20
The team stood before the tree, inspecting the macabre display as dawn spread across the sky. It was a gruesome sight; though in the new morning glow it looked far less sinister than the ethereal, blue-tinged spectacle that Fletcher had seen a half-hour earlier.
‘Well, this is great news,’ Sylva mumbled, rubbing the tiredness from her eyes. ‘I’m going back to sleep.’
‘This? This is great news?’ Cress exclaimed, turning to Sylva in confused horror.
‘Yep,’ Othello mumbled, turning back to their camp, where the crackling campfire beckoned. ‘Wake me in half an hour.’
‘Am I going mad, or are they?’ Cress asked, turning on Fletcher.
But Fletcher already knew what they were talking about, a forgotten fact swimming to the forefront of his mind. It was no surprise he had not immediately recalled it, for it had been taught during a lesson Fletcher had missed, pulled out of class so he could show Dame Fairhaven Baker’s journal.
‘Do you know how Shrikes got their name?’ Fletcher asked, scratching his chin. ‘I just remembered.’
‘Errr … not really,’ Cress replied. ‘To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention in my demonology lessons – I was too focused on winning the Tournament.’
‘Well, they’re named after a real animal. There’s a bird species native to the borders of the Akhad desert, known as a shrike. It has a habit of impaling its prey, usually insects or lizards, on to thorns. It’s so it can hold its catch in place while it feeds. Demonic Shrikes have the same feeding habits, so the name stuck.’
‘So, it means we haven’t lost the Shrikes,’ Cress said, understanding dawning on her.
‘That’s right,’ Fletcher said, eyeing the dripping remains and resisting the urge to shudder. ‘We just follow the corpses.’
Knowing that they were so close to the Shrikes put the team in a grim mood. They were in danger now, not only from the Shrikes but the predators and carrion eaters that followed in the flock’s wake. The deadly Wendigo was perhaps the most feared of these, its penchant for corpses giving it a stench to match its favourite source of nourishment.
From the freshness of the carcasses, Fletcher knew that the Shrikes would be roosting in the trees ahead, so they sent Pria to scout first, then approached carefully on foot, so as not to encounter the deadly creatures.
On its own, a single male Shrike was dangerous, with the wingspan of an albatross, the talons of an eagle and the cruelly hooked beak of a vulture. But when they migrated, the demons would band together in an unstoppable flock, decimating the populations in their path.
Most fearsome of all were the Shrike Matriarchs, the rarer, female leaders of the brood. In a strange reversal, the male Shrike bore an insignificant crest and wattle like that of a hen, while the brood mother’s own was fully developed, flaring from her head like a rooster’s did. Twice as large as their male counterparts, they were capable of swooping down and plucking a juvenile Canid from the ground.
The team’s first sighting of the Shrikes was the next morning, when the flock broke through the canopy only a mile or so in front of them to continue their migration, having stripped the nearby jungle of all living creatures. The team flew after them – but only when the demons were no more than distant dots on the horizon, using Athena’s keen sight to keep track.
Day turned to night, turned to day once more. At dusk, the team settled on the trail of the roosting demons, camping as they had done before. They ate their petals and the pitiful remnants of the jerky, supplementing their diet with the edible leftovers that the Shrikes had abandoned. On the next night it rained, and they were soaked but grateful, stretching out the Catoblepas pelt to catch the water and refill their flasks.
So it went, the jungle rolling beneath them in a seemingly endless carpet of green. Fletcher had never imagined such a sight, for it stretched from horizon to horizon on a flat terrain that was devoid of landmarks, rivers or clearings. Only on their far right was any semblance of a break from the trees: a thin red line denoting where the jungle ended and the deadlands began.
On the fourth evening they dined on the haunches of a freshly killed Yale, a demon that looked like a cross between an antelope and a billygoat, with a curved pair of horns that could swivel at will. The beast tasted like aged mutton, tough but flavoursome, and far tastier than the remains of their poorly smoked jerky.
It was that night that they saw the first carnivores that prowled behind the flock, skirting the edges of their makeshift barricade in the darkness, attracted by the light and scent of cooking meat.
The team watched the approaching predators through their scrying crystal, as Athena perched in the trees above. A single zebra-striped Leucrotta trotted by at dusk – a strange mammalian creature with cloven hooves, a lion-like tail and the head of a badger. Later, a pair of mangy Lycans slunk past. The bipedal wolves howled mournfully as they settled down no more than a few dozen yards from their camp. Nobody got much sleep that night.
It was the next morning that they saw their first volcano, the great column of smoke belching into the sky. The sight quickened Fletcher’s heart. The land was becoming similar to Hominum’s territory, rugged and with a sky darkened by the same clouds of ash he could see now. Only there was no way to be sure. They could fly right over it and never notice.
Worse still, Othello had reminded them of something else – after sitting up in the middle of the night and coming to a terrible realisation. The average time a summoner would hold open a portal into the ether was brief, perhaps a half-hour at the most. The area in which a portal might appear was vast, so that even if they were in the right area, their chances of coming across an open portal as they passed by was even more unlikely.
Their only hope was to somehow spot one as they flew, an impossibility given the thickness of the canopy. So Fletcher was glad that the Shrikes seemed to be migrating towards the deadlands, where they might better catch a glimpse of a spinning orb. By now they were skirting the red wastelands: a good sign. The Shrikes had been near the deadlands when Valens had been attacked two years ago. Could this be the same place?
They spent hours flying along the edge of the jungle, peering into the red sand bowl, hoping to see the spinning blue orb that would take them home. But there was nothing.
Defeated, they settled down for the fifth night since they had crossed the desert, their eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed from the wind and dust. The others all looked as if they had been crying, and Fletcher supposed they might as well have been. It was hopeless. They were condemned to the ether.
For ever.