Back to the Vara (eBook)

John Kerry (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018 | 1. Auflage
232 Seiten
EATEOM Publishing Ltd (Verlag)
978-0-9572389-3-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Two years have passed since Sammy returned from Perseopia. She was gone less than a week, yet she came back changed. Something inside her has awoken. She can sense people's intentions, is able to affect objects with her mind. And there's no one she can talk to about it. Her mother won't acknowledge her made-up fantasy stories and Esther, the old market woman, never returned for the bracelet. Sammy needs answers and her only hope for them lies back in Perseopia. Journey back to the vara with Sammy Ellis as she's once again thrust into the Fungi Forest to fend for herself. Discover the events that led up to her first visit and learn of the fallout she created in her wake.

Textauszug

–ONE–

BEFORE SAMMY

 

 

Behnam didn’t have to wait long for his young partner to catch up.

Hami emerged from the shadows, his skin purple under the magenta smog that hung over the city. He strode purposefully up the centre of the street, passing through the ephemeral wisps of the smog that floated at ground level, his head up, and dark hair and black cloak flowing behind him. He had the beginnings of a smile, but one damaged by pain and loss.

The men he’d been questioning would be dead.

In hindsight, Behnam should’ve interrogated the men himself. He stepped out of the doorway, into Hami’s path. “Should you be walking up the centre of the street so brazenly?” he asked.

“Who’s going to see me?”

Behnam had hoped he’d been wrong about the men. He tried to suppress the disappointment, but it must’ve shown.

“They’d have given us away,” Hami said, his smile gone.

“Not if you’d tied them.”

“It’s safer this way.”

“You’d be a master by now if you could suppress that vicious streak of yours.”

“If I’d developed a vicious streak sooner, your sister might still be alive.”

Behnam withdrew inside. The memory of that night hit him with almost physical force. It came from nowhere. The blood, the crying. The surprised look on his sister’s face as she breathed her last. The pain he experienced now was as raw as the night it happened. As it would be for Hami. They’d both suffered the loss of Jamileh, but Hami had perhaps taken it harder.

Behnam decided then that he was going to tell Hami the full story. The boy had a right to know the events that led up to Jamileh’s death. “You couldn’t have prevented it, you know. It wasn’t your fault –”

“It’s not a good time.”

“There’s never a good time, but we need to talk about it.”

“After the mission,” Hami said. He softened. “Please.”

Reluctantly, Behnam held his tongue. He should’ve kept going, relieved Hami of his burden, but instead he allowed himself to be silenced again.

Hami was right. A lengthy debate and probable argument in the old capital would be irresponsible. They needed to keep their wits about them. There were other patrols of Order members roving throughout the city and Hami couldn’t kill them all. They’d already left a substantial trail of bodies through the district that had once housed the rich and powerful.

Behnam had never known this place. Few living had. The entire city had been vacated generations ago when the smog came, and only members of the Order and a few wasters remained.

He led the way off the street and into an oval courtyard surrounded by grand marble arches and pillars. At the far end stood a large circular building with a shallow dome. It was a beautiful piece of architecture with a grand doorway, carved lintels and window frames. Behnam felt almost ashamed that he didn’t know the name of it. He closed his eyes and accessed the magi network, scanned for Aratta maps, articles and building plans.

“What are we waiting for?” Hami asked.

Behnam opened his eyes. “This building used to be the royal opera house. We’re standing in the courtyard where the sultan and his family held social events.” Silence. “There’s a staircase inside the doorway that will take us to the roof.”

Hami gazed up through the open courtyard at the magenta clouds churning above them. They were lower here than he was used to, fine wisps floating just above the rooftops. Hami had been born in the outskirts of Aratta, but this would be the closest he’d ever been to the centre. He’d changed a lot since then. Since the wounded street urchin he’d been when Behnam found him.

“Those men didn’t deserve to live,” Hami said after a time. “It’s better for the realm that I’ve killed them.”

Behnam said nothing. There was no talking to Hami when he was dwelling on Jamileh. Behnam had never appreciated how badly the boy had fallen for her until she’d been killed. It had changed him. Something inside him had broken. Behnam wanted more than ever to speak to Hami then, explain how he knew it wasn’t his fault, but he suppressed the urge. On the way home he’d explain the truth. But not now, not while their lives were in the balance.

They crouched behind a fallen pillar. The smog was already making Behnam woozy. Half a day more and the hallucinations would begin. They’d need to be out long before that if they wished to survive.

“Did you learn anything before you killed them?” Behnam asked.

“They gave away the location of a base up in the Atrabiliar mountains.”

“A base?”

“On the northern slopes of Dev’s Peak.”

“That’s thousands of stadia from here. Why there?”

“They didn’t know. We’ll need to question someone higher up for that information.”

Behnam wondered how Hami had extracted what little information he had. Then realised that perhaps he didn’t want to know. He led the way across the courtyard at a crouched run and in through the opera house doorway.

“The staircase is just in here,” he said. “We should have a decent view from the top.”

They climbed the stairs in the dark. At the top, they emerged onto a curved balcony that circled the building.

Ahead loomed the sultan’s palace. Little more than a silhouette in the smog, but at six storeys high it dominated the skyline. Thick purple smoke still billowed from a ragged fissure in the vast dome and clouds hung thick about it.

“I’ve never seen it this close before,” Hami said.

“An impressive building,” Behnam said. “But thankfully, not somewhere we need to go tonight.”

They walked further around the balcony and stopped.

A black tower, gnarled and crooked, had grown from the earth in the centre of the piazza ahead of them, twisting its way skyward and reaching up into the smog above. At its base, a line of men and women funnelled into the entrance carrying stone blocks. Spikey grey crabmen stood either side of the slaves, twitching in the strange manner of their kind, chattering and poking people with their sword arms.

There were human slavers too, interspersed among the crabmen. Most were dressed in furs and many were scribbling notes on parchment.

“Should we fall in with the slaves?” Hami asked. “Follow them into the tower?”

“We’d have to lose our lightning staffs if we wanted to blend in,” Behnam said. “It would be risky.”

“I can’t see how else we’ll get in.”

“We don’t necessarily need to get in. Let’s take a closer look. See what we can find out first. We’ll have to leave soon, as it is. Before we contract smog sickness.”

They left the opera house and made their way towards the tower. It was an easy landmark to locate, given its height, but one that wouldn’t be easy to get close to. The area around the piazza had been cleared of buildings. Those closest to the tower had been reduced to their floorplans with only a few low sections of wall remaining among the heaps of rubble.

“Do you think anyone at the top can see us?” Hami asked as he looked up at the tower.

“I doubt it,” Behnam said. “It’s dark down here in the shadows. And even if someone does spot us, we’ll be long gone by the time they can get a message to ground level.”

They crawled through the foundations of one of the derelict houses that skirted the piazza. The building had been mostly destroyed, aside from the exterior wall, which at its highest point was around waist-high. Hami and Behnam arranged themselves either side of the gap that had once been the front door and sat down with their backs against the wall to catch their breath. The house they occupied was in a row parallel to the line of slaves entering the tower. They would have to crawl through adjacent houses to get closer to the entrance.

Behnam was about to get up when the atmosphere changed. An increase in air pressure accompanied by an almost metallic tang he could feel in his teeth. A wave of panic washed over him. He turned to Hami. The young magus’s eyes were wide, his chest pumping. He’d make himself sick if he didn’t calm his breathing and stop inhaling smog. This was bad. And could only mean one thing. Ramaask.

Some of the slaves were experiencing the atmospheric change, too. A few had stopped walking and were clutching their heads. Others were shaking or crying.

Behnam nodded to Hami and they both dropped off the magi network. They wouldn’t be able to communicate for a while. Inconvenient, but nothing compared to the risk of Ramaask sensing them.

Moving slowly, Behnam turned to peer through the doorway.

Ramaask emerged from the darkness across the square. The Nightmare, some called him. Others knew him simply as the Lurker at the Gate. Impressive titles for an impressive creature. A giant dressed in thick, black plate and trailing a cloak that floated impossibly on a non-existent breeze. His face was obscured by a visor and on his helmet, three serrated ridges ran from front to back. One at the top like a fin and one on each side.

The air around him distorted and rippled as he strode across the piazza.

Following him was an equally tall figure, but this one was thin. It was cloaked all in black, its hooded head hanging limp at its chest. It kept pace with Ramaask, gliding across the square without any outward appearance of motion, as if it were floating.

The temperature was going up as the two monsters approached. The slaves parted and backed away. All of them, bar an older man...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.10.2018
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-10: 0-9572389-3-2 / 0957238932
• ISBN-13: 978-0-9572389-3-0 / 9780957238930