The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(49)
“We’re nay getting it to that cave, I’ll tell you that much. It’s as big as the chopper as it is. I dinnay think there’s much we can do for it.”
The sky was darkening to a bloody crimson. The Irahok mountains loomed to the north, jagged and icy, and the dark shapes of slain dragons were scattered across the marsh in every direction. There was no sound but the rattling and rasping of the young dragon’s laboured breath. Nell felt her knees go watery again. She had imagined arriving triumphantly in the marsh by helicopter and then being part of some great adventure with Eliza and Swarn. Instead, she was alone with a confused policeman in a marsh full of dead dragons and she didn’t know what to do next. Well, she was fairly certain Eliza didn’t go weak in the knees whenever she had a problem to deal with. She pinched herself hard on the arm and drew in a sharp, shuddering breath. The stories she had heard from Eliza and Charlie tended not to include many friendly Tian Xia worlders. The only beings besides Swarn and her dragons that had helped Eliza in any way were the Faithful.
“We’ll go back to the temples,” she decided. “Even if the Faithful are nay there, praps we can find some trace of where they’ve gone.”
“What temples? Who? What are you talking about?” Ander ran his hands through his hair agitatedly. He had an awful sinking sense that he was being dragged deeper and deeper into something he did not understand or care to understand.
“By the lake of the Crossing. There were temples not far from where we landed, aye. They’d been attacked too, I think.”
“It’s a blur, lah. I wasnay feeling my best.”
“We should go there now.” She meant to sound decisive, confident, but everything she said came out in a high-pitched babble.
“It’s getting dark,” Ander commented. “But I dinnay fancy camping here.”
The dragon let out a sudden roar of pain and dragged itself a little further on its belly. Nell shuddered and looked away.
“No, we have to hurry,” she said. “We’ll just have some food and go straight back. How are we for fuel?”
Ander refilled the engine from their supply and they left the dragon with its burning wounds and torn body behind in the marsh among the hundreds of dead dragons. They flew through the night, over the forest. Nell thought she could still hear the dragon roaring in pain long after they had left the marsh behind them. It was nearing dawn when Ander put the helicopter down by the ruined temples.
“Think we’re seeing a sort of theme here,” he commented, drinking from a bottle of water. “So you reckon this is your friend the Xia Sorceress’s doing too?”
Nell took the bottle from him and finished it, then tossed it back into the helicopter.
“I spec so,” she said. How glad she would be, right now, to lie down in her bed in Holburg or to watch television with her father! She straightened her shoulders and made for the temples. “Let’s look around.”
What they found, again, was tragedy. There were many bodies crushed by the collapse of the temples but if Eliza had been accurate about the numbers of the Faithful, most had escaped. Broken statues and painted walls lay crumbled in great heaps. Some of the temples had been reduced to rubble while others stood charred, with only sections caved in. Broken as they were, the temples were easy to climb. Nell wandered through the ruins, hoping to find someone alive. She peered into a room half open to the dawn sky, its remaining walls beautifully painted. Her eye was caught by a picture of a glittering sea-snake when somebody stepped in front of her, barring her view, and spoke in a language she did not understand. What she did understand very well, however, was that a narrow steel blade was pointed straight at her throat.
Chapter
12
Eliza had read a little of harrowghasters and heard some of Swarn’s stories about them but she had never seen one. In this she could count herself lucky, for none who laid eyes on them and lived to tell of it had ever described it as a pleasant experience. Beings caught between life and death, they were among the most fearsome predators in Tian Xia. Emaciated and yet possessed of inhuman strength, with dank, matted hair and rotting skin the colour of a mottled bruise, they looked and smelled of death. They lived on the hearts of mortal beings and could stop the blood and breath of any living creature with a mere touch. After paralyzing their victims in this way, they cut out the heart, drank it dry and ate it. The story had it that, long before the separation of the worlds, the harrowghasters had been a tribe of noble and rebellious humans, until a malevolent Faery Cursed them into this terrible form for eternity. Beheading them or cutting out their withered hearts, widely considered a reliable way of killing any mortal creature, was of no use. They died only when deprived of heart’s blood for a period of many months, growing gradually weaker until they fell into total decay. Beings with power kept them at bay with barriers and enchantments. Others stayed away if they could. During the war harrowghasters had crossed over in great hordes, moving through villages and leaving only corpses in their wake. Now fourteen of these monstrous creatures were walking the halls of the Mancer Citadel.
The Cra gave them a wide berth, swooping out of reach and staying close to the ceilings while the harrowghasters massed below, reaching vainly. The mountain-womi kept close together and managed brief Confusions and walls of fire to keep the harrowghasters away. However, two witches had been exploring the Citadel independently and the younger of the two was caught unawares and swarmed. She was left now slumped on the stairs, her bloody chest gaping open. The harrowghasters moved on, following the scent of life.