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.
Sadira shrugged. “I don’t know what I’ll find. All I can say for certain is that Dhojakt is going to a lot of trouble to keep me from looking.
“Is going? Does that mean he’s still alive?” Rhayn asked, rummaging through the pile of bird parts. “Huyar said you pushed him off the cliff.”
“I did, but I don’t think he hit bottom,” the sorceress answered. “And even if he did, that doesn’t mean he died.”
“I wonder what he doesn’t want you to find,” said Rhayn, pulling a long sinew off one of the leg bones.
“Or to become,” Sadira said. “Faenaeyon raised an interesting point before banishing us. If this is where the New Races are born, who’s to say the magic can’t be used to give me what I want? Perhaps that’s how Dhojakt became half-man and half-cilops.”
Rhayn looked at the transfigured remains of the erdlu. “It doesn’t strike me as something that can be controlled.”
“Maybe not out here, but I’ve seen someone undergo a similar change,” she said. “When we killed Kalak, he was in the process of changing himself into a dragon. I think he would have succeeded.”
“And you believe something similar can happen in the Pristine Tower?”
Sadira shrugged. “I’ve heard that the original Dragon was created there,” she said. “From what we’ve seen so far, I believe it.”
“That’s why I coming with you,” said Rhayn. “If that can be done, then I should be able to find what I want in the tower.”
Sadira raised her brow. “What’s that?”
“The power to win Faenaeyon’s place as chief of t
he tribe,” Rhayn said. She looked westward, toward Cleft Rock.
“The Sun Runners will never take you back,” Sadira replied. “No matter what we find.”
“Don’t be so sure. Elves are a practical people,” said Rhayn. “They’ll follow a strong chief—especially if they have no other choice.”
“You wouldn’t tyrannize your own tribe!” Sadira gasped.
“What I won’t do is allow my children to grow up without me,” said Rhayn. “They’ll be treated no better than slaves in another woman’s camp.”
“Meredyd won’t let that happen,” Sadira objected. “After what you did for her—”
“By now, Meredyd has already forgotten that my gold bought her child’s freedom,” Rhayn spat. She sat down and, using a shard of bone for a needle, began sewing shut the bottom of the erdlu’s stomach.
Sadira shook her head. “Meredyd is your friend.”
Rhayn laughed. “Friendship is based on mutual need,” she said. “Now that Meredyd stands to gain nothing from me, she’s no longer my friend. She won’t look out for my children—any more than I’d watch after hers if she had been banished.”
Magnus’s dulcet voice drifted across the field. Sadira looked in the direction from which it came and saw the windsinger almost a hundred yards away. He stood beneath the floater, his black eyes fixed on the thing’s pulsating body. His ears twitched back and forth slowly, as if listening to some sound the sorceress could not hear, and his snout was curled into an expression of utter rapture.
“What’s Magnus doing?” Sadira asked, alarmed.
The floater lowered its ribbonlike arms and allowed them to dangle a few yards above the ground. A soft warble began to play in the wind, so gentle and faint that the sorceress sensed it only as an uncertain tingle in the back of her skull.
“It looks like he’s talking to it,” Rhayn answered, continuing to work. “I’d leave him alone—you wouldn’t want to startle the thing.”
A few minutes later, the elf tied off the thread and laid the new waterskin aside. After stripping more sinew from the legs, she motioned for Sadira to sit down beside her. The two women busied themselves with making a pair of weapons, trying razor-sharp claws to the ends of the bird’s thigh bones.
They were almost finished when Sadira noticed more than a dozen shadows surrounding her and Rhayn. They had vaguely human shapes, with ropey limbs, serpentine torsos, and blue embers where their eyes should have been. The sorceress looked around, searching for the beings who were casting the shadows, but found no one—even when she looked into the sky.
One of the shadows reached for the stomach Rhayn had just sewn shut. When its finger touched the waterskin, the vessel turned black and became part of the shadow itself.
“What are they?” Rhayn demanded, also staring at the dark figures surrounding them.
“Shadow people,” Sadira answered, recalling Rikus’s description of Umbra. She also remembered Er’Stali’s account of the two dwarves who had gone to the Pristine Tower, then used obsidian to bribe the shadow people. “I think they’re from the tower.”
Rhayn stood, apparently less interested in where they were from than what they were doing. “Tell them to give us the waterskin back!” she said, motioning at the creatures with the lance she had been making.
“How?” Sadira asked.
When several shadows began to close around Rhayn, the elf cast a simple spell and a beam of light sprang from her hand. She aimed it at the ground before her, trying to fend off the dark figures at her feet. If anything, her efforts only made the silhouettes grow blacker and more substantial.
One shadow stopped harassing Rhayn. Its body began to thicken and assume a solid form, then it moved into a kneeling position. When it had assumed a full, three-dimensional form, it rose to its feet. The thing stood as tall as a half-giant, towering over the elf as she towered over Sadira.
“By what right do you hunt on our lands?” it demanded, black fumes rising from the blue gash that had opened to serve as its mouth.
Instead of answering, Rhayn backed away and looked toward Magnus. When she saw that he and the floater were still singing to each other, she called, “Magnus, leave that thing alone and come here!”
When he did not seem to hear her, the shadow looked down at its fellows on the ground, then waved its hand toward the windsinger. Several of the silhouettes rushed toward Magnus, swimming through the grass like a person would swim through an oasis pond. Upon reaching the windsinger, they began circling him in a mad dance. After a few moments, they stopped and, assuming solid form, rose to a standing position.
The floater’s shrill warble ceased, and it shot its ribbonlike arms down to grasp Magnus. The windsinger’s song came to a strangled halt, and he cried out in pain. The beast’s limbs began to retract, though instead of lifting the heavy windsinger into the air, it descended toward him. The shadow people surrounding Magnus melted back into the ground, shooting away from him as quickly as they had approached.
Rhayn screamed in alarm, then sprinted toward the windsinger. Sadira started to follow, but found her way blocked by the shadow that had been talking to her sister.
“The game on this land belongs to us,” the silhouette hissed, taking Sadria’s wrist. A black stain slowly spread up her arm, accompanied by a cold, numbing pain that seemed to draw the very heat from her body. “How are you going to pay for it?”
“Forgive us. We didn’t know the birds belonged to anyone.” Sadira pulled her arm away, but the shadow blocked her path and would not allow her to go forward. She waved a hand at the pile of erdlu flesh. “Does it look like we—”
She was interrupted as Magnus’s thunderous voice rumbled across the heath, intoning a single bass note. So deep and full was the tone that Sadira could hear nothing else. She even felt the sound in her bones, a resonate vibration that made her joints rasp and her abdomen tremble.
Across the meadow, Sadira saw her sister reach Magnus’s side and begin slashing at the ribbons holding him prisoner. Rhayn accomplished little, except to cover herself with slime. The windsinger shoved her away, raising his voice still louder. A searing whirlwind, full of burning sand and flying stones, roared in from the desert and entwined the windsinger and his attacker. Wild undulations rolled through the floater’s body, then its blue entrails began to writhe madly about.
In the next instant, the whirlwind ripped the beast apart, flinging slimy tendrils and masses of viscid flesh in all directions. The largest part of the floater’s body sailed far over the heath, where it was snatched from the air by the flick of some unseen creature’s barb-covered tongue. Magnus closed his mouth and collapsed to the ground, allowing the whirlwind to dissipate as quickly as it had appeared.
Sadira sidestepped the shadow in front of her and rushed to the windsinger’s side. Where the floater had gripped him, Magnus’s face and arms were red and inflamed. On one of his legs was a long welt that had burst open and was slowly oozing blood.
“Magnus, heal yourself!” Sadira said, pulling a piece of slimy tentacle off his shoulder.
The windsinger nodded and began his song.
The welt did not close. Instead, the tip of a brown root sprouted from the wound. Sadira snatched Rhayn’s weapon and used the erdlu claw to cut the thing off.
Magnus howled in pain, then took the lance from her hand and flung it away. “No!” he cried. “It’s part of me now. I can feel it growing out of my bones.”
Another root appeared from the wound. The three companions watched in horror as it grew larger and longer, until was as big around as Sadira’s wrist. Suddenly, the tip turned downward and plunged into the soil. Rhayn and Sadira grabbed the stalk and, ignoring Magnus’s scream, tried to pull it free. The women were nearly jerked off their feet as the thing burrowed into the ground. Finally, when the stem had grown so large that they could no longer grasp it, the sisters gave up.
“We’ve got to try something else,” Sadira said. “Maybe blasting it away?”
“That would be like taking off a leg, maybe worse,” Magnus said, his teeth clenched in pain.
“Then what do you want us to do?” demanded Rhayn, her voice betraying her frustration.
“We could reverse the metamorphosis for you,” said a deep voice.
Sadira turned around and saw that all of the shadow people had manifested themselves in solid form. They were standing several yards away, their cold blue eyes fixed on the root attaching Magnus to the ground.
“You can do that?” the sorceress asked.
“Of course,” answered the shadow. “This is our land, is it not?”
Sadira and Rhayn stepped aside and waved the shadows forward. “Please do.”
The group’s leader shook his head. “First, there is the matter of payment,” he said. “It has been more than a year since our last shipment. We had hoped you were the couriers.”
“We’re not, so stop wasting time and fix him,” Rhayn snorted, pointing at Magnus.
The shadow shook his head. “Not without payment.”
“I’ll pay you!” the elf yelled, spreading her fingers to draw the energy for a spell.
Sadira laid a restraining hand on her sister’s arm. To the shadows, she said, “I’m sorry, but we have no obsidian—”
“Then your friend shall remain as he is until you bring it to us,” hissed the speaker.
With that, he walked over and seized the weapon that Magnus had thrown to the ground earlier. As his darkness engulfed the makeshift lance, the other shadows went over to where Sadira and Rhayn had been butchering the erdlu. They collected all of the claws, scales, and bones that the two sisters had labored so hard to harvest, then melted into the ground and swam off toward the distant tower.
“Now what?” Rhayn demanded.
“We follow them,” Sadira said. “If they can reverse what happened to Magnus, I’ll wager they can control the tower’s magic. All we have to do is figure out a way to convince them to give us what we want.”
The Amber Enchantress Page 25
