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  The conflict seemed endless, for time was not marked by the passage of any sun.

  Zimak slashed down, felling his fifteenth victim. He realised that he had fought his way across the arena and was now facing his disoriented opponents the moment they appeared through their paraplane portal. He called out to the others and they followed his lead.

  It was a long and wearying battle that often seemed to have no end; it instilled in each a weary despair. Hakat and QeSu had the hardest time, but Zimak’s ruse saved them. As time wore on, the gaps between the attackers lengthened, as if the defenders were somehow winning and getting time on their side. Oddly enough, the exhaustion was not really physical; if it had been they would have died earlier at the hands of a fresh attacker. It was their minds and souls that seemed to slow and stumble, and fill with hopelessness. They continued to fight on and win, though oftentimes by chance and good luck rather than skill. It was as if the fighting was a ritual, or ceremony. Although their new opponents were felled the instant they entered the arena, the defenders grew more weary as the battle lengthened.

  Jelindel also was tiring in the most crucial sense: her magic was drying up. She was now drained at the deepest level, and her power was becoming less effective. She felt the desert growing in her soul, a vast gritty ocean of aching intensity.

  They knew that this punishing pace could not last. Despite the small respites that seemed to expand between attacks, there was no end in sight, nor could any of them think how to bring the nightmare to a close.

  Daretor felt as if his limbs were made of lead. They still functioned normally; they still moved with deadly speed and accuracy, yet he felt empty, a husk.

  ‘I’m exhausted,’ he croaked, trying to raise his voice above the clash of arms. The others echoed his feelings, in words or grunts.

  ‘I don’t know how to stop it,’ Jelindel said, a hysterical edge in her voice. If they stopped killing the attackers, the queen would suffer no more wounds. In turn they would be swamped and killed. Twice she had sought the entrance to this place, but it had been sealed. The wall of the amphitheatre was seamless.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Daretor. ‘The prophecy.’

  ‘I’m telling you, I don’t know.’

  Daretor stepped back from the shimmering portal as another warrior entered its field. The stones beneath his feet were slick with blood, and the bodies of the fallen had all but corralled him. He readied his sword for yet another blow.

  Finally Jelindel had no more power. It was gone and would take hours to recharge. She slumped against the platform, gazing at the queen whose body was rapidly becoming insubstantial. At that moment the defenders were reeling from more attackers.

  Hakat staggered back, suffering a shoulder wound. QeSu flung her spear and killed the attacker as he was about to slay her lover. There was no shortage of weapons lying about. She quickly hefted a short sword.

  ‘Gah!’ Zimak cried, stumbling over a corpse. He stayed down, clutching a dirk and staring at the portal as a man-shaped darkness gathered within.

  The queen was the consistency of mist. Jelindel reached out and her hand passed through the monarch. An idea came to her. She pushed herself onto the sarcophagus and lay down in the space occupied by the dissipating woman.

  ‘Jelli, no!’ Daretor called out.

  It was too late. Jelindel merged with the fading monarch. As she did so, the milky light blinked out. The vistas were next. The attackers disappeared and the queen sat up, her long hair hiding her nakedness.

  Queen Ortha looked about, dazed. When she saw the defenders she smiled.

  ‘You have done well,’ she said. ‘Many others have failed over the eons.’

  Daretor walked to the dais. ‘Where is Jelindel, the woman that saved you?’ he demanded. He barely had the energy for the raging anger he felt.

  The queen climbed slowly out of the sarcophagus and the others gathered about her. Still smiling she reached out and touched each in the middle of the forehead. Daretor was last. When her fingers came into contact with his skin he felt a profound sense of wellbeing and safety. The underworld vanished and he stood once again at the base of the hill in the lakebed.

  Only it was no longer dry. An inch of water sloshed about Daretor’s feet. Markul stood some yards away, staring first at Daretor then at the water. He was weeping for joy. His mouth gaped and he pointed as though entranced.

  Queen Ortha stood still. She was literally seeping into the ground. Fluid ran from her fingers in impossible torrents, as though a huge dam had burst from within. All around the desert, sand darkened with moisture as Queen Ortha’s lifeforce spread like a stain.

  ‘Another curse,’ exclaimed Zimak, drawing his sword.

  Markul said something in his tongue.

  ‘No, no, it has merely begun,’ explained Hakat.

  ‘What’s begun? Who’s doing that to her? Can it be done to us?’

  ‘This is what I have always been,’ said the queen dreamily. ‘I was ripped out of the land many, many years ago and trapped in human form, cut off from the soil that is my home by the accursed sarcophagus.’

  Daretor caught sight of Jelindel climbing down from the cave entrance. He rushed up and helped her down the path. The queen continued her rapid transformation. A weary Jelindel stood before her.

  ‘When I merged with Her Royal Highness, I learned the truth,’ panted Jelindel. ‘The spirit of the land has great power. Ancient beings, more than mortals but less than gods, tore the queen from the soil and used her energies to open portals to the four worlds. That’s where the armies came from.’

  ‘They were powerful children. We were their pawns and this was their game,’ added the queen. Her voice was increasingly thick and slurred. ‘When they tired of their game, they abandoned it and moved on.’

  ‘Moved on?’ gasped Zimak. ‘You mean they’re still out there?’

  ‘They no longer concern themselves with the likes of us,’ the queen told them. ‘They are in a time and place beyond reckoning. The sarcophagus, the portals, the armies, it was all like a sandcastle left by children on a beach. And I was as a beetle trapped within the walls of the sandcastle. Now the walls have been breached … I am free to become … myself … again. I thank you …’

  The desert floor was sodden for as far as the eye could see. Queen Ortha’s face melted into the ground. As it did so, the ground rumbled, shaking the mortals standing there. Where she had been there now stood a column of water. Even as they watched, it collapsed and merged with the sand.

  ‘By the odd gods, I hate magic,’ grumbled Daretor.

  ‘How could you hate something so beautiful?’ asked Jelindel, who managed to dredge up the energy to be annoyed.

  ‘Any problem that cannot be solved with a sword is not to my taste,’ he said tersely.

  ‘When you marry your sword don’t bother sending me a wedding invitation,’ muttered Jelindel, climbing wearily between the humps of a camel.

  The return journey was fast. Dark and heavily burdened clouds appeared overhead. A downpour began and did not abate. Every ancient waterway, etched out of the desert during the centuries of desiccation, ran with water. Flash floods filled the gulches and canyons.

  Toward the end of the journey the only thing that prevented the riders from drowning were the gently sloping basin sides, which had once been the ‘shallows’ of the sea. As they galloped through the sucking sand, and made for the town that was now within sight, there came a vast roaring noise. None dared look back lest the smallest delay hastened their doom.

  The town gates opened and a great cheer went up from the citizens. The chieftain walked out to greet them, his fine shoes splattered with sand and his robes bedraggled by the rain. He did not seem to care.

  ‘The ocean is coming back, as foretold,’ he announced. People danced in the rain, like children.

  Everyone watched from the ramparts as the tsunami exhausted itself against the lower shoreline. None cared that structures built outside the city wall
s were reduced to rubble, or taken out to sea. Each new demolition dazzled the crowd.

  Jelindel, Daretor and the others stayed as guests of the chieftain for three days. Though their mission was urgent, they felt profoundly exhausted. More than that, they had a deep desire to witness the results of their strange battle in the desert.

  A day after the battle, the great basin was beneath a sheet of water as far as the eye could see, though it had not yet risen to its full depth. Small waves broke upon the shore several hundred yards below the city wall. Eager townsfolk continued rebuilding the ancient piers and docks. Although fallen into disrepair, the docklands were quickly readied for this auspicious moment. A fleet of boats was prepared for launching, and ancient tales of great fishing expeditions were retold to eager children.

  Thicker garments replaced the thin linen robes that had been the fashion for centuries. Little work went on in the city. From dawn till dark most of the folk gathered on the town ramparts, or on what they were calling, not without a sense of awe, the shore. Festivities and celebrations were held day and night. Jelindel and her companions were feted as saviours. Musicians crowded the five, reciting poetry and singing songs in their honour.

  As the third night approached, Jelindel announced their departure. The chieftain thanked them profusely for the miracle they had wrought. Markul, with a kind of warrior’s shyness, presented Jelindel with a necklace on which hung a solitary pearl.

  ‘This was made,’ Hakat translated, ‘on this very shoreline two thousand years ago. It has been in Markul’s family ever since.’

  ‘I cannot accept it,’ Jelindel said. The flawless pearl was beautiful and had to be worth a king’s ransom.

  Markul closed her hand around the relic. ‘Soon we will have others, thanks to you. May this become an heirloom for your family as it has been in mine.’

  Jelindel donned the necklace and everyone cheered.

  Hakat set up the machine and turned it on. It hummed and lit up. The Kesparii looked in amazement. Machines were unknown in their world.

  ‘It’s a kind of magic,’ Jelindel explained.

  ‘I think the contraption’s ready,’ Hakat said when a row of lights began flicking.

  The Kesparii kept a respectful distance from the otherworld machine. A silence descended as a shimmering light encompassed the travellers.

  Jelindel waved and then they were gone, but they were not forgotten. A thousand years later the story of the witch woman and her companions who, with their own hands, remade the ocean was still being told. Even Zimak’s girth became a thing of impossible myth.

  They materialised close to a hamlet. The Q’zaran villagers welcomed the group as they would any travellers – with suspicion. This suited them. A farmer allowed them to use his barn for the night, and Jelindel paid in kind by tending the man’s sickly cow.

  The next morning, as they prepared to set out for D’loom, the sky was darkened by the huge form of S’cressling. She settled on a nearby knoll, much to the astonishment of the villagers. Hakat and QeSu stood gaping.

  Jelindel and Daretor rushed forward to greet Osric. They pulled up short when they saw he had one arm in a sling. Zimak waddled after them, puffing. The force-feeding given him by the Farvenu had been too successful.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Jelindel called.

  ‘And I you,’ Osric shouted back.

  ‘But how did you escape Fa’red back in D’loom?’ Jelindel asked.

  ‘Fa’red knocked you two out. I tried to fight and got this for my trouble.’ He indicated his broken arm. ‘After that, you were bound and taken away. As for me, I was imprisoned for several days then sold into slavery. When my new owners sought to transport me across the Marisa River they got a rather nasty shock. S’cressling has that effect on people. After that, they were only too happy to free me and all the other slaves. I came back to D’loom as quickly as I could but you were nowhere to be found. S’cressling circled the area for days. It was as if you had disappeared off the face of Q’zar.’

  ‘We had,’ Jelindel said sombrely.

  ‘Then last night S’cressling picked up your scent from the Sacred One’s blood mark and we came here as fast as we could. We are only a few hours south of D’loom. Tell me, where have you been?’ His mouth gaped when he saw Zimak. ‘And you, Zimak, what happened to you in Yuledan?’

  Zimak told them how he had been attacked by the deadmoon warriors and woke up on the Sargasso. Daretor brought the story up to date and introduced Osric to Hakat and QeSu. They both regarded Osric and S’cressling with apprehension.

  ‘Now what?’ Osric asked, ignoring Hakat and QeSu’s stares. ‘Are we any nearer reaching our goal?’

  ‘With luck,’ said Jelindel. ‘Let’s ask S’cressling.’

  Osric frowned. ‘S’cressling?’

  ‘I’ll explain on the way,’ Jelindel said. They climbed the knoll and stood before the dragon. S’cressling, in turn, observed them with great unblinking eyes that seemed immeasurably old.

  ‘S’cressling,’ Jelindel said, ‘do you know the language of the first men of Q’zar?’

  The mind speech of the dragon was like the sound of boulders moving deep in the earth, or like far-off thunder. It was hard to understand but not impossible. When necessary, Osric translated verbally.

  ‘I know it,’ replied the dragon, in their minds. ‘The dragons gave mankind the gift of speech and taught them language. Before that they had only the speech of wild animals.’

  Osric’s brow knitted in confusion. It appeared that the dragons were universal; their magic and knowledge spanning the paraworlds.

  ‘What is Q’zar?’ Jelindel asked.

  ‘Not what, but who,’ the mind speech rumbled.

  ‘Who was Q’zar?’

  ‘The first dragon born of the Original Egg. All dragons are descended from Q’zar.’

  The Q’zarans lapsed into silence. This was a history so ancient that not even myths and fairy tales hinted at the truth anymore.

  ‘Do you know what the word Hadirr means?’ Jelindel asked the dragon.

  S’cressling stared down her long snout. It was impossible to read an expression in that majestic face. Perhaps she smiled. ‘Hadirr means “abode of the clouds” in the Old Speech,’ she told the humans.

  Osric scratched his head. ‘She knew all the time,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’

  ‘You did not ask,’ said the dragon. There was a trace of mockery in her tone, good-natured though it might have been. ‘Would you spoil the games of children?’

  To that they had no answer.

  ‘I should have known,’ Osric said. ‘We say, “Out of the minds of dragons”. And I call myself a dragonrider. I should be flayed alive.’

  Daretor and Zimak were still frowning. ‘That still doesn’t solve our problem,’ Daretor pointed out. ‘Where on Q’zar is the “abode of the clouds”?’

  Jelindel stared at him in surprise. ‘Come on, Daretor. Think about it.’ Exasperated, she said, ‘Think “valley”.’

  ‘The Valley of Clouds is in Dremari,’ he said slowly. ‘The Stone People’s realm is somewhere beneath Fa’red’s keep. No doubt he thought that a rich joke at our expense.’

  ‘Gah, he won’t be laughing when I get my hands on him,’ Zimak cursed. ‘Look what he’s done to me.’ He grabbed a hold of his flabby stomach.

  ‘You were well on the way to obesity without Fa’red’s help,’ Daretor seethed.

  ‘Right you two,’ Jelindel said pointedly. She noticed that Hakat and QeSu looked confused. ‘S’cressling, if you would be so kind?’ she said.

  The dragon rested on her haunches to enable them to climb her flanks. When the group was safely secure in their harnesses, S’cressling launched into the air and began the journey back to Dremari, beyond the Valley of Clouds.

  Chapter 9

  ABOVE AND BELOW GROUND

  T

  hey landed in the same spot as before, a mist-enshrouded mountain top invisible to pryin
g eyes and inaccessible to any but the most determined. Osric, Hakat and QeSu remained with S’cressling. Even though Jelindel healed Osric’s broken arm, it remained weak and there was little he could do in a fight. Zimak did not get the same consideration. Climbing up and down steep mountain sides and quite possibly running from an assortment of enemies seemed the perfect recipe for losing weight, and strengthening a fat, force-fed body.

  ‘Gah, Jelindel. This isn’t fair,’ he wailed, not for the first time. ‘I suffered as well. Do you think I enjoyed eating that food? They stuck a tube into me and poured it in. I couldn’t even taste it!’

  ‘As allegory, Zimak, that takes a lot of beating,’ said Jelindel, putting a hand to her head.

  ‘What’s an allegory?’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said, patting his bulging stomach. ‘Just don’t name it after me.’

  ‘Am I being insulted?’

  ‘Definitely. Meantime a little exercise and you’ll be fine.’ She stared at him and frowned. ‘Actually, quite a lot of exercise. There’s nothing magical about building muscles. I daresay the body you stole from Daretor was made by blood, sweat and tears.’

  Zimak appealed to Daretor. ‘It’s your body. How can you sit there smirking?’

  ‘You need to sweat it off,’ Daretor said. ‘You will go and eat like a pig.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. They made me eat!’

  ‘Nobody can make you eat,’ Daretor said, pretending he did not know the truth. ‘Either way, it’s time you went on a diet. This little adventure will be good for you.’

  ‘There’s nothing “little” about any adventure with you two,’ Zimak growled. Having established that neither Jelindel nor Daretor would indulge him, he distanced himself from both.

  Later that evening they came to the main gate of Dremari. This time, instead of presenting papers that they no longer had, Jelindel cast a cloaking spell. When a gap in the foot traffic opened up they joined the flow of pedestrians, carts and wagons, careful to avoid contact with anyone else.