I took a plate out of the cupboard and then got out the strawberry jam. I had both pieces coated with a thick layer of jam when Tess reached me. She had her leathers on, as did I, but hadn’t zipped up her jacket, yet. I held out the plate.
“You already ate?” she asked, taking one of the jammed pieces of toast.
“Yep, I would have let you sleep longer, but we do need to get something done while there’s still daylight.”
She munched softly and swallowed. “Sure you don’t want to tell me what we’re doing? I didn’t feel a summonings.”
“It’s not that, but it is a surprise.”
“Okay then,” she said, shoving the rest of the first slice into her mouth.
Still chewing, she mumbled around the toast and jam, “Let’s go.”
I turned off the coffee while she downed the rest of her cup and started for the door. Her crossbow hung on a hat rack beside the door. She picked up its quiver of magical broadheads and slung both the bow and the quiver over her shoulders.
Beast and Maia stood near each other, already in their natural forms, in a few inches of snow that had fallen overnight. February is the coldest month in the Springs, but not the time of the most snow. That came in March.
“We’re flying?” Tess asked.
“Yep, we’re taking a portal. Roads aren’t well developed where we’re bound,” I said closing the front door without locking it. I refreshed the wards on the cabin and then walked down the steps after Tess.
“Good morning, Maia. Did your night go well?” Tess asked as she reached her hippogriff.
“As well as most. Hunting was good and I ate well,” Maia answered.
I nodded to Beast as I approached and he gave me a slight nod of his head in return.
Maia knelt for Tess, while I levitated onto Beast. We were both mounted in a few seconds and I said, “Beast, we’re traveling to the Bank. Get us airborne and I’ll open the portal.”
“The bank?” Tess echoed.
“That’s what I’ve been calling it. I don’t know if it has a local name. Walt took me there early in my career and never really referred to it by name.”
Beast leapt into the air and angled toward Cheyenne Canyon. I didn’t have to check to know that Maia and Tess would be right behind us. When we were over the spot that Walt had originally shown me, I could feel the closed portal and triggered my tat.
A shimmering portal some thirty feet in diameter opened a few hundred feet above the canyon and Beast flew toward it. A warm, steady breeze blew toward us from the portal.
We popped through and were in another world. The air here was much warmer than the Colorado Rockies in February. Snow-capped mountains rose to our west and north and in the distance I could see the blue ice of a massive glacial wall. Over the years, the wall had been moving closer to the verdant valley that stretched out for what looked like a hundred miles to our east. Directly below us a granite cliff marked this end of the valley. A river flowed out of the glacier and dropped from the cliff face less than a mile to our west.
“What is it with you and waterfalls?” Tess called.
“What?”
“It seems like half the places you’ve taken me have had waterfalls. Granted, this one looks higher than most, but what’s up with that?”
“Just a coincidence of topography,” I said, but she had a point. Why would so many of the places I took her have waterfalls?
“I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences,” Tess returned.
I rolled my eyes and pointed down. “We’re headed for the base of the falls.”
We descended in a tight spiral; both Beast and Maia locked their wings and glided rapidly toward the misty forest that concealed the base of the cliff. The mist seemed to rise to meet us before we reached the forest canopy. I hadn’t been here in a few years, but the area looked as I remembered. The waterfall formed a wide lake, nearly a half mile across. It narrowed as it flowed out to the east. Granite boulders, fallen over the centuries, lined the border of the lake and formed an abrupt boundary between the crystal waters and the marshy ground which surrounded the lake. The forest proper started a few hundred yards from the lake’s edge except where the lake’s outflow formed a twenty yards wide river that snaked across the marsh and cut a path through the dense forest.
We landed on the shore of the lake near the cliff face and well inside the spray from the waterfall. The mist was cold and I considered putting a shield over us, but that wouldn’t help for what we were going to do. I slid off Beast, onto the boulder where he’d landed. There wasn’t room there for Maia to land so she set down on a similarly large boulder a few yards farther from the cliff. As soon as I was down, Beast took to the air and flew out over the marsh until he was out of the waterfall’s spray.
When Tess slipped off her familiar, I saw the glimmer of her shield form in the air above her. I grinned to myself and levitated my apprentice to my boulder. When she reached me, I caught her in my arms. She embraced me for a moment and I found myself unable to resist kissing her.
When we separated, I pointed to a
