Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

Odder still was the sight that greeted her when she stepped out of the door at the top of the shaft. Not the fact that they were standing under the beating sun on the rim of the face of Kaliban's mouth – a dark chasm, which Sandwalker told her, had once expelled water vapours as the giant power source's sole pollution – but the shape of the creature that was waiting for them. Taller than Molly by a couple of heads, green scales shining in the light, two massive wings wrapped around it like a cloak to shade it from the heat. It was a lashlite, or something as near identical to the people of the wind that made their nests in the Kingdom of Jackals' mountains as to make no difference.

'This is Baxcyteen,' introduced Sandwalker. 'His people work with us against the masters.'

'The few of us who are left,' said the creature, its eagle-like beak opening, the feathery scales of its muscled neck quivering in the heat. 'The slats still visit the mountains to burn our villages where we have not concealed our caves well enough.'

Even the whistling accent in his speech put Molly in mind of the lashlites. Her novels often featured races similar to the race of man being discovered on one of their moons, so perhaps she shouldn't have been so surprised to discover that the pattern of her world's other species might also be repeated on other celestial spheres.

'I shall not keep you from your home for much longer, brother of the wind,' said Sandwalker. 'Can you bear the two of us down to the dunes outside the city?'

'I flew you up here,' said Baxcyteen, 'and two will not be so bad for the glide back down. But we must be quick, for if gravity is on our side for the journey down to the sands, it is our only ally. The slats have been passing overheard in their flight balls. I think they suspect free Kal are abroad in the salt wastes.'

'They have good reason to, my friend. We were betrayed in the city. Another of our people has been given the hunger and many of the resistance lie dead behind us.'

Baxcyteen hissed in frustration. 'They seek you, Sandwalker, and they would burn my wings from me for helping you. Come.'

Taking each of them under one of his arms, the lashlite waited for his passengers to grip on tight, then unfurled his massive wings and ran forward until he found a strong enough thermal, beating up into it and rising above the face of Kaliban. They were riding heavy with their combined weight, even Molly could tell that. She kept her eyes shut for most of the flight down, only the churning inside her gut indicating the means of their escape. They were still in the shadow of the carving's chin when the three of them put down on the gloriously soft and safe sands. Molly steadied her beating heart while Sandwalker unfurled two pieces of diaphanous white silk-like material from a pouch around his waist and helped the lashlite fix the cloth to his wings. 'A present from the free tribes of the south, traded through our friends in the city, Baxcyteen. I would have accepted a little more if I knew they were going to be betrayed and the exchange shut down.'

'A good present,' said the lashslite. 'A fair trade for your life this day. Your people in the south are canny.'

As the sun struck the material it began to turn orange, the same colour as the sands, matching the ground perfectly. Even standing a foot away, Molly could barely see the creature.

'My tent is also made from memory silk,' said Sandwalker, seeing how she was staring at the lashlite. 'It is a meta-material. The silk also bends sound around itself, so the slats cannot see it, and matches the heat of its surroundings so the twisted creatures in the desert cannot hunt us through our body warmth.'

Sandwalker waved to the lashlite as the lizard-man took a run down the dunes, and threw himself up into the air. A brief shimmer of his memory silks then Molly's rescuer vanished out of sight.

'I was rather hoping your friend might be able to whistle up some of his flight and fly us all out of here,' said Molly.

'We do not know where his villages are, just as he does not know where the great sage hides. Our two people meet at barter points scattered throughout Kaliban, and hope our rendezvous are not betrayed while we wait.'

'The slats want the great sage so badly?'

'You have no idea,' said Sandwalker, wrapping a turban above his blue-skinned forehead. 'My tribe's sage is called Fayris Fastmind and he is as our people once were. The masters fear him as if he were a plague that would make an end of them. There were many sages once, but over the centuries our secret holds in the wastelands have been betrayed and uncovered. We have so few of them left now. Fayris Fastmind may be the last of his kind, and he is certainly the most powerful. I think the masters suspect that he has the power to destroy them and if the Army of Shadows has one defining trait, it is that they cannot bear to suffer that which they cannot control. Even the wastes left by their uncontrolled appetites have been infected by their twisted spawn to exterminate the few Kal that live free and evade the slat hunts.'

One of Kyorin's memories of the creatures haunting the outskirts of Iskalajinn surfaced unbidden and Molly stumbled, nearly fainting with the pain of it.

'I fear for you, Molly of the Jackelians,' said Sandwalker, helping her to her feet. 'Your second soul is growing too heavy for you. We should find the others in your party and leave here at once.'

'Ah, lass,' cried the commodore, seeing Molly peering over the broken fabric of his half-buried dome. 'I was about to go out searching for you, so long have you been gone.'

The commodore and the others were not alone in the dome. Coppertracks and Duncan Connor stood behind the corpse of a vast blue snake-like thing – its circumference wider than an oak tree. The creature was lifeless, a sabre driven through the middle of its three eyes, multiple whip-like tongues lolling across the dome's floor.

'Lucky you did not come back last night, though, when this terrible beast came slithering out of the dark with a taste for my mortal legs in its wicked sharp mouth. But it met its match when it tried to add brave old Blacky to its diet.'

Duncan coughed.

'Well, with a little help from our ex-officer of the rocket corps, here. I see you've brought our guide at last, but where is that rascal Lord Rooksby?'

'I'm afraid things didn't go well in the city,' said Molly. 'He's as likely dead, along with Keyspierre and his daughter.'

'Surely not, Molly softbody,' said Coppertracks, the steamman's iron hand gesturing behind Molly and Sandwalker. 'Unless they are a mirage.'

Molly whirled around. It was the two shifties, Jeanne and Paul-Loup Keyspierre following the trail out of Iskalajinn together.

'Stop them!' Sandwalker pushed Molly to safety behind the commodore. 'They may have been twisted by the masters and turned against us. They may walk with the hunger inside them.'

Commodore Black drew his pistol, breaking the gun and feeding a charge into its breech. 'That does not sound too good, my blue-skinned friend.'

'How can we be sure?' Molly whispered.

'One of us must risk their life by getting close enough to check.'

Molly was about to say that she would do it, but the nomad was already off. Sandwalker ran up the dunes towards the two shifties. The expedition desperately needed the nomad alive, or all of them would be doomed to wander the desert aimlessly until the slats finally hunted them down. Sandwalker stopped in front of the pair and after a brief heated conversation, Jeanne and Keyspierre opened their mouths and allowed the nomad to inspect inside their jaws for newly grown fangs.

'What is going on, lassie?' asked Duncan. He had drawn his pistol, moving to stand beside Commodore Black and the steamman.