Blood of the Mantis

It did not matter, of course, so long as it was Achaeos who actually took possession of the thing. Sykore had her agent in the seer’s camp, unknown to all. The Blooded Ones of the Mosquito-kinden knew their trade, and they guarded secrets that even the Moth-kinden did not speak of.

What concerned her most was that it might not be Achaeos’s hands that eventually closed about the Shadow Box. She had not been swift enough to follow, but she had a feeling that there had been one other who had. She had a sense of age and power, the musty taste in her mouth that spoke of her kind’s ancient enemies, the Moth-kinden that had driven them to near-extinction.

His name was Palearchos, and he was old now, too old for this. He who had first flown at five years old – considered unthinkably early to develop the Art – he was finding it a labour now, and even more so when he screened himself in darkness so that even a Moth-kinden’s eyes could not see him.

He had come from Tharn originally, but there were now five decades between him and the Tharen halls, and it hurt. Five decades of exile, and he had laughed at them when they cast him out.

I am a Skryre, he had told them. The world is mine to shape. I do not need you. And he had departed for his adventures, his schemes and plots, and he had revelled in his freedom from their interference. He had travelled the world, and seen things that they had only read of.

But now he was old, and he had been sick for a long time, sick for the company of his own kind and for the carved stone halls of home.

This would be his lodestone, to bring him home. This would be his invitation, so that his bones could at least be laid in the deep sepulchres, and his name remembered. But only if he possessed it. The young seer, that appallingly untrained boy, could not be allowed to take it from him.

And yet somehow it favoured him. Palearchos felt it keenly, this loss of faith. It was not just his own people had turned against him, but their whole world, too. He would therefore have to take it in both hands and force it to recognize him. How dare the box call out to this weak young stripling, and not to him!

He was an old magician and, as such, he had spent years of his life in other people’s dreams. When the Shadow Box had at last opened, and thus compromised its hiding place, he had been deft enough to pick up that trail. When the dream had snapped shut, he had leapt from the window of his meagre lodgings and begun labouring flight. It would be a race, but he was in the air whilst the fool boy remained on the ground.

But they ran fast and he was not the flier he once was. It would be close.

I am too old to start this hunt again! He felt even older now, his wings stuttering on his back. Once he would have had disciples to seize the box for him, but they had all gradually fallen away, disillusioned with his outcast status. Now only his magician’s arts could furnish him with help. He tried to compose the tattered spells, born of an ancient discipline almost fallen into utter disuse these days. He reached out, seeking those wretched spirits he had bound to himself long ago, expending his dwindling strength in an effort to give them momentary form.

If you want something doing… The strain of the flight thundered in his heart and lungs, but he kept going, with no time to lose. He was too old, too old…

Scyla’s eyes snapped open in the certain knowledge that something significant had happened. She looked about the little low-ceilinged room and tried to work out what had changed.

Nothing… nothing… but yes. She was no great magician but she had developed a little of that sense, and realized there was magic afoot. The damned box.

It rested on the rickety little nightstand beside her. She could easily reach out and touch it, but she held back. She had the uneasy sense that it was not precisely where she had left it.

The shadow figure was absent, at least, although the other shadows of the room seemed to bristle with briars and sharp-edged leaves.

Damn you, Mantis-creature. She was a Spider, she reminded herself, and Spiders would always get the better of the warrior-kinden that so much hated them. She would take this tatty fistful of superstitions and sell it to the highest bidder, and thus make her fortune.

She stood up, reaching automatically for her belt with its twin knives. These days she slept fully clothed because she could not bear to be naked in the same room as the box. It watches me.

She allowed her senses to drift, listening out beyond the roof, the walls. For once there was no shroud of rain to drum on them.

But there had nevertheless been a sound from above…