the tentacle toward the body. Devon was still terrified, but he grieved for the battlers. They were sacrificing themselves for no good reason. The best they could hope for was to feed the Hunter enough that it would leave. They wouldn’t destroy it, only themselves.

“Go up,” he directed, his voice thick.

I’m trying,
Airi sobbed, hauling them both upward, but still forward. She couldn’t just lift him and had to settle for circling upward, using the winds as much as she could. It seemed agonizingly slow, though they moved quickly enough.

“Left!” he screamed and she rushed that way, a tentacle lashing through where they’d just been.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.

“I’ll play an entire symphony for you after this,” Devon promised. “I will.” His gorge rose and he almost vomited. “And I’ll never ask you to carry me anywhere ever again.”

You better not! Just kill the thing so I can put you down and cry!

“Move right!” he shouted.

The Hunter fed lazily, gorging itself on the creatures so willing to feed it. Their energy filled it, pushing the gas production in its main body to maximum. It would feast on these creatures and the rest of the hive once they were gone. Then it would give itself to the winds. There was even more food in the hive than it had hoped for and it wasn’t worried anymore. It could cross that ocean with this much to fuel it. The underground hive would escape, but that didn’t matter. If the winds ever brought it back, it would have more food waiting for it.

The battle sylphs threw themselves at it, a nice delicacy that it savored. They truly were stupid creatures, given to instinct so much that they never even considered attacking except where it did damage. So they hurled themselves at its feeding tentacles and it savored their taste, enjoying itself as it always did when it managed to breech a hive.