some time there himself with a snapped wrist.
Other skyles, especially the larger ones, were lethal with the presence of preda
tors. But the greatest risk to Foke life was the zotl raid.
The zotl used the radar in their nimble needlecraf to fly through the clouds that spiraled the length of the Werld. The only safe place for Foke along the Cloudriver was beside the Wall. The wizan told Carl that gavitational fluctuations along the Wall had destroyed many a zotl craft, and the paineaters rarely flew there now.
When Evoe and Carl left the wizan, they traveled on the fog-tattered fringe of the Wall until they came to where it joined the Cloudriver and they had to move inward. No Foke could travel in the Cloudriver for very long: Vision was an empty lilac-gray, and one had to gauge the fallpath by feel alone. Landing anywhere was out of the question. Not only were those cloudforest skyles evil with bizarre predators, but there was no sure way to catch the fallpath. The visual clues were not there. One had to jump into the wind and pray.
So Carl and Evoe stayed above the clouds, looking for a well of clear space and lighted skyles that tunneled through the Cloudriver. The fringe was a tricky place, since the wind could suddenly shift and smother the fallpath and nearby skyles with blinding clouds.
Just that was happening to them, as it had happened numerous times before. Cauliflowering clouds loomed out of the Cloudriver, billowing purple and gold. Around them, rain girandoled, a gray halo sheeting the flowlines of the fallpath and smoking over the skyles.
They soared toward a flower-bright skyle where heat shimmered in the cup of a small valley. When Carl glanced back to gauge the advance of the cloudfall, he saw them, and it was already too late.
They, had hidden in the Cloudriver and had approached with the blossoming clouds until they were close enough to strike. Carl thought in that first instant
that they were Foke. They were human, and all six wore finsuits.
But in the next instant, he realized they were moving too fast for Foke. He noticed the black thrusters on their backs the same moment Evoe spotted them.
Without hesitation, she unsnapped a naphthal pod from the belt under her robe and flung it toward them. The fireball caught one of the flyers head-on and splashed with the impact, searing two others. All three whirled out of control and spun flapping flames into the cathedral buttes of a skyle.
The remaining three were already-too close for another naphthal pod, and Carl unholstered his gun. He never even had the chance to aim. Evoe glanced about and saw a steep-banking plunge in the fallpath below them. She grabbed Carl in both of her arms and pulled him close.
'Carl, I love you,' she said, and her face was a blaze of feeling, her soul leaning against the opal light in her eyes. 'Stay alive.'
He burbled the beginning of some reply, and she twisted him about, tripped him with a swing of her legs, and toppled him into the drop of the fallpath that sheared away from them. Carl was too clumsy to stop or even slow his fall. He watched Evoe distance away.
The three flyers were almost on her. One of them peeled off to pick Carl up, and Evoe drew her gun and fired several rounds, her body wrenching. with the coil of each shot.
Then the two flyers were on her, and she was bowled over, snagged by their grapnels, and swung away.
Carl jerked about to see his pursuer rolling lifelessly in a cloud of his blood. Trying to brake himself, Carl went into a roll. He tumbled head over heels in a
freefall and was soon lost among the skyles whipping past him like freights.
Panic hardened to clarity, and he utilized the techniques Evoe had been teaching him to slow a fall. He pulled his finsuit sleekly against him before carefully unfurling its fins to cup the air. His fall relaxed to a float, and he swam toward the contraflow that always paralleled a fallpath.
- The contraflow was there, and he swooped back toward Evoe.
He swung around the obstructing skyles in time to see the two pirates carrying her limp body away.
He'd lost his gun in the fall, but that's not why he hung back.
Emerging from the Cloudriver was the black chevron of a jumpship. He watched helplessly as they boarded and the jumpship slinked back 'into the colossal clouds.
Carl raged. His blood sang with despair, and he howled at the Cloudriver, dashing in and out of its blankness hoping to be taken by the pirates and joined again, at least in fate, with his Evoe.
They were gone.
Carl was alone, staring into the long emptiness of his life.
In the end, there was only one place for him to go. If Evoe was imprisoned in Rhene, he couldn't hope to free her. And if she was in Galgul, an army couldn't save her. At the end of his hysterics and his heroic and fatalistic strategies, only one hope remained. The eld skyle.
He journeyed eldward, stopping only for the sustenance he needed to travel. His sleep-frayed alertness went into rage-drive, automatically guiding him through the brightening heights toward the feathery radiance of the Welkyn. Only after he saw the rainbows threading
the glass minarets of Rhene did he seek a brambly covert and sleep.
He nightmared Evoe's abduction and woke sick with anguish.
His pain led him finally to the slow whorl of the Gate, the down-moving fallpath that was the only entrance to the Welkyn. Claws of frustration tore his insides as he circled the vast area, hunting a way up the gravity slope.
Carl lay spraddled in a field of golden grass among bells of green flowers, charred inside from his thwarted approaches: His grimaced mind was contemplating the madness of entering Rhene alone for a flyer when he saw a brown tumbleweed rolling toward him across the meadow.
