He didn’t like to fly in the open, so when he found a shallow stretch of lowland between two ridges, he guided the flying machine down into it. We were still heading generally southeast. Ahead of us loomed a rugged highland of steep canyons and wind-smoothed pinnacles. Goats moved on the barren cliffs. I took their presence as a hopeful sign. “There must be someplace in there to shelter from the silver,” I said, pointing them out.
Yaphet nodded. “That’s where we’ll go.”
We tried to reach the cliffs, but the winds were confused, darting at us in powerful gusts that pushed us back out onto the plain. We were working our way back to the cliffs once again, flying lower than ever, only a few feet above the rocky soil, when we heard two faint concussions, one swiftly following the other. I would have thought it my imagination, if Yaphet had not turned to look.
Far to the northwest, a huge dust cloud boiled silently into the sky—far too much dust to be caused by any convoy.
In the ancient city, the bogy had taken Liam for one of her warlords. I wondered if she had been right after all.
Chapter 29
We made our way at last into the highlands, succeeding in late afternoon when the winds began to die. We entered the mouth of a north-facing canyon where we had earlier seen goats along the walls. After half a mile, Jolly sighted a wild kobold well on the lip of a little pocket valley some three hundred feet above the canyon floor.
None of us wanted to fly that high, but time was growing short. The sun had already dropped behind the crags and the canyon was in shadow. We could look for a more accessible kobold well, but chance did not favor the finding of one so late in the day. So we agreed to try for the little valley.
Yaphet guided the flying machine in a tight spiral, keeping close to the cliff wall. He would glance anxiously at the valley, then back again, to the leading edge of the wing, alert for the first sign of a silver bloom. Jolly too kept a close eye on the wing, but I was distracted by a herd of brown goats that had stopped their browsing to eye us as we rose past them. They didn’t seem to know what to make of us, for we did not much resemble the predators they were used to.
It was then, as I watched the goats, that a flicker of awareness stirred in my mind. Moki whined, and one of the goats snorted, scampering away on an invisible path that climbed the cliff face. The others followed after it, while I glanced up, confirming what I already knew: a glitter of silver had ignited on the nearest wing tip. “It has started,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the wind.
Yaphet looked at me. Then he looked up, and his eyes went wide. He jerked at the controls, and the flying machine lurched. Jolly yelped, grabbing for Moki with one hand and a strut with the other.
“Hold on,” Yaphet muttered. “We only have a few seconds. If we don’t make the well—”
The tuft of silver expanded with astonishing speed, rushing along the wing’s edge like a gleaming, glittering stream just escaped from its dam.
Yaphet saw it and leaned hard on the control stick. “I’m going for the cliff! There’s no place to land, so get ready to jump—”
“No! Turn away! Turn away now!” There was no way we could survive a crash against the cliff face, but maybe we could survive the silver?
Motes glittered on the back of my hand and danced between my fingertips. Myha was awake. So for the first time, I invited it deliberately into my mind.
A liquid awareness filled me. The silver on the wing’s edge boiled in my consciousness, becoming part of me, an extension of my will. Holding tight to a strut with one hand, I reached out toward the silver with the other. In the way I had learned, I leaned on it with my mind. I used it, like a glove that I could wear, and pushed, and it came away from the wing in a long thin skein of silver.
But silver will always sink to the ground. Detached from the wing, with nothing to buoy it up, the skein fell while we flew forward into it. Yaphet shouted, hammering at the controls so that the flying machine jerked upward, in a sharp turn away from the cliff. I dove half out of the basket and pushed, out and down. The skein passed just beneath my hand. It stirred an electric awareness in my skin so sharp I yanked my hand back, as if from contact with a flame.
Then it passed beneath us, brushing the belly of the plane and igniting a scatter of silver sparkles, but I commanded them away. More motes formed along the wing, but these too I willed away. Then the cherished scent of temple kobolds reached me, and a moment later Yaphet guided us over the wild well and we landed gently in a little bowl of dry grass.
I could not wait to distance myself from the flying machine. I was climbing out of the basket even before it came to a rest. “Jubilee, wait,” Yaphet said. “It’s windy. If we don’t anchor the plane—”
I stumbled on my swollen knee. At the same time, a gust caught the wing, dragging the whole flying machine a foot back toward the cliff. “Jolly, get off!” I shouted. “Now!”
Jolly’s eyes were wide with fright. He shooed Moki out of the basket, then tumbled after him. Deprived of his weight, the plane skidded back again. Yaphet too scrambled free, but he did not abandon the plane. He grabbed a strut and sank in his heels. “Get the ropes!” he shouted at Jolly. “In the cargo basket. Help me tie it down.”
I wanted to see Yaphet’s flying machine tumble over the cliff. On the other hand, I did not want to be trapped three hundred feet above the canyon floor. Torn by these conflicting desires, I risked a quick glance around. The valley reached back only fifty feet or so. Really, “valley” was much too grand a word for it. It was more a gloomy little hollow, hemmed in by sheer walls of stone. Birds could reach us, and I guessed that goats could climb down from the ridgeline, but I did not know if a player could scale those cliffs—certainly the task looked hopeless for a player with a twisted knee.
So after a moment of indecision, I lurched after the flying machine and grabbed a strut, bracing my good leg against a rock. Jolly found the rope. He looped it around the central struts, and Yaphet secured the other end to a boulder. “Help me furl the wings,” he told Jolly.
I had not realized it before, but the white wings were made of a metallic cloth, stretched upon a frame. Yaphet showed Jolly how to unclip the edge, and tie down the cloth so the wind would not catch it.
When the danger was past, I turned away from the hateful machine. But I managed only a few stumbling steps before my knee gave out. I sank down in the dry grass, not knowing what else to do, or what to think. It did not seem hard anymore to accept the idea of ha, but I could not get my mind around the fact of a flying machine.
“Jubilee?” I looked up to see Jolly beside me, a furtive look on his face. “Is your leg badly hurt?” He sounded very guilty—as he should. He had dropped the heavy bike on my leg after all.
“My knee’s swollen.”
He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder. Then, speaking under his breath, “He is so much like Kaphiri.”
“Has he threatened you?”
“No! He’s angry though.”
“Not with you,” I reminded him. Then I nodded toward a stand of tangled brush that grew against the back wall. “Go and find me a walking stick, okay?”
I used the stick to hobble behind the brush and relieve myself. I had very little urine in me, which made me wonder how much water Yaphet had aboard his flying machine. All mine had been lost with the bike, and by the half-dead look of the vegetation in our little valley, I was certain we would find no water there.
When I came back, Yaphet was rearranging the supplies in the cargo baskets. He said nothing. He did not look at me. I asked about water. He had two gallons. He told me to sit down and he would get it. I hobbled the few steps to the rim of the valley, sitting beside the wide mound of dirt surrounding the kobold well.