‘I don’t want to know what those are doing there,’ Othello said. ‘But I guess we’ll find out in a minute – that tunnel’s our hiding spot. It might even go to the caves.’
‘Who knows where it leads,’ Fletcher said, peering into the depths. ‘I bet that’s where Khan and his shamans are headed, down those steps. If it’s a dead end it’ll be us three trapped down there against … how many orcs?’
‘Ten,’ Sylva said, counting the shamans and adepts on Verity’s tablet. ‘Their demons have been infused though. We’d better hurry – they’re walking in through the back entrance right now.’
Fletcher wracked his brains. They could take one of the other three passages leading into the room, but there were no guarantees that the shamans wouldn’t come that way. They couldn’t go down … an idea formed in his mind.
‘Lysander, can you fly us up to those beams?’ Fletcher said to the Griffin, looking at the vaulted ceiling. ‘They’re broad enough to hide us.’
Lysander squawked in agreement, then gave Fletcher a wink, confirming that Captain Lovett was in control. He grinned back, her support steadying his resolve.
‘Are you sure?’ Othello said, staring up at the beams. ‘They look rustier than a fisherman’s bucket.’
‘It’s that or take our chances in the caves,’ Fletcher said, putting Ignatius on his shoulder and then mounting Lysander. Othello and Sylva squeezed on behind, and Fletcher felt Sylva’s hands slip round his waist. He, in turn, gripped Lysander around the neck. Without a saddle, Fletcher’s seat was made up of the ever-shifting back muscles of the powerful beast, and the Griffin’s feathers were slippery beneath his breeches.
Fletcher opened his mouth to give the order, but before he had a chance, Lysander launched them from the bridge with one powerful thrust of his wings. For a heart-stopping moment they dropped like a stone, then the bottom fell out of his stomach as they swooped upwards in an arc that hurled them into the rafters above.
Lysander skittered his talons along one of the broad beams in a screech of rusted metal until they came to a standstill. For a moment Fletcher took some deep breaths to calm himself, his face buried in Lysander’s glossy neck feathers. Then he felt the others dismount and he followed their example, careful to plant himself in the very centre of the rafter.
From this view, he could make out the eggs at the base of the pit quite clearly, as well as the platform below. The largest pipe was just beside his head, and the sloshing of liquid could be heard from within. He shuddered and extinguished his wyrdlights, casting the room into pitch darkness. He was just in time, for he could already see the glow of light coming from the entrance they had used.
Then, clutching a crackling torch in his hands, Khan ducked into the room. Up close, his size was even more stark in contrast to the shamans that followed him. His brow-ridge was less defined, and his tusks were somewhat smaller than most orcs’. But that was not what made him stand out the most to Fletcher. It was the demon perched on his shoulder, peering around the room with amber eyes.
Khan had a Salamander with him.
41
The Salamander was black as pitch and twice as large as Ignatius. It even had stubs of wings on its back, where Ignatius’s shoulder bones were. But despite these anomalies, it was indisputably a Salamander, from the spiked tip of its tail to the toothless beak on the end of its snout.
Ignatius seemed to think so too, for he chirred quietly as he watched the demon preen itself on Khan’s shoulder. Fletcher quelled him with a thought and watched as the shaman retinue marched behind, following the albino orc over the bridge. One carried a sack of yellow petals from the antechamber.
None had their demons with them, nor did they have summoning leathers but, even from the rafters above, Fletcher could see that all of them had pentacles and other symbols tattooed on their hands, just as he did. Even the new adepts had them, though several held their hands gingerly, as if they had only recently been marked.
Up close, Fletcher could see that these adepts were smaller than the others, with underdeveloped tusks jutting from their lower lips. They wore little more than grass skirts, but their bodies had been dusted with white powder, perhaps to emulate the albino’s skin.
A shout from Khan made Fletcher jump. He gave orders in guttural barks, pointing at the five corners of the pentacle. The shamans that had accompanied him took their places there, while the adepts kneeled behind, watching intently.
More orcish speech followed, and in unison the shamans began to etch complex symbols that intersected in the air above the star. It was mesmerising to watch. For some reason, Fletcher had always imagined orc shamans to be the most rudimentary of summoners, barely capable of controlling anything more than a low-level imp.