21
‘Fletcher, wake up!’
Sylva’s voice hissed in his ear. He yelped in pain as her nails dug into his shoulders.
‘Whuh—’ he began, but a hand clamped over his mouth. Above him, first rays of light were already appearing in the sky, casting the world in the faintest tinge of yellow.
He was lifted into a sitting position, and the scrying crystal was laid in his lap. The others were already awake, crowding around him – pale, ashen faces, lit by the glow of a tiny wyrdlight.
‘There,’ Sylva whispered, pointing at the stone.
For a moment he thought he was looking at the dim reflection of the wyrdlight above. But it wasn’t. It was a flicker of indigo, somewhere deep in the deadlands. Too far to see the source.
He tried to sit up, but Othello’s arm was like an iron bar across his chest. The image on the crystal panned down, to the jungle’s edge.
Shrikes. Hundreds of them, their black forms roosting among the branches as if the trees were laden with rotten fruit.
Othello leaned in and pointed silently upwards. Fletcher lifted his head to see that Pria was hovering just above the tree canopy. The Shrikes were directly over them!
‘There’s a dust cyclone where they were before,’ Sylva whispered, her voice barely more than a breath in his ear. ‘They must have moved back here to avoid it while we were sleeping. Athena woke me a few minutes ago.’
Fletcher shuddered and looked for the Gryphowl, and she jumped into his arms. He thanked the stars that she had been on watch. Othello leaned in, so close that his beard tickled Fletcher’s cheek.
‘If it’s a portal, we don’t have long,’ he murmured. ‘It’s your call. You got us this far.’
Fletcher’s heart was racing uncomfortably in his chest. It was as if he had been drenched in cold water, shocked out of his sleep and filled with sudden terror.
‘It could be Will-o’-the-wisps,’ Fletcher said softly, looking them each in the eye. ‘It could be anything.’
‘And it could be our best chance at making it home,’ Cress replied, biting her lip. ‘If we don’t leave now, we’ll miss it.’
It was an impossible choice, with the worst possible timing. The Shrikes could begin to wake any minute – dawn was coming soon. If the team left the cover of the trees they might be spotted by an early riser.
‘Othello, send Pria to check it out, the rest of you, pack up,’ Fletcher ordered, trying to keep his voice low and steady. ‘We need to move away from here regardless.’
Pria darted off, making for the deadlands. Already her carapace had turned red, to blend with the dusty plains.
‘So we’re doing it?’ Cress asked, suddenly fearful.
‘If we find out it is a portal, we’ll know that we’re in Hominum’s territory,’ Fletcher whispered. ‘That’s a blessing in itself – we could have flown by here and never seen it. It might take us a few weeks of searching the area to come across another portal, but it means we’ll find one eventually.’
‘Weeks?’ Othello uttered in a low groan.
‘If the Shrikes move on before it closes, we should be ready to go for it,’ Fletcher murmured. ‘Otherwise, we wait it out. It’s not worth dying over.’
There were two minutes of hurried packing, then Lysander and Ignatius were cajoled out of their sleep. The team waited by their prospective mounts, peering at the scrying crystal clutched in Othello’s hands.
‘Pria’s moving slowly,’ Othello said, his voice so quiet that Fletcher could barely make out the words. ‘Some of the Shrikes are awake, so she’s hugging the ground.’
Fletcher looked up and felt the cold rush of fear down his spine, prickling his skin with goosebumps. In the growing light, he could see the bird-demons among the branches far above, their black feathers blending with the murky shadows of the canopy. Already a few of them were awake, their heads untucked from beneath their wings. Fletcher and his team were lucky that they had not been spotted when the birds had come to roost.
‘We should move – now,’ Fletcher whispered. ‘We’re not safe here.’
He turned and looked into the scrying crystal. It was still too far to see the source of the blue light, though it was larger in the crystal’s screen. At the same time, the blue was less visible, for the growing light of dawn made its glow indistinct.
Silently, Fletcher tugged a few branches from the barricade to make a way out of their camp and motioned the others to mount. He followed suit, gathered Athena, and cajoled Ignatius to move through the gap. The Shrikes might stir any minute.
The Drake tucked his wings against their knees so he would fit through their exit and turned to it, placing each foot with care so as not to snap stray twigs underfoot. Athena wriggled against Fletcher’s chest and he realised he was gripping her tightly with unconscious fear. He released her and she pounced on to his shoulder, catching Alice’s attention. Fletcher’s mother smiled, oblivious to the danger they were in.
Ignatius took one step. Two steps.
Then, the unthinkable. Alice laughed aloud, her voice unbridled as she reached for the Gryphowl. Athena leaped into her arms, hoping to keep her quiet.
But it was too late.
A screech came from above. Then another, cutting through the air like nails on a chalkboard. Slowly, ever so slowly, Fletcher tilted his head back.
A dozen eyes stared at him, black and beady in the dawn light. It was as if time stood still, freezing the world in one horrific moment. Then a dark form dropped from the canopy above to the branches below, landing among its brethren in a rattle of leaves. A second came after it, enormous wings beating the air. It cawed softly, the sound raucous and raw in Fletcher’s ears, filling him with terror.
More followed, one after another, seeking the source of the noise beneath them. Pairs turned to dozens, turned to scores, so many that the branches creaked under the weight of the enormous birds. One settled so close that Fletcher could see the red wattle shaking as it snapped its beak in anticipation.
‘Three,’ Sylva breathed, just loud enough for Fletcher to hear.
He didn’t understand, his mind reeling with fear.
‘Two.’
Fletcher stared as the first Shrike dropped to the ground, no more than a few yards from Lysander’s feet. Sylva and Othello were already mounted.
‘One.’
Ignatius was lowering into a crouch.
Oh.
Fletcher lunged for the Drake’s neck.
‘Now!’
They launched into the air, shooting directly up so that Fletcher was flattened against his mother, feeling her arms tighten around his midriff as the momentum pressed them against Ignatius’s back.
A mad cacophony of screeching tore at his eardrums as the two demons hurtled by, then they were twisting through the canopy and into the open air.
The dawn sky was stained the yellow of an old bruise, and the red land in front of them glowed with its light. The world tilted once more as Ignatius jinked into the deadlands, then they were whipping through the air in a flurry of beating wings. Lysander was just ahead, his lighter load and experience giving him the edge over the Drake.
Screeching, ragged with fury, the Shrikes followed in their wake. Fletcher glanced back and his breath caught in his throat. The Shrikes were in hot pursuit, so many that the jungle was almost blocked from view by the mass of black forms that tore after them.
‘The light, where’s the light?’ Sylva yelled, twisting her head to look over her shoulder.
The sky was bright now, so much so that the portal no longer glowed like a beacon to point their way. They flew on into the deadlands, hoping to catch a glimpse of the blue speck.
‘Faster,’ Fletcher yelled.
The Shrikes were gaining, and the Matriarchs were leading the flock. Their wings were as large as a cutter’s sails, beating the air in long, ponderous sweeps that somehow thrust them through the air at breakneck speeds. It was all Ignatius could do to stay ahead of their outstretched claws, the talons ready to hook into his burgundy flesh.
A flash of pain. Fletcher turned to see Ignatius’s tail had been stabbed by a Matriarch’s beak, but even as he did so, the Drake’s tailspike slashed upwards, stabbing into the demon’s plumage and hurling it aside.
Another dropped from above, its wings folded, talons aimed for Cress. Fletcher drew Gale and fired twice without thinking. The Matriarch was snatched away in a double burst of feathers and blood.
Wind tore their hair as they hurtled over the red plains, the rock-strewn terrain rushing beneath them. The land stretched onward, the Abyss on their right, the jungle on their left, with nothing to guide them but the rough direction that Pria had disappeared into.
‘There!’ Othello bellowed, even as he blasted buckshot from his blunderbuss into the mass of Shrikes behind. Three jerked and tumbled limply away, but the dwarf’s action barely made a dent in the screeching tumult of wings and beaks.
Fletcher saw nothing but the Shrikes behind; he only felt the tilt of Ignatius’s path as he followed Lysander in a new direction. His mother’s face was at the corner of his vision, calm as she stroked the Gryphowl in her arms.
A crackle of lightning spurted from behind her, Cress’s battle gauntlet outstretched and swinging to spread the spell. The nearest birds jerked and spasmed in the air, twisting and dropping like stones, only to recover and join the pursuit once more.
Fletcher tried a shield, but the white light spooled away in the wind, tangling in a nearby Matriarch’s claws but doing little else. A fireball followed from his next finger, blasting it beak over claws into another, knocking both from the air.
A small Shrike swooped in from the side, and Cress cried out in pain as its talons tore at her. Her returning kinetic blast sent it flying, accompanied by a crossbow bolt that took its neighbour through the wing. Then the Shrikes were above, below and among them, the flock overtaking to surround them from all sides.
‘The portal,’ Sylva screamed, and Fletcher turned to see the spinning orb in the distance, a blue mote floating on the horizon. A pair of Shrikes dropped from the sky above Lysander, and Ignatius blasted a torrent of flame, leaving their charred, smoking remains to whip over Fletcher’s shoulder.
In response, the Griffin screeched and dropped down, taking a Shrike by the wings and tearing it apart, even as another slammed into his side and scrabbled at his feathered fur.
Fletcher fired Blaze, hitting the attacker in the thigh, enough to send it spinning away. A talon slashed his arm, feathers blinding him as a Matriarch swooped. He snarled with pain and holstered the pistol before it fell from his nerveless fingers, the wound on his arm spreading crimson through his blue jacket.
‘Almost. There,’ Othello yelled, punctuating each word with a kinetic blast, hurling swooping Shrikes and Matriarchs back with the force. Cress was following his example, the deep whump of each spell accompanied by a blast of wind and tumbling plumage. Fletcher drew his khopesh left-handed, clasping his injured right arm to his chest. He extended a finger from the hilt and fired a streak of lightning, the electric-blue bolts searing through the air, punching a hole of falling Shrikes through the mêlée that surrounded them. His mana was near drained.
Shadows streaked past as Shrikes dived and feinted, wary of the ferocious defence of their prey. Another burst of pain crossed his calf, the demon speeding away before he could riposte with his khopesh.
The world spun, the edges of his vision darkening. He could feel the hot trickle of blood down his leg, the deep wound voiding blood fast. Too fast. He tried to etch the healing spell but it sputtered and died in the air, his elbow jarring from the judder of Ignatius’s wings.
He heard a cry of warning from Sylva, felt the thud of a Shrike hitting his shoulder. Ignatius dropped into a stomach-churning swoop.
A blue glow rushed towards him.
The world was suddenly cold and dark. Fletcher felt the jar of Ignatius hitting the ground, then he was sailing through the air, turning once, twice. He slammed against the ground, tumbling over and over until he lay in a crumpled pile of pain. He could feel the stickiness of leather against his face, smell the harsh tang of its scent through his nostrils.
His half-cracked eyes saw the blur of the spinning portal, part blocked by black figures. The glow darkened as a demon emerged, then the blue sphere winked out of existence, leaving the place in utter darkness.
He heard the pounding of feet, sensed Ignatius’s presence beside him. There was the warm lap of the demon’s tongue across his calf, then a moment later it bathed his arm in saliva. He felt the rush of the last of his mana leaving him, the healing spell imbued in the Salamander’s tongue working its way into his flesh, knitting muscle and skin together.
Fletcher was suddenly aware of voices around him, shouts of surprise, of fear. The room, for that was where he was, flared with flickering light as torches sputtered into life. His vision widened.
A man’s voice cut through the noise, barking orders. Then he saw him, striding purposefully towards him, eyes flashing with concern.
Arcturus.