The Draykon Series (1-3)

Lokant: Chapter Five

A few hours later, Aysun was close to despair. His device was malfunctioning; it had to be. According to the display, Llandry was moving far faster than they were. No matter how quickly he forced his company to move, she continued to draw further away. He knew she could fly fast with her Glinnish wings - she and her mother had often outpaced him on the ground, even when Llandry was a child - but even so, it shouldn't be possible for her to put so much distance between them at such a rate.

A halt was called some hours after they had encountered the snakes. Eyas at last declared it safe to rest, but while the others slept Aysun worked on his location device. He worked relentlessly, ignoring his tiredness, searching for the fault in the machinery that was causing the problems with the display.

But all his efforts only made it worse, for after an hour's work something remarkably strange happened. The point of light that represented Llandry's position abruptly reversed its direction and began to head back towards Aysun's group. He calculated that her position must be more than fifty miles ahead of them, but she closed that distance with impossible speed. Over the space of a mere few minutes, her path traced an arc around them, passing a few miles to the northeast. Then that taunting dot of light veered away once more.

Aysun was an engineer, hailing from the realm of Irbel where talent with machinery was common and highly valued. He was a skilled practitioner of the mechanical arts himself, and had long worked with the outpost of Irbellian engineers based in Glinnery. He was aware of several projects developing vehicles that would move faster than nivven-drawn carriages, but he had never heard of anything that would allow the kind of speed his display was showing. It was unimaginable.

It must be broken, but he could find no fault and as such there was nothing to repair.

Without the reliable help of his locator, how could he ever expect to find Llandry in this fluid place, where nothing stayed the same and no landmark could be relied upon? Despairing, Aysun tossed the device into his pack and turned his back on his companions. He wanted to sleep, but he couldn't; not while Llandry was lost somewhere in the Uppers. He was one of the foremost engineers of Irbel: he had to find the solution.

'Who would you recommend as your successor?'

Guardian Islvy Troste regarded Eva with some sadness as she posed the question. Eva's eleven years as High Summoner had just come to an end; Islvy had been at the head of Glour's government for seven of those years, and the two women had often worked together. They had never been close friends, but they had been able to rely on each other.

'Roys Alin,' Eva replied. She hadn't had to think hard for an answer to that question. Roys was no aristocrat, and that must speak against her when it came to government appointments. But she was a summoner whose natural strength almost equalled Eva's own, and had long been Eva's second in command. She was a rational, dedicated woman; she would do well in the role of chief of the realm's summoner practitioners.

The Guardian nodded. 'That's as I expected. I agree with you entirely, and I'll make sure there are no objections from the rest of the Council. Would you prefer to postpone your departure, or is your resignation effective immediately?'

'Immediate,' Eva replied without hesitation. It cost her something to say it, but she ensured that no trace of doubt appeared in her manner. 'There is much to be done regarding the draykon problem, and I have already lost a great deal of time.'

The Guardian frowned slightly. 'That issue has already been passed to the university. Some of their finest scholars are at work on it. Not that I doubt your ability to contribute to the research, but is it indeed so vital that you participate immediately? I don't wish to lose our best High Summoner in a generation unnecessarily.'