Holly rushed to Walinda's side and yanked her away from the griffons. 'Stop it,' she ordered. 'You're going to bring the whole house down on us!'
Walinda spun angrily on the paladin. 'We need to subdue these creatures to escape,' she retorted.
'No we don't,' Holly argued. 'Jas can carry us one at a time.'
'She would drop me the first chance she had,' Walinda said, tossing the bucket of meat at the griffons.
'Like that,' Jas agreed, snapping her fingers.
Joel approached the winged beasts, singing the calming spell that had worked so well on Butternut, but to no avail. The griffons were immune to any magic that affected ordinary beasts. They continued shrieking. Joel stepped back. 'We've got to get out of here fast,' he murmured, 'before they send someone to check on the griffons.'
Walinda tugged at his sleeve. 'I cannot trust Pigeon Girl with my life. You vowed to help me escape from here,' she reminded him.
'Poor Banebitch,' Jas taunted. 'She can't get down from this rock.'
'You don't get down from a rock, you get down from a goose,' Joel retorted automatically. Then he remembered his vision and the wings he'd found. He drew the golden talisman out of his tunic pocket and held it up for the others to see.
'Ahh… a feather token,' Jas said. 'Haven't seen one of those in a while.'
'What does it do?' Holly asked.
'You throw it to the ground,' Jas explained, 'and you grow wings. You can use it only once.'
'I can carry you,' Joel said to Walinda, 'and Jas can carry Holly.'
From somewhere above them came human shouts.
'To the hole! Hurry!' Jas shouted, grabbing Holly's arm and pulling her in that direction.
Joel followed, with Walinda right behind. At the edge of the hole, he hesitated. 'I just throw it to the ground?'
'The floor will do,' Jas explained. 'It would take a little too long to get to the ground.
Joel threw the talisman to the floor. The wings shattered with a tiny flash. Then a golden light blossomed from the broken magic item, bathing Joel's body in a rich radiance. When the glow had faded, Joel had a pair of great butterfly wings jutting from his back. They were yellow, with black striations, fully three times the size of Jas's.
'There's something else I should explain about these magical wings,' Jas said as she shouldered Walinda aside to stand before Joel.
'What?' the bard asked.
Jas put her hands on the bard's chest. 'You can use them to glide downward, but you can't fly back up with them. Once you start down, there's no coming back,' she said, and then she gave Joel a hard shove backward.
The bard fell through the hole and plummeted downward into the dark sky.
Joel started to scream, but the wings spread out from his body, controlled by some subconscious instinct. The magical appendages checked the speed of his descent, and he began drifting like a dandelion seed. After taking a deep breath and letting his air out, he regained his self-control.
The bard discovered that, by twitching his shoulders. he could control his direction, but just as Jas had said, he could not regain lost altitude. The winged woman had prevented him from honoring his vow to help the priestess of Bane escape.
He craned his neck to see the hole in the floor of the Temple in the Sky. By the feeble light of the waning moon, he soon saw what he'd expected to see-Jas soaring away from the flying rock, carrying Holly. There was no sign of Walinda.
Joel wondered if the giants on the tower would spot them, and if the cultists would mount the griffons and pursue the prisoners. He also began to worry that he might just end up landing on top of the tower, or so near it that he would be quickly recaptured.
Able to control her flight, Jas soon caught up to the bard. Holly's arms and legs were wrapped around the winged woman's neck and waist. Jas wasn't able to hover beside Joel, but she flew under him and then up, trailing her legs.
'Grab hold,' Holly shouted.
Joel reached out and snagged the strap of one of Jas's boots. He felt his stomach lurch backward, but his wings held and the rest of his body remained intact. Jas pulled him along as easily as a child played a kite on a string. The winged woman headed southwestward along the edge of the Border Forest, keeping the River Tesh to her left as Holly had instructed.
Joel looked back, scanning the sky for pursuit from the Temple in the Sky. He thought he saw dark specks issuing from beneath the great flying rock, but in the blackness, it was hard to be sure. Then the bard spotted something much larger, something he recognized without any trouble.
It was Walinda's floating ship, the one in which she'd traveled to the tower. Now, however, the ship was flying, moving upward toward the Temple in the Sky. Just as it drew near the base of the flying rock, Jas flew into a low bank of clouds, obscuring the bard's view.
Joel puzzled over what he had just witnessed. Had Walinda summoned the vessel somehow? But if she could do that, then why make a pact with him, and why had she seemed willing to risk flying on the griffons?
Unless she hadn't realized the ship would come for her. Was it possible, Joel wondered, that Bane had found another way to rescue her?
Seven
Joel had no notion how far they traveled, but by the time Jas began to descend, the sky was beginning to lighten. Below them was a meadow adjacent to the Border Forest. Upon Jas's instructions, Joel released his hold on the winged woman's bootstrap when they were still a good twenty feet above the ground. Jas landed, dropped Holly, and sank to the ground. Between carrying Holly's weight and towing me, she has to be exhausted, the bard realized. He was worn out merely from hanging on and being buffeted by the wind.
He drifted downward. The instant his feet touched the earth, the magical wings on his back dissolved, leaving only aching shoulder muscles as a reminder of their previous existence. From here on, he and Holly would have to walk. What Jas would do was up to her.
The bard strode up to the winged woman. 'Look,' he said, looming over her, 'I'm grateful for the help you've given us, but you shouldn't have done that.'
'Done what?' Jas asked, not even looking up at him. 'Pushed me out of the Temple in the Sky,' Joel retorted
Jas looked up at the bard as if he were a fool. She yawned.
'Well?' Joel prompted, expecting a reply.
'If you're expecting an apology,' Jas said with a laugh, 'you're going to be disappointed.'
'You abandoned Walinda,' Joel growled. 'You left her there to die.'
'What makes you think I didn't run her through before I left?' Jas asked.
Joel's eyes widened in shock.
'We didn't harm her, Joel,' Holly reassured the bard. 'We just shoved her aside and flew off without her.'
'And somehow that's supposed to be better?' Joel argued.
'Depends how much the cultists make her suffer,' Jas said with a smirk. 'A quick death would be too good for her.'
'We had a pact,' Joel snapped angrily.
Jas rose to her feet and stood no more than a foot from the bard. She was no taller than Walinda, but her body was tough and muscular. She'd seen some hard times- there were scars on her shoulders, her throat, her
