Evastany by Charlotte E. English

Author:Charlotte E. English [English, Charlotte E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublishDrive
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7 V

A few tense days passed. The school proceeded, but in a state of some disorder. I was conscious of Tynara and Dan in our midst, people who were loyal to Dwinal, and who must not learn of Nindrinat’s presence if we could possibly help it. This was not easy, with everyone housed in the same (admittedly large) building. We achieved it by assigning attic quarters to Nindrinat, in a disused chamber no one had any other cause to go into. But the necessity of secrecy, of tending to the draykon without alerting any more of our number to her presence, placed an extra strain on Ori, Avane, Tren, Nyden and me, one which we would have gladly done without.

We were all thinking similar things: were we now training our part-Lokant, part-draykon hybrids by order of Nindrinat’s tormenter? What exactly was she planning to do with our most talented graduates, anyway?

Another question: if Dwinal conceivably had draykon help with projects like Nindrinat, why did she need us? There were too many holes in everything, too many questions, too many reasons to doubt everything we thought we knew.

Nindrinat revived enough to speak, but she refused to address anybody save Nyden; she was too cowed, I believe, for she would willingly suffer nobody else’s near presence, and shrank back if we approached too near. She and Nyden engaged in long conversations, of use to us only in one particular.

Nindrinat did not know how she had come to be bound and enslaved in the middle of a Lokant Library. She did not remember any attack, because there had, in all probability, never been one. She had come awake to find herself alone in an enclosed space she did not recognise, unable to move, and in a state of some pain. Last time she remembered being awake… well, Nyden had not been able to establish precisely when that was, but that it was an extremely long time ago was not in doubt.

You know, I imagine, that the draykoni can revive each other from death? They do not think of it as death, even: they call it the Long Sleep, because to them, that’s more or less what it is. If a draykon dies, and its body decays to nothing but bones, it is not necessarily the end for them. If the skeleton is whole, the spirit still lives and the assistance of sufficient of its fellows is at hand, the dead draykon may be restored to life. It is a startling ability which is shared by no other species of creature in this world. It fascinates the Lokants no end, because though they created the draykoni they did not anticipate that the creatures would be able to do anything so marvellous as that.

What we can conclude about Nindrinat, then, is that she had “died” long ago, slipped peacefully into her Long Sleep, and remained in that state while the ages passed. Until somebody discovered her skeleton, conveyed it to Sulayn Phay, and — we conclude — there revived her to life, bound and at their mercy.

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