The Draykon Series (1-3)

Lokant: Chapter Forty

Limbane was thinking.

It was always a long and involved process, when he did it properly. Thinking involved not just musings or idly putting a few things together. Thinking meant locking his door, settling into his chair, closing his eyes and committing himself to a prolonged examination of the relevant sequences of facts, circumstances, events and occurrences until he began to see the patterns that lay behind them.

He had a considerable mess to deal with. Facts and events crowded upon one another, tangled up with occurrences that may be mere happenstance or may be significant. Too many characters now littered the gaming board; he was beginning to lose track. They must be set straight so that all may proceed in order.

The biggest problem, as usual, was Krays. That man had been trouble since before he'd betrayed the Library and set up a rival organisation. His band had always been too small to truly challenge the power of the Library, but he had been a persistent irritation ever since Limbane had become the Lokantor, the Library's director and leader.

What was Krays up to? Limbane reviewed the facts. He knew that his so-called fellow Lokantor had gone to some trouble to find, recruit and train some of the partial Lokants of this Cluster of worlds. Not all of them, but apparently enough to serve his purposes. From Devary Kant, he knew that Krays had taken control of at least one information agency, the one that lay concealed behind the university of magical history in Draetre. He may well have taken over others besides. That meant he was looking for information, presumably magical in nature.

Then there was the whurthag device he himself had encountered at Sulayn Phay. The purpose of that machine evaded his understanding. Was it really a more effective guard than any of his earlier creations? It would be a fearsome defence against human intruders, but that was precisely what the island was without. None but Lokants had any real chance of infiltrating that place, and they had disabled the thing (albeit with a little trouble. Melle would survive, and Rael's leg had been saved, but he was still toweringly angry with Krays for those injuries).

If he had built one unnatural hybrid of a device, what else might he be building? And why? Certainly not just to guard a few captives.

And so to consider the matter of the prisoners. Krays had gone to considerable trouble to find out who the hereditary draykoni were, and had subsequently abducted two out of the three. He had tried hard to get hold of the third as well. Why? He didn't buy the idea that they were to be used to locate draykon graves. Krays was inventive; if he sought more bone, he or his associates would long since have developed some device to do that for him.

Mr Kant's presence at the island had surprised him. According to the agent's own account, he had been confined there as punishment for snooping. That made sense, as far as it went. The absence of Orillin Vanse was more troubling. Kant's presence of mind in petitioning Ynara Sanfaer may have saved the boy much, but where then was he? Kant didn't know, and by Andraly's account Ynara herself lay in a coma in Waeverleyne. Had she got to Vanse in time, or had Krays taken him?

And he had no report from his own personal complications, Mr Warvel and her ladyship. It was many long years since he had consented to the training of a partial; as yet he was unsure whether it would prove a benefit or a liability. He'd been reluctant to confer full Library access upon Evastany Glostrum until he had taken her measure. Was she an asset or a dead weight? That remained to be seen. He hoped she would have something useful to report when she returned.

Limbane was well used to the workings of his Library. Time passed here, but so slowly it was almost the same as a complete severance from the time flow. He was used to waiting in the Library while worlds rushed through their cycles outside. But for the first time in his life he was becoming impatient. He had the foreboding sense that Krays's antics meant more, now, than they often had in the past. Ordinary rivalry he was used to, but all of this amounted to something worse, he was sure of it. Why hadn't his rival made more effort to stop them when he'd found them at Sulayn Phay?