The king did not return Sophia’s salute, only stared at the Tangatan Sovereign, as though he were still trying to communicate in the telepathic manner of a Melder. Finally he shook his head and crossed to his own chair. A servant stepped forward to fill his glass from the decanter as he sank into the soft leather.
“What would you propose, My Lady?” he murmured.
“I do…not know,” Sophia replied, her eyes drifting to the open window that overlooked the harbour. Outside, in place of the shacks Lukys had seen, buildings of stone stretched across the cliffs. “Only that we must stop Maya, before…” she trailed off, and Lukys shuddered as fresh images flickered through their minds, of a land overrun, of fields, forests, an ocean aflame.
The king sighed. “How many Tangata will this Old One bring against us?”
“Maya will have thousands from New Nihelm,” Sophia replied, “but…others have been moving north to occupy Calafe. My people once had a bond with that place, with its people, in centuries long forgotten...” She shook her head at the distraction, at the memories rising from the depths of their minds, struggling to restore her train of thought. “If she gathers more on her way north, they could number ten thousand by the time she reaches the Illmoor.”
Her words sent a chill down Lukys’s spine. “Even amongst the younger generations, it would take thirty thousand human soldiers to match that force.” The younger the generation of Tangata, the more their lines were mixed with humanity. Sophia was of the fifth generation, the others they had brought with them mostly sixth. “Perfugia has only three thousand regular soldiers,” he finished finally.
“And my fleet six thousand,” Nguyen added grimly. “What of your citizens though? If we could recruit—”
“No,” Lukys cut him off, turning hard eyes on the king. “I will send no more untrained innocents to be slaughtered in a foreign kingdom.”
The king scowled. “You would prefer them to be slaughtered in their houses when the Tangata come?” he snapped.
“I would prefer them not to be slaughtered at all,” Lukys replied.
He thought the king might dig in his heels, but instead Nguyen waved a hand. “Fine,” he said curtly. “Then what do you propose? A gorilla campaign? We know the Tangata cannot easily replenish their number. If we retreat into the mountains and forests, avoid a pitched battle, we could whittle them down over a few years. It will cost Flumeer everything, of course. Turn the entire kingdom into a battleground, but I am prepared to play that game.”
Lukys’s skin crawled at the king’s words, at the thought of condemning an entire kingdom to years of open warfare, to armies rampaging across their lands, resisted only by small freedom forces, striking the enemy where they could. He could never countenance such an option, even for the warlike Flumeerens. But there was another reason the king’s strategy would not work, one that meant the war must end, and end quickly.
“No,” he replied softly, his tone so low that all eyes in the room turned to him. “We cannot afford to delay.”
The king raised an eyebrow, but when the said nothing Lukys swallowed and went on.
“It’s different with this creature, with the Old Ones,” he said, digging into those ancient memories.
The Sovereigns had only been created on their arrival in Perfugia, but even before then, the ancestors of the Tangata had passed knowledge between their generations.
“Maya, the Old Ones, they’re fertile, virulent. In ancient days, they would gestate for a matter of months before giving birth to litters of half a dozen or more. Those children would grow to adolescence within two years, but even before that they could be dangerous. If you think one Old One is terrifying, wait a few years, and there will be dozens.”
Lukys trailed off. A silence had fallen, heavy with the weight of his words, with the spectre of the danger that haunted them.
“Not even the strongest of the Tangata could stand against Maya’s power. Give her time, and she will give birth to an army of her own kind, superior in every way to our soldiers, and the Tangata,” he paused, those other memories stirring in the back of his mind. “Maybe superior even to the Gods.”
There was more there, a flickering in the back of his mind, a memory of Cara soaring above, and others, winged figures in the sky, soaring through mountain peaks…
…then it was gone, slipping beneath the surface of a hundred others. He looked around, meeting the eyes of his friends, of the king, and let himself fall silent. Slumping into the sofa beside Sophia, he waited for someone to speak, to offer a plan, some semblance of hope. That had been his task for so long now, first as they marched south of the Illmoor on the Archivist’s mad quest, then again on their desperate flight from New Nihelm, on the ship amidst the storm, even here in Ashura, when they had faced the condemnation of the old Sovereigns.
But now…this time Lukys couldn’t see where to begin. If she chose it, Maya could remain at the seat of her power, safe in New Nihelm, far from any danger humanity might pose to her. Their only chance was the rage of Old Ones, that her hatred for humanity would drive her to attack, to place herself at risk.
“You’re right,” Nguyen said finally, his voice reassuringly calm, though Lukys didn’t know how anyone could keep their cool when faced with such an existential threat. “We cannot let this Maya go to ground. She must be destroyed…even if it means going through ten thousand Tangata to get to her.”
Lukys nodded, but before he could ask what the king planned, a fresh wave of emotion struck him, a surging, bubbling, rippling red, of anger, of rage. He
