‘Does he disturb you ?’ Jaya said quietly. ‘I know a worried warrior when I see one.’
Bel shook his head. ‘What disturbs me is this …connection …I apparently share with Losara. I keep imagining a thin strand of myself running away over a great distance, all the way to Skygrip.’ He frowned. ‘A shadowy strand it is too. As if the worm left a trail when it crawled away.’
‘Well,’ said Jaya, ‘whatever it is, it’s fortunate for us, else we wouldn’t have Fazel. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but …it was enough when I realised that Losara’s life is tied to my own. And now this.’ He turned to her. ‘Not seeing some slick of shadows under my skin, I hope?’
‘Would it matter?’ she said, sounding more contemplative than reassuring.
‘All right,’ called Gellan, waving them over, ‘let’s smooth out that riddled skin of yours.’
As evening set in, they gathered around the fire. Fazel sat at the edge against the darkness, his black skull gleaming in the flickering light.
‘I take it you don’t eat?’ said Hiza, tearing a leg of rabbit from the spit.
‘No.’
‘Now,’ said Bel, ‘you must tell us – how is it that you come to be here? Do you know where the Stone of Evenings Mild is?’
‘I do,’ said Fazel.
‘Do you have it with you?’
‘No.’
‘Where is it, then?’
‘In a dragon’s lair.’
Bel almost choked on his food. ‘What?’
‘Perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ said Gellan. ‘Should we not simply ask Fazel what happened to him after the fight in Whisperwood?’
Bel pulled the bone from his mouth and tossed it away. ‘Good suggestion,’ he said. ‘Fazel?’
‘As you wish,’ said Fazel. He sketched at the ground with a bony finger, choosing where to begin.
Well did he remember the horror he’d felt at being pulled back together in the dust. Despite his being little more than ash and bones, the enchantment tying him to ‘life’, for want of a better word, had held strong. Oh no , he remembered thinking, over and over. Oh no, oh no , an eddy of troubled awareness swirling around burnt remains.
‘I came back not long after the fight ended,’ he said. ‘Arisen from the ashes as the thing you see before you. I do not think that anyone, even me, expected such resilience. Battu certainly didn’t, and must have believed me dead ever after, otherwise he would have willed my return.’
Stupid indeed of Battu , Fazel thought. Just because the bug-eye that had connected his sight to Fazel’s had been destroyed, Battu had assumed that the mage too had perished. Fazel, for his part, had never ceased worrying that a Battu-shaped shadow was going to billow out of the rocks and compel him ‘home’.
‘As it was,’ he continued, ‘I still had my orders from Battu, to find and retrieve the blue-haired boy. They were orders that had become nigh on impossible to fulfill, for the boy had been split in two and taken to opposite ends of the earth. One part, gone to the shadow, was accounted for, but the other was away in the Open Halls. Without a clear way forward, I was able to think, shall we say …sideways about my task.
‘I could not return to Fenvarrow, for I had neither succeeded nor failed. I did not journey towards the Halls, for I’d be captured within minutes of crossing the wards, and how would that serve my aim? Besides all that, I was supposed to retrieve the blue-haired boy , not boys , which confused the matter even further. The only thing I could imagine in the world that would make it possible to put the two boys back together, and thus complete my orders, was –’
‘The Stone of Evenings Mild,’ said Bel.
‘Yes. I had an idea that’s what the pendant I saw around your neck might be, and certainly I knew it was responsible for whatever had happened to you. Thus I hunted for it and found it quickly enough where it had fallen amongst the trees. Immediately I felt the wood …well, worrying at me is the best way I can put it. There are souls in that place, not gone to either Well, and another presence too, which did not like me taking the Stone. They were too depleted from the battle to concern me overmuch, but nonetheless it became my priority to protect the Stone from them …and indeed protect it from any who may covet it for purposes not in line with my mission – even Battu. ’
That had been a good bit of sideways thinking, he’d always thought.
‘I left Whisperwood via the Nyul’ya river, which kept me safe for many leagues. By walking below the surface, I was able to avoid detection, and for a long time I strode slowly on, day and night, against the current. I might have been years down there, yet I was still in line with my task. I reached the Great Rass and the going became even more ponderous, for the river flows so strongly. All that time submerged gave me ample opportunity to think, and think sideways, about what I must do and where I should go.
‘I remembered a mission I’d had years ago. Battu was ever obsessed with sending out bug-eyes to increase his network of unknowing spies. He was bored, I suspect, and in need of purpose, for he was not allowed to attack Kainordas …he never told me why, but I caught a flicker of it once in a stray thought of his. At any rate, bereft of greater designs, Battu concentrated on seeing as much of Kainordas as he could though his bug-eyes.
‘Somehow he heard that a dragon, called Shebazaruka, had made her lair in the far eastern foothills of the Arkus Heights and was heavy with child. A rare thing indeed, for there are few dragons in the world since the breaking, and they do not often stray from their territory to meet others and mate.
‘Battu started thinking – a dragon would fly high and see much of the land. Imagine if he could get a bug-eye into one! There was no way the parasite could take hold in a fully grown dragon, but if he could get one into a baby, perhaps it would grow with its host.’
‘By Arkus,’ murmured Gellan. ‘What an appalling idea.’
‘I agree,’ said Fazel. ‘At any rate, Battu ordered the First Slave Tyrellan and I to journey into Kainordas and find Shebazaruka. We travelled up the eastern coast, accompanied by enough Arabodedas to carry a crate of bug-eyes and a golden statue, which was part of Battu’s cunning plan. I kept us heavily disguised, of course, and we went by rough, untravelled ways whenever we could.
‘Tyrellan wasn’t happy – although he’d never speak openly against Battu, he knew there was a madness to our mission. It was so overly grandiose, and with what reward? A view of treetops for Battu in some remote part of the world? For myself, I was glad to be back in my own lands, on a mission that brought no direct harm to those I still consider to be my people.
‘Weeks later we drew close to Shebazaruka’s lair. We left the carriers and the statue, and took the bug-eyes into the woods that run along the foothills. Soon we came upon an area that had been burnt clear, around a large cave mouth in the mountainside. We left the crate of eyes in the woods and went out from the trees, calling to the dragon. Well, she came, and was none too happy, either, to see strangers so close with her newborn in the cave. She would most certainly have attacked us, but Tyrellan shouted out that we’d brought a gift of gold, and that curbed her fury. Greedy things dragons are: to them treasure means more than the safety of a child.
‘Why, she wanted to know, did we bring her gold? We said it was in offering, like the days of old. We told her it was back along our trail, and she asked why we hadn’t brought it to her. We said we’d had to scour the mountain for many days to find her, and meanwhile left the heavy statue under guard to hasten our search. At the word heavy, the glint of desire in her eye became a lantern, blinding her to all else.’ Fazel sighed. ‘How can great creatures be so shallow? You’d think a thing so long lived would grow wise.’