The Draykon Series (1-3)

Orlind: Chapter Thirty-Two

And Eva wouldn't have known about this development without Ori. She could feel the increased volatility of the realm, and the whirling amaskan energy affected her, but more than that she could not see or sense.

'Let's hope we're right,' she said. 'Onward now. He's getting ahead of us.'

Krays, it emerged, was making his slow way towards the Orlind Library. Had he anticipated how much more deeply the corrupted amasku would affect him, once he had implanted himself with draykon matter? Perhaps not. It was reassuring to know that the handicap they fought against also affected their enemy.

Eva kept an eye out for Galywis as they followed after Krays, gaining on him by slow degrees. But she saw no sign of the Master Librarian.

Soon they were barely ten paces behind Krays, all conversation at a halt as they strove to reach him. Their predicament struck Eva as faintly absurd: four people conducting an urgent chase across the island of Orlind, barely managing more than a slow walking pace between them... she might have laughed had it not been so serious.

They'd closed the distance to only five paces when Krays finally realised he was being pursued. 'Who's that?' he called, calmly and without a trace of doubt or fear. He sounded like a man whose project was going precisely according to plan. Eva hoped he was deceived on that count.

He did not wait for a reply. Turning away, he achieved a stumbling run as he raced for the Library, Rikbeek in close pursuit. Krays's machines were having a grave impact on the confused building and it now cycled through its changes with alarming speed, flashing from shape to shape approximately once every thirty seconds. Eva, Tren and Ori picked up their own pace and hastened after him as fast as they could manage; but still he made it up to the top of the precarious stairs before they had ascended more than the first few steps.

This proved to be a blessing as Krays paused at the base of the building and turned. Under the influence of his new, stolen draykon abilities, the staircase disappeared. Eva and her companions fell back to the ground, a distance that - mercifully - was only a few feet.

'Ouch,' Eva grumbled anyway. Krays was beginning to annoy her. Far above, the Lokantor wrought a small door in the face of the Library and went through it. The door vanished behind him.

'Does he imagine that will stop us?' Tren said, picking himself up.

'A sensible precaution,' Eva sighed. 'He still doesn't know who, or what we are.' Ori forged a new set of stairs and they hurried up them and through a new door that Tren made, trying to ignore the way the castle hallway warped into a reading room as they did so.

Krays was nowhere in sight, but raised voices could be heard coming from beyond an open door in the far wall. They ran for it, bursting into another room lined with bookshelves to find Krays - and Galywis. Krays had the old man by the shoulders and was shaking him.

'Why are you still here!' Krays was shouting. 'How are you still here! If you've interfered with my constructs...!'

Galywis, oddly, was howling with laughter. 'B-beautiful devices!' he managed around his mirth. 'Never saw better!' He laughed even harder, and Eva felt a knot of tension ease inside her. Galywis's amusement suggested that she'd been right: he had indeed tampered with Krays's constructs.

'Drop the invis,' she said to Tren, not bothering to lower her voice.

A moment later Tren and Ori appeared beside her. A glance down told her that she, too, was visible once again.

'Congratulations,' Tren said lightly to Krays. 'You broke the world.'

Krays let go of Galywis, to Eva's relief, and spun around.