who was fighting a two-front war against acne and overweight, and losing both.
Brenna reached the fence and clambered over it easily, then plunged in among the trees. The snow wasn’t as deep here, since some of it had been intercepted by the overhanging branches throughout the winter, although occasional deep drifts and deadwood, betraying its presence only by the slightest of bumps in the snow, made the footing precarious. But Brenna plunged ahead, knowing she was doing something she really shouldn’t, knowing it could even be dangerous-if she turned an ankle, it might be hours before anyone found her-but getting perverse pleasure out of that very fact.
The going got even harder as the land sloped up. The new snow was moist enough to compact under her feet as she climbed, turning icy. She had to hold onto bushes and branches to keep from sliding backward, but eventually she emerged from the forest onto the bare hillside. Up here the winter winds had driven most of the snow into drifts. By carefully picking her way, she could follow a path where dry grass still showed through the thin white blanket that covered it, providing some traction. Though the wind continued to snap slithering snakes of snow at her, she was working hard enough now that she felt too warm in her fur, and she unbuttoned it a little to let in some fresh air.
She had a specific destination in mind, an outcropping of rock to which she often climbed in the summer. It was a good deal easier to get to then, she thought, panting; but there it was now ahead of her, and a few minutes later she reached its broad, tablelike top and turned to survey the landscape.
Below her sprawled Falk Manor, the large main building with its white walls and red roof and multiple smokespewing chimneys surrounded by an untidy cluster of smaller structures. From the manor’s front gates, a road ran past the compound of the men-at-arms, white wooden barracks behind a stockade of peeled logs, through snow-covered fields down to the edge of the lazily meandering river, still frozen solid. To her left and right along the Grand Valley, the Seven Fish showed as broader, flat expanses of alternating dark gray ice and white snow.
The road ran alongside the river, eventually disappearing to her left around the shoulder of another hill. As she looked that way, Brenna saw a black dot roll into sight, trailing smoke, and recognized it at once as Lord Falk’s magical carriage. Once he had returned to the Palace after the Moon Ball, Brenna ordinarily didn’t see her guardian again until spring; since he had the option of living in the perpetual warmth of the Palace grounds, she could hardly blame him. But there he came. I wonder what’s happened?
And then she forgot all about Lord Falk and everything else as an enormous glowing blue something, roaring like a dragon, burst over the crest of the hill behind her.
CHAPTER 5
Five hundred feet above the ground, the downdraft became a powerful westerly wind, hurling the airship out over the snow-covered prairie, the straining propeller adding to its eastward momentum. Freezing wind roared through the gondola. The envelope fluttered and twisted. Anton, staring over the side, saw the ground both streaming past and growing larger at an alarming rate. He looked forward. And ahead…
… hills. Not very big hills, but big enough. Anton watched the clump of trees on the hill in front of them grow rapidly nearer. It would be a very near thing, but he thought they might just…
Another loud tearing sound. The hole in the envelope grew larger. The airship lurched downward and twisted, and the tip of a towering pine, the tallest tree on the hilltop, tore through the side of the gondola like a blunt knife. The impact threw Anton forward; only a frantic grab at the rigging saved him from being tossed out.
In the stern, the tip of the pine slammed into the Professor’s left leg. Anton heard the bone break, a sickening sound, then the wind flowing over the hill tossed the airship skyward again, ripping the tree free of the gondola.
The Professor dropped to the bottom of the gondola, eyes wide with shock. Anton scrambled toward him. The burner continued to roar, but Anton knew it couldn’t last much longer. At the Professor’s side, he peered out through the splintered hole in the wickerwork. Forest, a river… a road? A house? “Professor, there are people down there!”
The Professor’s eyes, which had closed, fluttered open. “Inhabitants? Inside the Anomaly?” He tried to roll over and look, but groaned with pain and flopped back. A sheen of sweat covered his white face.
“Maybe they can help us!”
The Professor closed his eyes. “If the gas won’t lift us and the ballast is gone, lad, no one can help us but God.” He coughed and smiled weakly. “Too bad I don’t believe in Him.”
The torch flared hugely and went out. The Professor’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked up at the envelope’s torn blue silk. “It appears He doesn’t believe in me, either,” he said softly.
With the roaring of the burner gone, the only sounds Anton could hear were the creaking of ropes and the rush of wind in the treetops below… and not very far below, at that. “Hold on, Professor,” he said desperately. “I think we’re almost down.” He guided the Professor’s hands to one of the rope-loop handholds in the gondola wall and seized one himself. He closed his eyes. “Any second now.. .”
Ten seconds passed. Twenty. And then…
They struck.
Crunching, tearing, ripping sounds; tumbling, no up or down; a flash of green, then white; violent blows to his body; a horrible stabbing pain in his leg… it all happened in an instant.
For a timeless period, nothing… and then Anton abruptly opened his eyes to find himself hanging headdown, tangled in ropes, six feet above the snowy ground. The gondola hung upside down above him. The burner had ripped out of it and lay steaming in the snow. Folds of blue silk hung like a stage curtain all around.
Something dropped past his nose. Where it struck the ground, the snow turned red. As he watched, another red drop fell, then another. It took him a long, dazed moment to realize the drops were blood… his blood.
He felt suddenly dizzy and sick and swallowed hard, fighting not to vomit yet again. “Professor?” he called weakly, but heard no answer.
Instead he heard footsteps, crunching through the snow, coming nearer at a run. And then a girl appeared beneath him. She wore an enormous fur coat, its hood thrown back to reveal tumbling curls of dark brown hair. Her eyes, just as dark, peered up at him from a pale, heart-shaped face. She said something to him. It sounded like a question, but he couldn’t quite understand the words…
“I need… help…” he said, and then promptly threw up all over her. The retching seemed to tear something loose inside him, and agonizing pain bludgeoned him once more into darkness.
Brenna gaped at the… thing… that had appeared from nowhere in the ragged gray sky. It was a huge bag of blue cloth, shaped like a loaf of bread, with a round opening at the bottom. A kind of giant wicker basket, badly broken, hung from it on ropes, and as it swept away from her, she glimpsed a white face inside that basket. A tall chimney rose from something like a heating stove in the center of the basket, but instead of belching smoke, it shot a roaring tongue of blue flame, like the manor’s Magefire, into the interior of the blue loaf-shape, lighting it up like a lantern but somehow not setting it on fire. At the back something like an overgrown version of a child’s whirligig spun lazily.
She took all of that in in an instant as the thing shot past. She heard shouts from inside the basket-there had to be a second passenger she couldn’t see-and then, suddenly, the fire turned orange and went out. For a few seconds the thing flew down the slope in eerie silence, lower and lower…
… and then it crashed into the forest at the bottom of the hill.
The big blue loaf-shape, which she now realized was made of cloth, collapsed in on itself. The basket upended. The Magefire-like burner ripped free with a tremendous noise and smashed into the ground, releasing a huge cloud of steam that obscured everything even before the blue cloth settled over the scene like a shroud. Yet even as the thin fabric drifted into place, Brenna was scrambling down the slope as fast as she could. There had been people in that basket. They must be hurt… or worse.
But even with that horrible thought in her head, another part of her jumped up and down like a little girl at her first Moon Ball. They were flying! she thought. Like birds… well, like dandelion seeds, anyway. But still, they were flying!
No one that she had ever heard of-not Lord Falk, not First Mage Tagaza, not even the First Twelve-had ever been able to use magic to fly. I’d give half my life to fly like that, she thought. Fly right out of Falk Manor. Fly right
