Faenaeyon arched his brow in mock sorrow. “Had you been brave enough to choose death, you would have suffered less.” He motioned for Rhayn and Magnus to climb onto the monolith, then pointed a long finger at the place where Huyar had thrown Sadira’s belongings. “Put your satchels, weapons, and waterskins there. You shall leave the tribe as you came into it, except that I will permit you to keep the clothes you wear.”
Sadira and her two companions knelt at the edge of a silver-green heath. The field stretched clear to the horizon, so lush and vast that nowhere did an outcropping of stone or a patch of barren earth show through the thick tangle of brush. On the horizon rose a spire of white rock, so distant that it often seemed to disappear behind the wavering bands of the afternoon haze.
Although the rock could only be the Pristine Tower, the three companions hardly seemed aware of it. Their attention was focused much nearer to their own location, on a herd of wild erdlus that had trotted into view just a few moments earlier.
As tall as elves and as plump as kanks, the featherless birds seemed completely unaware that they were being watched. They worked their way through the field at a steady pace, their serpentine necks thrashing about like whips, flinging out small round heads to snatch cones of silvery broompipe and the ivory blossoms of tall milkweed plants. Occasionally, an erdlu let out an excited squawk and scratched at the ground, then flapped its useless wings in delight as it impaled a snake on its wedge-shaped beak.
Far above the birds, drifting with the breeze, was a bell-shaped pod of slimy membrane. The floating beast was more than ten yards across, with dozens of wispy tendrils dangling from the rim of its underbelly. Inside its transparent body, a morass of blue organs pulsated at irregular intervals, occasionally giving off a bright yellow glow.
“The floater’s back!” Sadira hissed, her pale eyes fixed on the strange beast. In her hand, the sorceress held a shard of quartz they found in the desert, and her body tingled with magical energy she had summoned only a moment earlier.
“It must be tracking us,” whispered Magnus.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been traveling against the wind for the last day and a half,” countered Rhayn. “Besides, without wings or feet, how could it follow us if it wanted to? It’s at the mercy of the wind.”
“The wind is everywhere,” answered Magnus. “You would be surprised what’s possible for those who know its secrets.”
As the windsinger spoke, four ribbons of blue membrane dropped form the center of the beast’s body and slipped around a feeding erdlu. The astonished bird bolted, dragging the floater through the air and squawking in panic. The rest of the flock sprang into motion, fleeing in all directions.
Instantly, Rhayn was on her feet. “Now, Sadira!” she screamed, chasing after the birds. “We can’t lose them!”
Sadira pointed her quartz shard at the largest erdlu and spoke her incantation. A translucent bolt buzzed from her hand and struck the beast, scattering brown scales in all directions. Cackling in surprise, the creature took two more steps and dropped to the ground. Rhayn leaped on it immediately, placing one foot on its throat and jerking the head upward to snap the neck.
“Well done,” she cried, looking back to her sister. “You saved the meat.”
Sadira’s attention was not focused on Rhayn. The sorceress was enraptured by the scene farther ahead, where the floater had lifted its prey off the ground and was pulling the bird toward its pulsing blue entrails. With its claws and beak, the erdlu slashed madly at the ribbons clutching it, but never managed to tear away anything more than a glob of slime.
The bird’s struggles ceased entirely when it came within reach of the short tendrils rimming its captor’s body. As the gossamer filaments touched the erdlu, its neck fell limp and its claws stopped slashing the air. Squawking mournfully, it rose slowly upward and passed into the floater’s gelatinous body, becoming nothing more than a dark shape in the blue tangle of its killer’s gut.
Suppressing a shudder, Sadira observed, “Remind me not to let that thing fly over my head.”
“We’ve been smart to avoid it,” Magnus agreed. “Still, I’d like to take a closer look. I could learn much from a being that lives in such harmony with the wind.”
The windsinger’s musings were interrupted by an angry cry from Rhayn. “Sadira, I need your help!”
The sorceress went over to her sister, brushing past cones of broompipe and long stems of milkweed. Underfoot, the grass was so high that her feet disappeared as she moved, and the soil from which the green blades sprang was not visible at all.
Upon reaching Rhayn’s side, Sadira saw the reason for her sister’s peevishness. Around the charred wound on the erdlu’s flank, some of the scales were changing into downy feathers, while others were fusing together to form a sort of knobby hide similar to Magnus’s. Where the beast’s neck and been snapped, a writhing lump had formed beneath the yellow scales. Rhayn had torn out one of the bird’s claws to use as a knife, and the resulting wound had sprouted a bud of gray fingertip.
From her earlier conversations with Faenaeyon, Sadira knew the bird would go through a transformation after being wounded. She hadn’t expected it to occur so fast, or to be so gruesome.
Eager not to prolong the misery of the last three days, the sorceress put her queasiness aside and knelt next to her sister. Since being banished from the Sun Runners with no weapons or water, the companions had barely managed to survive. They had eaten only once, sharing a single lizard that Magnus had managed to pluck from under a boulder. For water, they had spent hours digging and mashing tubers, than squeezing a few drops of bitter juice from the resulting gruel.
Therefore, after Rhayn had told her that a single erdlu could provide them all with weapons, waterskins, and meat, Sadira had readily agreed to delay their trek long enough to kill one of the birds. And now, it appeared the magic of the Pristine Tower was threatening to rob them of their prize.
“What do you want me to do?” Sadira asked.
Rhayn used the claw in her hand to cut away another talon, which she handed to Sadira. The tip of another new finger began to protrude form the fresh wound.
“We need the claws, the leg tendons and bones, the stomach, the beak, the hardest scales-just about anything you can take off,” Rhayn said. “But be careful. If you cut yourself …”
She let the sentence die and gestured at a tiny hand that had just slipped from beneath one of the bird’s scales.
“Maybe we should have Magnus do this,” Sadira suggested. “His skin’s a lot tougher than ours.”
Rhayn shook her head. “He’d never finish it in time. His fingers are too thick,” she said. “It’s better if he keeps watch on the floater.”
The elf frowned at a pair of sharp fangs that had begun to protrude from the erdlu’s mouth, then fell silent and concentrated all her attention on butchering the prey. Within a few minutes they had a large pile of bird parts that had not changed into something else: claws, scales, a pair of long leg bones, sinews, and some meat. They also had a dozen more items the two women hoped would prove useful as substitutes for the spell components they had lost with their satchels.
Rhayn tossed the erdlu’s stomach onto the pile. “That will be our waterskin,” she said, looking out over the heath. “Assuming we can find something to fill it with.”
“You know, if this place is as dangerous as Faenaeyon says, it’s unlikely all of us will make it to the tower,” Sadira said. “If you and Magnus don’t want to go with me-”
“We will,” said Rhayn. “I didn’t come this far for nothing.”
“But why?” Sadira asked. “I’m doing this for the people of Tyr, but they mean nothing to you.”
“Will you find the power to defy the Dragon in the Pristine Tower?” Rhayn asked, avoiding a direct answer to the question.