The Draykon Series (1-3)

Chapter Six

   Eva found him in his rooftop garden as usual, bent over pots of seedlings. He was cursing their lack of progress with an enviable fluidity, impatiently pushing his escaping strands of hair back behind his ears as they repeatedly fell forward. She noticed he was wearing mismatched colours.

   'Lackadaisical monsters! Destined to grace the most delicious and marvellously effective potions in Glour and you fail to produce more than a SINGLE miserable leaf?'

   She cleared her throat. He shot upright, turned and stared at her.

   'Damned laziness,' he muttered darkly.

   'I can assure you, I have never trained a dringle-bird faster.'

   'Not you,' he said impatiently. He never did have much of a sense of humour, she reflected. He was far too intense for that.  His wife, on the other hand...

   'It's these absurd milkleaf sprouts. Couldn't ask for a better environment, could they? Pampered like children. Food, water, moonglow, never so much as a hint of strong daylight...' He stepped forward suddenly, his face brightening as he observed the glove and the pacing bird. 'Dringle-bird, you said? Is this him? It's about time. I lost an entire crop of darsury grass to the mites not two days ago.'

   She drew off her glove and passed it to him. 'He'll respond to the whistle, every time.'

   'Perfect, perfect.' Wrobsley eyed the bird. Skritch paced, fluffed his wings and clucked. Eva gave him the hunt signal, and Skritch took to the wing. Eva and Wrobsley watched as the dringle systematically combed the tubs of plants, snaring insects and mites with deft, quick snaps of his tiny beak. Wrobsley began to walk after it, selecting pots at random and inspecting the leaves. Eva knew there wouldn't be an insect left in sight.

   He returned to her at length and nodded approvingly. 'Thank you. I know you don't train much anymore. Meesa will appreciate it.'

   She smiled. 'Only for friends, yes. Glour Council seems to have other things for the High Summoner to do, for some reason. Where is Meesa?'

   He turned back to his plants. 'Downstairs somewhere.'

   'One more thing, Numinar, if you've a moment.' He straightened up again, eyeing her impatiently. 'I've run out of the prophylactic and I need some more, fairly quickly.'

   Numinar frowned. 'I don't have much. One bottle. The rylur shortage is killing me.'

   'There's a shortage?'

   He led the way back down to his workroom and fell to rummaging through cupboards. 'You haven't heard? I can't get any at all at the moment.'

   This was curious news. Rylur was one of the trickier plants, impossible to rear properly outside of the Lowers. That meant supply was always a problem - it had to be carefully gathered by herbalists trained in Lowers survival and excursions down there were always brief and tightly controlled. But she knew that Numinar didn't always rely on the fully legal sources.

   Numinar was throwing bottles around with a carelessness that made her wince, but nothing broke. 'All sources have dried up lately. I can't get a straight answer out of anybody as to why. Something about increased dangers.'

   That dovetailed with a few odd reports she'd received recently from summoners. A few of them felt that the Lowers were growing more unstable, more difficult to navigate. She hadn't taken them too seriously; it was the sort of conclusion newer summoners often reached when they found themselves out of their depth down there. But perhaps there was something in it after all.