The Draykon Series (1-3)

Chapter Seven

Three guards had been assigned to protect Llandry's house. They arrived in the early eventide, all youngish men in light armour with weapons strapped to their uniforms. The prospect of having to speak to these grim-faced people was enough to close Llandry's throat on the spot, but fortunately they were not much inclined to talk. They took her mother's instructions silently, taking up positions at her front door, the back door and outside the largest window. When her parents had gone she wandered the house for a time, feeling as though she was under siege.

   As the strong light of day began to fade, she suffered some doubts. Her mother's fears may seem exaggerated to her, but they were not unjustified. What if someone still lay in wait for her? Were they really gone? She shouldn't be so willing to endanger herself for the sake of a gem. She hovered near her kitchen window, nibbling at a fingernail. The proximity of her guards didn't prevent her escape: if she was careful she could slip out without being seen by the man at the rear door. But should she?

   What it was about the istore that drove her, she couldn't say. But nonetheless it did. Pursuit or not, she would go. Besides, tomorrow she would release the location of the cave and her part in the matter would be over. It wouldn't matter if she was followed today.

   Her mind made up, she slid silently out of the window. Her stature was a source of embarrassment to her under normal circumstances; the winged citizens of Glinnery were not typically very tall as a race, but she was particularly diminutive. Now she blessed her size, her slight figure easily fitting through the frame. She pulled herself up onto the roof and lay silently for a moment, listening. Below her stood a silent guard. He had positioned himself directly before the narrow wood-and-rope bridge that connected her dwelling with her neighbour. She watched as he took a few paces onto the bridge, looked around himself, then paced back to his original station. He hadn't seen her.

   Llandry waited until a passing cloud bank cast a misty grey shadow over the forest, then she silently took to the skies. She flew low, keeping beneath the cover of the glissenwol caps, trusting to their wide trunks and blankets of draping vines to conceal her movements. There was no sign of pursuit on the ground or in the air behind her, and she relaxed. She flew south and east, making for the vicinity of the border into the Darklands. Eventually she saw the darkened skies of Glour looming ahead of her and she began her descent, landing gently in the thick mosses wet from the day's rain.

   She paused, disorientated. The surroundings were familiar: clusters of entwined glissenwol formed a tangled wall stretching away to her left, crowded with an obscuring thicket of ferns and moss. The path to her cave lay behind this mass of foliage, she knew the route perfectly. But the opaque darkness of Glour loomed close, too close. It should be a dark mass on the horizon. Instead, the eventide light was abruptly cut off and plunged into shadow barely one hundred feet ahead of her. Had she flown off course? She stepped forward warily, scanning her surroundings for familiar landmarks.

   She stepped softly towards the wall of twining trees, twisted easily between the glissenwol trunks, ducked to avoid the hanging vines. The path was slightly overgrown, but unmistakeable; this was the same route she had passed through many times before. Her cave lay two hundred feet ahead, through the overgrown passageway and into the grassier space beyond.

   Now that passage lay under shadow.

   Llandry walked forward until she stood with the tips of her red boots on the very edge of the divide. The transformation from light to darkness was abrupt: the air blurred into dusk for a mere few feet and then the solid darkness of the night took over. The moon was up, silvering the land below, but with her Daylander eyes it was a strain to see into the darkness that cloaked the forest ahead of her. She could just make out the outlines of half-grown, pale glissenwol caps shrouded in palpable darkness. Starved of light, they were already fading, their shining pale trunks turning sickly, the vibrancy draining from their crumbling caps.