Alta

them, heading straight up into the clouds. Either that decided her, or else Aket-ten had managed to “speak” with her to tell her what they wanted, and that there would be sunlight up there; with a snort, she followed.

The journey was a repetition of the one they had taken on that pair of swamp dragons when he and Aket-ten had gone up to spread the dust—but without quite as much of the buffeting inside the clouds as the last time. As Avatre was hit by contrary winds, by unexpected updrafts and even a downdraft or two that made his stomach plunge and his passenger scream with fear, he thought that the turbulence was perhaps half that of the initial storm. And if that pig of a swamp dragon could handle it. . . .

His steadiness seemed to give Avatre confidence, and she fought her way back after every obstacle. Finally, she lifted her head a little as if she sensed something.

At that moment, it seemed to Kiron that the rain-filled mist above him was marginally brighter.

With a mighty surge of wings, and the added help of another unexpected updraft, they burst out of the clouds and into the sunlight.

Despite their head start, and Re-eth-ke’s lighter burden, it was a moment or two after that before Aket-ten and her passenger lumbered up into the light, and they did so a good six furlongs away from Avatre. Following Kiron’s signals, Avatre wheeled toward them; he wanted to be closer before they tried the next part of the journey.

It was then that he noticed that his passenger was clutching him around the waist so tightly that, if he had not been wearing the Altan Jouster’s broad, thick, leather belt that protected the midsection, he’d have been having trouble breathing.

“Are you all right?” he called back over his shoulder.

“No,” said a strangled voice in his ear. “But don’t stop.”

He spared a brief thought of poor thing for her, but had no time for anything more; the next bit would be tricky and required a lot of concentration. As he now knew from experience, the winds up this high were layered; while he had never yet come across one layer going in the completely opposite direction of another, he had encountered winds moving at right angles to each other. The Magi probably paid very little attention to their magic once they set it in motion, and as long as the rains went south, that was all they cared about. There was a single channel of wind up here, above the clouds and rain, that Heklatis had “purloined,” deflecting it so that instead of going north to south, it curved off to the west. It would be high, Heklatis had told him. Perhaps higher than he had ever flown before, and Avatre, who could read the winds better than he, and who had more experience than Re-eth-ke, would have to find it. He signaled to Aket-ten, who nodded vigorously, then sent Avatre up.

She was not at all averse to this idea; this clear, dry air was much more to her liking than spending the day trying to fly through the pouring rain.

It was cold, and getting colder; he was glad of the extra clothing they were wearing. He and Aket-ten were wearing those woolen garments; Nofret and Marit had to make do with a pair of woolen robes with the skirts cut and bound around their legs. At least they were drying out quickly.

Avatre seemed unhampered by the cold. Up she went, with Kiron consistently giving her the signal that she should go west. And she tried, with the strong winds up here carrying them farther south all the time as she tacked against them. And she kept looking, craning her neck around, searching—he had the feeling she knew what he was asking of her.

When they planned this last night, he had wondered if she would understand what she needed to do without Aket-ten being able to give her clear directions. The “up” part was easy, but she had not flown on a long flight since they had arrived in Alta; would she understand that they needed to take one now?

Her bright eyes darted this way and that as she continued to climb, continued to fight the south-flowing winds—and then, just as he had seen her sense the clear air above them, he saw her find something else.

It was nothing that he could see, but she did, and she redoubled her efforts, driving strongly upward toward a place in the sky that seemed no different to him than any other place in the sky—

Until she was in the middle of it.

And then—ah, then she spread her wings wide and suddenly they were shooting westward, in the middle of a current that took them at right angles to the flow of the clouds underneath them. This time, with something to compare their speed to, it was clear that they were flying at a dizzying pace, both the highest and the fastest that he had ever flown before.

He glanced around, and caught a glimpse of Aket-ten right behind him. That was all he needed to know; that, and the position of the sun. When it was at its zenith, they would have to go down, no matter where they were, because at that point, this wind would die for a while, and then reverse itself.

They hoped that this would be somewhere that Kaleth was waiting for them, but Kiron did not believe in counting on hope alone, no more than Nofret and Marit did. The boys had together scraped up enough ordinary currency in bronze and silver to get a cart and donkey. He and Aket-ten should have enough time to find a farm, buy a cart and donkey, and send the young women out to the desert’s edge, where they could sell the cart and donkey and have enough money to provision themselves while they took some of their jewels apart and pounded things like rings and delicate ornaments into unrecognizable bits of silver, electrum, and gold. Then, if Kaleth had still not put in an appearance, they could go to one of the places at the desert’s edge where the Bedu came to trade and buy their way into one of the encampments and wait there.

Kiron never counted on anything. Especially not luck.

But before the sun reached the appointed spot, the clouds began to thin in front of them. Soon there were gaps below where Kiron could see the green of the farmlands. And then, when he looked ahead, he realized that it was not the white of more clouds that formed the horizon, but the white sands of the desert—

And the farms beneath turned to scrub, the scrub to dry-scape plants, and then, just as the wind dropped away to nothing and Avatre went into a long, slow glide downward, the sparse desert-edge plants turned to true desert.

This was the moment that he realized just how high they were.

His passenger realized it at the same moment that he did; she shrieked in his ear, startling Avatre into a side-slip, and buried her face in his shoulder.

He didn’t blame her.

Their woolens had kept them warm, but it had been a bit hard to get his breath. Now he knew why.

Suddenly Re-eth-ke folded her wings and went into a dive; taken by complete surprise, he only had the wit to direct Avatre to follow her. And follow she did.

It was not the sort of heart-thumping, near-vertical stoop that he and Aket-ten had endured on their first such flight, but it was steep enough, and he heard his passenger’s muffled wails of pure terror against his shoulder. Re-eth-ke evidently saw something that he couldn’t, for she had her eyes fixed on some point in the blank expanse of desert below. This was not so much a dive as a series of steep spirals; the dragons were somehow steering with their tails, and had just enough wing extended to slow their fall a little.

About the time when he made out that the thing that Re-eth-ke had spotted was a group of four beasts and two men, she tucked her hindquarters under and fanned her wings more, slowing the dive even further; a moment later, Avatre did the same. When he made out that the riders were muffled in Bedu robes and veils, and the beasts were camels, they were moving no faster than they usually were when they made landings, and they were spiraling down in a series of shallow, lazy circles, while the men and beasts watched, the men calmly, the camels nervously. The honks and groans of their complaints drifted up to him, and one of the men laughed at something the other said.

Then the wings of both dragons snapped open to the fullest, simultaneously, and they began backwinging furiously. They touched down within a heartbeat of each other.

Kiron’s passenger might have been still too terrified to move; that was not the case with the other passenger. She had unbuckled her restraining strap and was sliding down Re-eth-ke’s back unassisted while the dust they had kicked up was still settling.

One of the men jumped out of his saddle, and began trotting toward them. She hardly seemed to touch the ground as she ran to meet him, cape flying behind her. He caught her up in a tight embrace and held her, while Kiron muttered to the young woman behind him, “You can look up now, Nofret. We’re down, Kaleth’s here, and something a little easier to ride is with him.”

“I’m not a coward. . . .” came the trembling reply.