She waved to invite Ina to go first. Still rather dazed by the demonstration, Ina awkwardly stepped on to the slim craft and edged forward towards the bow. Her patron took the stern. Then the Queen of Dreams gently pushed her hands forward, as if parting a cloth, and the vessel slid off the mud into the current. She directed it downstream. The craft sliced through the water at what to Ina was a rather alarming rate. But the Enchantress had said they’d been making slow progress and that events were moving ahead of them; the Queen of Dreams, it seemed, was in a hurry.
They raced for days and nights continuously along the river. Ina slept through the nights while the Enchantress appeared to need no rest. This amused Ina — the Queen of Dreams never slept. It seemed somehow appropriate. When she hungered, Ina had a small nibble from the bag of dried stores that remained. Her lifelong training in privation and restraint served her well here. Water was their sole problem. The Enchantress forbade her to touch the river. Occasionally they passed small clear rivulets draining into the main channel. The Enchantress would direct the craft to the shore here and Ina would collect what she could in the one waterskin that had yet to rot away.
Now that they were without the constant shade from the jungle’s canopy the new problem Ina had to deal with was sunstroke. During the day no cloud cover softened the sun’s driving rays. She draped her robes over her like a blanket but to begin with neglected her head, and now peeling burnt skin came off in her nails when she probed her scalp.
So great was their speed that when they swept round a river bend they sometimes startled flocks of tall wading birds that swept skyward in great swaths of white and brilliant yellow. The gangly birds cawed their raucous complaints and found temporary perches in the trees along the shore until the branches bowed down almost to the murky surface of the water, festooned with what resembled tall slim flowers.
Ina spent much of her time treating her blade against the constant bite of the humidity. Long ago the Seguleh smiths had found that adding charcoal to their furnaces yielded an iron that was superior in flexibility, while also being particularly resistant to corrosion. Yet it remained an uncertain process and no blade was perfectly impervious. She had run out of the plant oils she usually carried and was now reduced to smearing her own skin’s sweat and secretions on to the blade, which, though harmful, were better than nothing.
They raced on, careering round the twisting bends. The river appeared to be widening as they went, gathering tributaries and creeks at every snaking curve.
Then one day Ina was adjusting the cloth of the robe draped over her head when something came screaming down from the sky above. She had one stunning glimpse of a great draconic shape, golden-red, claws extended, stooping, snarling teeth agape, before those claws clamped on to the craft and she was plunged beneath the clouded ochre-hued water.
She came up, gasping and thrashing, yet gripping the hilt of her sheathed sword to make certain it was safe. She swam one-handed for shore. Here she found a woman in nothing more than a ragged loincloth standing over her mistress. She drew immediately.
‘Stand aside.’
The woman turned on her and Ina was shaken to see that her eyes churned like twin furnaces of molten gold. ‘And what is this?’ she asked. ‘A Seguleh?’ She pointed to Ina’s face. ‘Your mask is sorely in need of repainting.’
‘Please let us go,’ the Enchantress said from where she lay sodden and muddy on the shore. ‘We are no threat to you.’
‘I will be the judge of that,’ the woman answered, though she did seem to relax somewhat, lowering her arms. ‘Just what are you then?’
The Enchantress shrugged. She wiped her mouth, leaving a smear of blood-red mud across her face. ‘I am a sorceress,’ she said. ‘Out of Tali. Quon Tali.’
‘I know Tali,’ the woman snarled impatiently. ‘More to the point — what are you doing here?’
Again an easy shrug from the Enchantress. ‘The power and wisdom of the Queen of Witches is legendary. I would seek her out.’
The woman actually laughed aloud at that. It was a very cruel and scornful laugh. ‘For a sorceress, your foresight is remarkably poor.’
‘And you?’ the Enchantress challenged, quite unintimidated. ‘Why attack us?’
The woman snarled anew. Her hands worked as if eager to tear and rend. ‘That is my business.’
‘It would seem you have made it our business as well. Spite, daughter of Draconus, sister to-’
The woman threw a hand up. ‘Not that name! If you wish to live.’
The Enchantress inclined her head, acquiescing.
Spite seemed to think on the Enchantress’s words, for she waved a hand dismissively. ‘If you must know … I am seeking something. Something stolen. You must have a presence, sorceress, for I sensed you and I thought I glimpsed … well, I was mistaken.’ She turned and walked off, then stopped, facing them once more. ‘Take my advice, sorceress. Go back home. Do not seek out Ardata. Only death resides in Jakal Viharn.’
‘I hear that Ardata kills no one.’
‘That is true. For that she has Himatan.’
Spite then leaped into the air and before falling she transformed into the great terrifying shape Ina had glimpsed. Wide massive wings elongated above them to blot out the sun’s rays. They flapped once, heavily and powerfully, propelling Spite skyward and casting up a storm of dust, leaves and twigs that drove Ina to turn her face away. When she looked back, blinking, her gaze shaded, she glimpsed a russet writhing shape disappearing into the distance over the tree-tops.
Ina turned to the Enchantress. She extended an arm to grasp the woman’s hand and pull her up. Red and grey mud smeared the woman’s robes. ‘She did not know who you are?’ Ina asked.
‘No. As I said, I have lowered my, ah, manifestation. It would appear that without it I am nothing more than an ageing sorceress.’
Sighing, the Enchantress eyed the wreckage of their vessel.
Her own uselessness in the encounter drove Ina to murmur, ‘And I am hardly a bodyguard.’
The Enchantress raised a finger. ‘Oh, but you are, my dear. You are vitally important. You have no idea what pause that mask of yours gives people. That you are here accompanying me is quite necessary. Spite would never have believed a sorceress alone. While you, a Seguleh, are the perfect guard.’
So — I am nothing more than the perfect accessory. So much for my vaunted ambitions. Rightly is she named the Queen of Dreams. One further question plagued her, yet she did not know whether it mattered now at all. In the end, her role as bodyguard — if humiliatingly illusory — demanded that she broach the subject.
‘Is she your enemy?’
‘My enemy?’ The woman’s thick brows rose. She nodded thoughtfully for a time. ‘Well … let us just say that she has grounds for resentment.’ She gestured. ‘This way. One good thing has come of this interruption, Ina.’
‘Yes?’
‘I do believe that we are close now. Very close.’
* * *
They pursued for four days, Jatal stopping only to throw himself down to attempt to catch a few hours of sleep before the dawn — though what he experienced could hardly be called sleep: his haze of exhaustion was more a delirium of nightmare images that flayed him worse than the agony of his lingering wounds. He often awoke feeling more tortured than when he threw himself to the ground.
Two days before, they had passed the corpse of a horse beside the jungle trail; it had been scavenged by predators but the majority of the carcass remained. The locals, it seemed, were unwilling to touch it. It was an Adwami mount. If the men and women they’d questioned along the way were accurate, the Warleader now had only two mounts remaining. Jatal led a string of four; he was confident they would overtake the man soon.
Scarza, of course, did not ride. Instead, he loped next to a mount, a hand on its cantle to help pull himself along. The half-Trell’s iron endurance was a wonder to Jatal.