Read Online Lokant by Charlotte E. English - Free Book Online Page B

coming to her feet. ‘I’ll bring him
home to you, Ma.’
    ‘How are you going to
find him, Llan?’ Ynara looked so weary and confused that Llandry’s
heart sank. She pulled her mother to her feet and caught her in an
embrace.
    ‘Same way I found
Devary,’ she answered. ‘Is he... did he recover?’
    Ynara hesitated before
she replied. ‘He did not die.’
    Llandry frowned. That
answer was cagey and incomplete, but there was no time to pursue
it, not while her father wandered Iskyr on a fruitless hunt for
her. ‘Send him my love,’ she said. Pensould frowned at that, but
she ignored him. ‘I must find Papa at once. We’ll return soon.’
    ‘I - Llan, wait-’
    Llandry was already
running back out to the balcony with Pensould behind her. She
jumped and soared, climbing above the glissenwol canopy. Once she
was above the level of the trees, she changed. In an instant she
was draykon once more, arrowing through the air; in the blink of an
eye she flashed through the barrier between the worlds into the
Upper Realm of Iskyr.
     
    ***
     
    Aysun had gone no more
than three steps before his father’s next words froze him where he
stood.
    ‘I’ve seen
Llandry.’
    Aysun turned.
‘What.’
    ‘She was here,’ his
father repeated. ‘Not long ago. Come inside and I’ll tell you about
it.’
    ‘I’m not coming
inside,’ Aysun grated. He was almost too angry to speak, but he
forced himself to remain calm - at least outwardly. ‘Come out and
we’ll talk about it.’
    The old man grumbled at
this, but eventually consented to shuffle onto the path before his
house. His shoulders were hunched and he leaned heavily on his
stick as he walked. He stopped a few feet away from Aysun and
regarded his son expressionlessly.
    ‘Where’s Llandry?’
prompted Aysun.
    ‘She left,’ was the
cool reply.
    ‘Couldn’t you have...
you should have...’ Fierce anger swallowed Aysun’s words and he
could only stare at his supposedly long-dead father in pure
disbelief.
    ‘I brought her through,
and you should thank me for that because she was in danger of her
life,’ said his father - Rheas - with chilling calm. ‘I tried to
protect her, but she refused to stay. No doubt she inherited that
wilfulness from her parents.’
    ‘You could have sent
word.’ Aysun forced the words through gritted teeth.
    Rheas actually
chuckled. ‘Where to? It is not as though I have your address.’
    ‘The fault for that is
your own.’
    ‘Is it? You stand ready
to go to your daughter’s aid, but you never came looking for me,
did you? Nobody did.’
    Aysun could find
nothing to say to that. ‘Tell me where Llandry went.’
    Rheas shrugged. ‘She
has been caught up in matters far greater than you or I. She could
be anywhere.’
    ‘What? What matters?’
Aysun took a step forward, his fists clenched. He was shocked to
find that, for an instant, he truly wished to hit the old man.
    Rheas lifted his chin.
‘Llandry will show you herself. We will wait for her here.’
     
    Two days passed and
Rheas made no attempt to explain himself. Two days of withering
coldness on the old man’s part and a stubborn show of indifference
on Aysun’s. Rheas would not speak of his secret life in the Uppers,
and Aysun refused to ask. His father spent most of his time tucked
into a rocking chair in the central room of the house; Aysun
therefore found it more convenient to wander out of doors, or to
sit brooding in the bedchamber allocated to him. Not even Mags, the
cheery and good-natured woman who inexplicably consented to live
with his father, could draw him out.
    He was sitting in this
very chamber, sitting and brooding and trying to smother his anger,
when a dark shape flew across the sun and cast a shadow over the
house. Then came his father’s shout, a cry somewhere between
triumph, dismay and fury.
    ‘ Come down, son, ’ his father cried.
    Aysun went instead to
the window. Two enormous beasts sailed through the air before him,
rapidly drawing closer to