Evastany

29 IV-2

Llandry looked a little disappointed, but she did not oppose my request. ‘Of course, if that’s what Ori wants to do.’

Ori gave her a hug. ‘I’ll come back,’ he promised. ‘Just not quite yet.’

Llandry nodded, but her face was thoughtful and her gaze strayed back to me. ‘But you want one more, right? At least one more, or you would not be here.’

‘Yes. I have at least eight students to manage already, and we expect more. Possibly many more. I’d like Ori to have help.’

May I admit something here? You may be wondering why I had gone to all the trouble of visiting Orlind myself, especially considering how much I hate the passage over the mountains. I could have sent Ori by himself, with instructions to collect a friend. It would have been far easier, and it is not as though I don’t have a thousand other things to do.

The fact is, I have missed Llandry, and Pense, and Avane and all the rest. It has been pleasant having Ori with me; more so than I would ever have anticipated.

For a time, Llandry and I were bound up in the same adventure. Our paths often crossed, we worked together, we had the same goals. It was a difficult time, but a lively one, and we accomplished so much.

But things changed. Llandry’s duties took her away to Iskyr (the Upper Realm), and then to Orlind. Pense and Ori went with her, of course. They have survived adventures aplenty since then — adventures I have had little to do with, because my own duties took me back to Glour City and (ultimately) Off-World altogether.

I miss our old fellowship. Nothing would please me more than to whisk Llandry back with me, install her in my school, and keep her at my side for as long as I can. Pensould, too. He is her mate, one of the ancient type of draykoni with no human blood at all. He’s… intriguing. He came wandering up about halfway through our conversation and stood nearby, listening with the impassive face, and interpolated only a brief comment, the substance of which I cannot remember. But there’ll come a moment where he will know exactly the thing to do, precisely the piece of information we need, and he will proceed to get things done with a kind of blunt practicality that has nothing to do with ordinary human behaviour. It’s refreshing. And effective.

I cannot take Llandry, or Pense. They are needed here. Reviving Orlind is a mission of grave importance (I love being able to say that), and I cannot justify removing those who are leading the project. Even if they would consent to come, which I doubt.

I might, however, be able to get away with taking Avane. She is like Llandry and Ori, a human shapeshifter rather than an ancient pure-blood. What’s more, she is a Darklander like me, a native of Glour, and near enough my own age. I like her a lot. I always wanted to get to know her better.

I know she is important to Llandry, too, so I broached the topic with as much subtlety as I could muster.

‘I want Avane,’ I told her.

Well, sometimes directness is best.

Llandry blinked. ‘Oh.’

She looked… crestfallen, which was as I had expected. But I was rapidly forced to revise my conclusion, for it was not that kind of dismay that I saw in Llandry’s face.

‘But…’ said Llan, and hesitated. ‘Surely—’

‘Avane would like to go, I think,’ said Pense, who blinked his black, black eyes at me and attempted something that was probably supposed to be a smile. ‘She suffers under the light.’

As well she might, being used to the comfortably dark conditions of Glour. ‘Perfect,’ I enthused.

Llandry nodded. ‘Oh, you may borrow Avane with my blessing, if she would like it! I can have no objection to that.’

‘Then, what?’ said Pensould gently, for he could see as well as I could that Llandry had something else on her mind.

Llan beamed at me. ‘Only two teachers! That is a good start, but should you not like to have one more? What if you get many more students? And besides, three minds to grapple with the problem would be far better than two, no?’

‘Doubtless,’ said I, watching Llandry’s face with decided wariness.

‘You will have two human shapeshifters, which is great! They will know exactly how to relate to your human-Lokant students, and I am sure Ori and Avane will do wonderfully. But should you not like to have an ancient along, too? They see things differently, you know. They have an entirely different perspective.’

Very good point, which is one reason why I’d gladly walk off with Pensould if I could. If we need people who are less hidebound by our age-old assumptions, traditions and beliefs, who better to entreat for aid than someone who predates all of it, and has never understood any part of our human interpretations of their arts anyway? I encouraged this line of thought, though I didn’t lose my sense of foreboding. Llandry was being far too strenuously helpful.

‘Best of all, an Elder!’ she said. ‘Nothing could be better! They are stronger, older, wiser, more powerful, they know everything there is to know about the draykon arts—’

‘All true, but do you not need your Elders here?’ I interjected. ‘I understood you were finding them most useful yourself, and were rather shorter on supply than you would like.’

‘Oh, that’s changed now,’ she said airily. ‘We have a few floating around, and I can easily spare one for you.’

Ori cast her a suspicious look. So did Pense.

So did I. ‘Who do you have in mind?’

Llandry gave me a winning smile, and beckoned. ‘Come with me.’

I followed.

Llandry led us around to the back of the ramshackle houses. Someone had made a pool there, all clear waters and wisps of steam — it was heated! It looked a bit sad somehow, though, for it was adrift in an expanse of dead and barren dirt. The water was not all that clean, and the air smelled odd.

Draped listlessly by the pool, half in and half out of the water, was an unusually large draykon. When I say unusually large, please understand that the draykoni are by no means small, even at their most diminutive. This one was probably not much smaller than my house. Or, well, if that’s an exaggeration… you get the idea. He was all sinuous lines and impressive bulk, and his scales were deep, solid black.

He was also the very picture of boredom. He lay totally inert and did not move, not even when the several of us trooped up to stand right by his head.

‘Hello, Ny!’ said Llandry brightly.

His eyelids moved in a slow blink.

‘I’ve brought people,’ she persevered. ‘You don’t know Eva or Tren, do you?’

This was productive of nothing whatsoever, for Nyden still declined to react. Only his tail moved, in a lethargic swish which sent a tiny spray of water up into the air.

‘You may not,’ I said grimly, ‘but we know you.’ At Llandry I directed a rather displeased look, for this couldn’t possibly do!

Nyden featured prominently in Llandry’s journal. He has much to recommend him, undeniably: he is indeed an Elder, which means he’s the most ancient of the ancients, one of the very first draykoni ever to exist. He uses their peculiar arts with an insouciance, a confidence, an aptitude which far outstrips most of the rest. He is also supremely unconcerned with notions of limitations and breezily oblivious to such obstructions as entrenched conventions or expected manifestations of power. What Nyden wants to do, Nyden does.

That is probably of use to me. There are one or two problems, though, the main one being that Nyden, for all his fine qualities, is…

…quirky, shall I say? Quirky in ways that lead me to suspect he would prove to be insubordinate, difficult, slow to take instruction, let alone orders, and a liability in several exciting ways it probably wouldn’t enter my head to consider.

When he’s fully involved in something that interests him, and about which he cares (as far as he’s able), I can well believe that his talents, his bright mind and even his attitude can be of great use and benefit. But if he is bored, having him around is probably more like having your own personal plague to hand.

Which is no doubt why Llandry was so eager to get rid of him.

Llandry crouched down by Nyden’s head, and smiled at him. ‘I know you have been bored. I am sorry. I thought it would interest you, what we’re doing here, but I can see I was wrong.’

Nyden’s tail lashed again, harder this time. ‘I,’ he said, slowly and deliberately, ‘hate growing things.’

‘Well, yes. So we have learned, and I apologise.’

‘It is so dull,’ he continued. ‘What do you even do? You take some tiny grain of a thing you can’t even see and shove it in the ground. Then, you expend a ton of effort — tons of it, Llandry — and after all that sweating and straining you get—’

‘I know,’ Llandry said hastily, shooting a look at me. She patted his face in a vain attempt to soothe him.

‘—you get,’ Nyden continued, flatly refusing to be hushed, ‘a… a leaf!’ He wailed the latter word in anguish. ‘And it’s not even a whole leaf! Just a miserable, sproutish, potential leaf that might, if you’re very lucky, become a tree. Someday. In about a thousand years.’

Llandry sighed. ‘Yes, well, we’ve been through all that. I have something else for you to do.’

Nyden’s tail stilled. ‘You do?’

‘Eva does.’ Llandry indicated me.

Nyden finally found it possible to acknowledge my existence, though not by way of anything so polite as a greeting. He squinted at me, sucking upon one protruding fang in a manner that struck me as thoughtful.

‘Awfully human-looking, isn’t she?’ he decided. ‘Draykony bits in there somewhere but not strong, Llandry. Not strong at all.’

‘She’s actually one of the better summoners in the Seven,’ Llandry said quickly, and I was touched by her eagerness to defend my prowess, though I did not feel at all dismayed by Nyden’s lack of approval.

‘One of the better what?’ Nyden lifted his head to peer at me, as though Llandry had said I was unusually well-supplied with heads, or limbs.

‘Summoners. It means she uses our magics in some specific ways, and she’s good at it. She talks to animals and she works with them and—’

‘Eh.’ Nyden fell back into his listless heap. ‘No idea what you mean.’

‘I’ll take him,’ I said.

Everyone looked at me funny. Tren looked quizzical, Ori dismayed, Pensould bemused. Llandry’s face was such a comical mixture of shock and elation that I was tempted to laugh.

‘No really, I will. Did you hear that? He has no idea what we’re talking about. Any of us. Sorcery? Summoning? It’s all nonsense to him, and that’s exactly what we need.’

‘Um, Eva?’ said Ori, eyeing Nyden with undisguised scepticism. ‘May I talk to you for a second?’

I graciously consented to this and we moved a little apart from the others. Ori lowered his voice. ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Yes!’

‘Really? Because he can be, um, difficult…’

‘I know. But I hope to keep him interested, and I think as long as we can do that he’ll be great.’

Ori cast a doubtful look Nyden’s way. ‘Do you think that will work?’

Privately, I highly doubted it, but I considered it worth the attempt. ‘If it doesn’t, we’ll send him back.’

Ori grunted, though whether the sound was intended to express agreement with the suggestion, or a lack of conviction either way, I could not tell. ‘He will drive Avane nuts, too.’

I had forgotten that. His interest in Avane was entirely unreciprocated, but she was too soft-hearted to successfully repel him. ‘If he irritates her too much, we will send him back,’ I repeated.

Ori rolled his eyes. ‘Llandry!’ he called. ‘Do you have any other Elders up here right now?’

‘None I can spare,’ she called back firmly.

‘No ancients? It doesn’t have to be an Elder, does it?’

‘No! I need them all. They’re vital. You’re already taking Avane!’ In other words, they were putting themselves to use in Orlind, unlike Nyden whose idea of productive activity was to lie in the pool. Half in the pool. He couldn’t even be bothered to immerse himself properly.

Was I making a huge mistake? Maybe. But my choices were few.

There was a desperate, beseeching quality to Llandry’s gaze which worked powerfully upon me, too. Yes, she wanted to help us, but Nyden was clearly driving her crazy.

‘We’re taking him,’ I said, and hauled Ori back to the pool.

Nyden grinned at both of us, his fangs prominently protruding. ‘We’re going to be the best of friends,’ he promised us.