“What, then?”
“A state of emergency is all I can think of. Even though you’re right: it’s not the ideal solution.”
“It’s not a solution at all, Brelan.” She let her frustration show and added irately, “If only we knew what was doing this!”
“You mean who. It still seems to me that Peczan’s behind it, somehow.”
“We’ve been through that. How could they be? And I don’t buy the idea that they have agents among our own kind.”
He sighed. “Neither do I. Look, I need to think. Would you mind making your own way back? I’d like to linger here for just a while.”
“If you say so. You’ll be all right?”
“Course I will. I’ll see you later.”
They had walked quite a way as they talked, and were now on what was essentially a country road. There were hardly any houses to be seen, and the nearest was almost out of sight. Open fields stretched from both sides of the road. There wasn’t much else except a sluggish stream and the occasional stand of trees. Brelan took himself to the edge of one of the fields and stood looking out across it. Chillder gave him a last glance and set off towards where they’d come from, lost in her own thoughts.
She didn’t know what it was that made her stop, just a short way along the road. It wasn’t a sound, it was a feeling. She turned.
Brelan was nowhere to be seen. Chillder stayed where she was for a moment, expecting to see him reappear. He didn’t, and she began walking back. Then she broke into a run.
When she arrived at the spot where she had left her brother, there was no sign. She scanned the fields on either side of the road, but saw nothing. There was no shelter of any kind, certainly nothing near enough for him to have reached in so short a time. It occurred to her that he might have set off across the field for some reason and fallen into the long grass. But she knew how unlikely that was. She called his name, and got no reply. Again she yelled, louder, with her hands on either side of her mouth, and kept on calling.
A chill was creeping up her spine. And she noticed something in the air, an odour both familiar and forbidding.
The feeling she had experienced as she was walking away returned. She couldn’t put in words what it was, but it was no less tangible for that. An awful oppression fell upon her, and her head was starting to swim. She felt faint and slightly nauseous. Her surroundings seemed to blur and she was unsteady on her feet. She tried to fight it.
It was no use.
Darkness took her.
23
The Wolverines landed with a splash.
They were in water, a great deal of it, and it was salty in their mouths.
“We’re in a damn ocean!” Jup yelled.
“There’s the shore!” Pepperdyne pointed to a sandy beach a short distance away.
Stryke looked around at the bobbing heads of the band and did a quick count. “Where’s Standeven?”
“Shit!” Pepperdyne exclaimed. “He can’t swim.”
“The gods are being kind to us at last,” Haskeer said.
“I can’t let him drown.”
“Why not?”
Pepperdyne took a gulp of air and disappeared beneath the waves. The rest of them trod water.
He seemed an awfully long time reappearing and Coilla was getting worried. She was about to dive herself when two heads broke the surface a little way off. Pepperdyne had hold of Standeven, who was blue in the face and gasping for breath. Jode hauled him to the band, where others lent a hand, most reluctantly. They all made for the shore.
“There’s something in the water!” somebody shouted.
Behind them, but moving in their direction fast, was the blur of a large and scaly creature, its spiked head and a sail- like fin dimly visible through the mist. The band increased their speed, and soon their feet touched bottom.
They staggered onto the beach and moved as far up it as they could, dragging Standeven with them until they dumped him. But the creature didn’t come ashore, perhaps couldn’t, and stayed out in deeper water, cruising back and forth.
“I thought you said the stars couldn’t land us somewhere that might kill us, Dynahla,” Stryke complained angrily.
“No, I didn’t. I said they couldn’t take us somewhere that would kill us. If they eliminated all possibility of danger they wouldn’t take us anywhere.”
Stryke snorted. “Yeah, well…” He looked about the place. They had jogged almost to a white cliff-face that backed the beach. Apart from a few patches of dull vegetation, there wasn’t much else to see. “Where do you think we are?”
“Could we be back on the world of islands?” Spurral wondered.
“No,” Coilla told her. “That had two moons. This has two suns.”
She was right, but they had to look hard to see the pair of dim globes through the milky white cloud that dominated the sky.
“So where’s Jennesta this time?” Wheam asked, tipping water from the innards of his precious lute. They were all surprised it had survived intact this long.
“She’s close,” Dynahla replied, “as always.”
“Any clue where?” Stryke said.
“Not exactly, no. But does it matter?”
“Does it matter? Of course it matters!”
“No, you don’t get my meaning. We don’t need to know precisely where she is because she’ll soon pop up where we can see her. She’s playing with us.”
“I think we worked that out,” Haskeer remarked sourly.
“Yeah, it’s all a game to her,” Spurral added.
“Maybe,” the shape-shifter conceded. “Though her motives could be more than just mischievous.”
Stryke eyed him quizzically. “Such as?”
“Who knows? Perhaps this is all for the hell of it. Even I find her hard to fathom.”
“Even you? What makes you such an expert on Jennesta?”
Dynahla hesitated for just a second before answering. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her father, remember, and Serapheim’s… very informative.”
“Heads up!” Jup yelled. “There she is, right on cue.” He indicated the headland at the end of the beach, a decent arrow shot away.
A group of figures were there. They stayed long enough to be seen, then vanished.
“Do we have to follow her, Stryke?” Dallog said. “I mean, if this is some kind of crazy game, do we have to play along with it?”
“What choice do we have? And what about Thirzarr? You want me to abandon her?” He glared at him.
“No…” The elderly corporal looked abashed. “No, of course not, chief.”
“Do what you have to, shape-changer,” Stryke ordered.
Dynahla worked on the instrumentalities.
“If I could just get my hands on that bitch…” Haskeer muttered, staring at the spot where Jennesta had been a moment before.
“You’d have to stand in line,” Coilla said.
They materialised in night-time, which would have been a lot blacker if it wasn’t for a big, full moon and a sky crammed with stars.
There was nothing special about the landscape as far as they could make out. Underfoot was rough grass, there were some ghostly trees in the middle distance and what could have been a mountain range at the limit of their vision. The temperature was balmy and the air dry, with no wind to speak of. Which was fortunate as they were all wringing wet.
Standeven, still huffing and wheezing after his dip, had plonked down on the ground. They let him be.
“So where is she?” Haskeer said, anticipating Jennesta’s appearance with his sword drawn.
“Hard to see anything,” Coilla replied.
Breggin pointed into the gloom. “What’s that?”
They all strained to see. A cluster of shapes, darker than the night, appeared to be coming their way.
“Right,” Haskeer declared. “This time we don’t wait for her to call the shots.” He began to run in that direction.
“Wait!” Stryke called after him. “There’s no point! She’ll only… Oh, what the hell.”
The others seemed to share Stryke’s opinion, or else they were tired enough by now not to give a damn. None of them followed Haskeer.