1
A kaleidoscope of violet seared across Fletcher’s vision. Then he was in an abyss, dark water flooding his mouth and nose.
Something rubbery knocked against his ankle as he kicked, fighting the inexorable drag down into the black emptiness. His lungs burned ice cold as he choked on the brackish liquid.
Consciousness faded, seeping from him with the warmth from his body. He was numb, weightless.
With each moment, flashes of memory darted across his air-starved brain. Sariel, crushed beneath the shattered masonry of the pyramid. Jeffrey’s smirking face, stepping over the paralysed bodies of his friends, a blowpipe in his hands. The portal, spinning. His mother.
He hung in the void.
But thick fingers grasped his outstretched wrist and drew him up. He gagged as cool air hit his face, then felt the meaty thump of a fist on his back as he vomited up the liquid he had swallowed.
‘That’s it, get it all out,’ Othello murmured, as Fletcher blinked the water away and saw the new world around them.
They were on a small, craggy island, shaped like an upturned bowl and coated in a thick layer of green algae.
He could see they were in the middle of a channel of inky water, with submerged, mangrove-like trees forming a thick barrier on either side. The sky above was a dim, sullen blue, like dusk in winter.
Cress, Sylva and his mother were also there, shivering wet and pressed up close to Lysander’s side, while Tosk nestled in his master’s lap. Ignatius was busy tongue-drying a bedraggled-looking Athena, and Solomon lay face down, hugging the island for dear life, panting with the herculean effort it must have taken to haul himself and the paralysed Griffin out of the water.
‘It’s moving,’ Sylva said, pointing at the contracting portal, ten feet from the island. It was half submerged in the placid water. ‘That’s why you were all the way over there when you came through from the chamber.’ As Fletcher watched, the shrinking portal seemed to get further away, before disappearing with a faint pop.
‘No,’ Othello said, nodding at the shifting trees beside them. ‘We’re the ones that are moving.’
It was true. They were slowly but surely edging down the dark river. It was almost as if the island was … floating.
Fletcher crawled to the edge of the rocks. In the murky water below, a reptilian head turned to the side, revealing a gold-flecked iris that blinked up at him.
‘It’s not an island,’ Fletcher whispered, watching as a webbed claw drifted beneath the surface. ‘We’re on a Zaratan.’
He backed away slowly, careful not to slip on the shell’s surface. For that is what it was – a shell. The demon they rode could have been described as a giant, amphibious turtle. He guessed this one was fairly young, for the species could grow many times larger than the specimen they were perched on.
Looking at the sunken trees beside them, Fletcher considered their options. With no land in sight, they were stuck until they found something better.
Blue light flashed on the trees around them, and he turned to see that the craggy form of Solomon was gone, infused using Othello’s sodden summoning leather.
‘Solomon would sink like a stone if our ride here decides to dive,’ Othello said, eyeing the black water with trepidation.
‘Good idea,’ Fletcher replied, feeling a pang of fear for Lysander. The Griffin was still paralysed from the darts Jeffrey had shot him with, and would likely have drowned had the Zaratan not been passing by.
As for Ignatius, he had curled around Athena, using his natural heat to warm her, while she in turn settled her wings over him like a blanket. Fletcher let them stay. It would do the two demons good to bond. He needed them to be a team, now more than ever.
The group sat in silence, the only sound being the creaking of trees in the wind. With each gust, the placid surface of the water shivered like a living creature.
‘The only question is, what do we do now?’ Cress finally asked, squinting at the dim sky above.
‘We wait,’ Sylva said, resting her head on Cress’s shoulder. ‘Wait for dry land, or somewhere to hide. Let’s just hope the Zaratan gets us out of here quickly.’
‘Why do we need to hide?’ Othello asked.
‘You think the orcs won’t guess where we’ve gone?’ Sylva said, gesturing around them. ‘They’ll see the blood pattern on the floor, and know we’ve escaped through a portal into their part of the ether. Of course the keys don’t transport us to a precise location, so they won’t know exactly where we are, but they’ll know we’re in the area.’
‘Maybe they’ll let us go,’ Cress whispered, half to herself.
‘We just walked into the heart of their holiest place and destroyed half an army that’s taken them years to build,’ Sylva replied, shaking her head. ‘They won’t let us get away that easily. The Wyvern riders will be hunting us in a matter of hours, entering the ether as soon as they’re back from chasing the other teams. We’re just lucky Fletcher buried so many of the nearest shamans’ demons. They will be in disarray, for a while at least.’
‘She’s right,’ Fletcher agreed. ‘We wait for land and the cover of the forest. We’re too exposed out here.’
He shuffled back and pressed himself against his mother. It felt strange, to touch her. He could hardly believe she was real. Was it truly her … after all this time?
All those years, searching the faces of the women he met, thinking of the heartless person that could have left him naked in the snow. And now, to know that she had loved him, and had been kept from him all this time.
As he lay his head on her shoulder, Fletcher realised she was shivering – her frame was so emaciated that it provided no protection from the cold, and the filthy rags she wore were soaked.
‘Cress, where are the satchels?’ Fletcher asked.
‘Erm … about that,’ Cress murmured, twisting her hands in her lap. ‘We landed in the water. I needed my hands to stay afloat. I only managed to keep hold of two satchels and one of the petal bags. Yours and Jeffrey’s. Here.’
She pushed Fletcher’s sodden bag over. At the thought of the loss of their precious petals, a pulse of fear spread across Fletcher’s chest – they were their only source of immunity from the ether’s atmosphere’s natural poison – but he pushed that worry aside for the moment. Instead, he opened the satchel and was relieved to find the tight leather casing had kept most of the water out. Rummaging at the very bottom, he dug out the jacket Berdon had given him for his birthday and wrapped it tightly around his mother’s shoulders, pulling the hood over her head. She rubbed her cheek against the soft down of the rabbit fur.
For the first time, he met his mother’s eyes. The swamp water had washed most of the dirt from her face, and Fletcher marvelled at the striking resemblance to her twin, Josephine, the woman he had seen by Zacharias Forsyth’s side at his trial. However, she was by no means identical, not in her current state. Her eyes were sunken, staring blankly past him. He brushed a stray hair from her cheek, which was so gaunt that it bordered on skeletal. Who knew what she had suffered in the seventeen years of her captivity?
‘Alice, can you hear me?’ Fletcher said. He tried to hold her gaze, but there was no light behind her stare. ‘Mother?’
‘Mother?’ Othello repeated gently. ‘Fletcher … are you OK? This is Lady Cavendish.’
‘No,’ Fletcher replied, helping the woman get her skinny arms into the jacket. ‘Lady Cavendish died in her fall; the prisoner was never her. This woman had been there for far longer … my whole life. She recognised Athena, and called for her baby, and I remember her face from my dream. This is my mother. The orcs took her when I was a child.’
Othello creased his brow, then understanding dawned upon him. But, even as he opened his mouth to speak, his eyes flicked to the murky waters behind them.
‘Get back!’ Othello yelled, diving across the shell. Fletcher was tackled to the ground, and he heard the hollow snap of jaws above his head. Fetid, fish-laden breath washed over him, then the creature was gone, slipping back into the dark waters around them with barely a sound.
Fletcher caught a glimpse of a reptilian head, and for a panicked moment he thought the Wyverns had caught up with them. But then he saw the humped, log-like shapes in the water around them, and his lessons at Vocans flashed unbidden to his mind.
Sobeks. Great bipedal crocodile-like creatures that used their claws and jaws to tear apart their opponents, if their large tails didn’t batter them to death first. Hunched over at five feet tall, the Sobek was a level nine demon.
And now they were surrounded by dozens of them.