I did have sense enough to stick to the places where warm updrafts gave me the lift I needed. Far ahead, jagged against the southern sky, lay the southern mountain rim of the Shadowmarches. From above those peaks I could look down on Cagihiggy Creek, upon what little was left of the Blot, on Schlaizy Noithn.
Upon the ice caverns, where lay one hundred thousand frozen men and women.
I tilted a wing to steer a little west. The cavern was the closest place where I might find someone, and whether anyone was there or not, it would make good sense to check the caverns before I went farther.
Below me the land was in ferment. Shadow bulks rose upon it, bubbling upward, subsiding once more. I circled, looking behind me. The air held roiling wings of shadow. Not near me, particularly, simply there, both high and low. I could see places that looked as though the air trembled, quivered, where a kind of grayness was. Once having seen them, I made a circle every few leagues, being sure that none of the patches was near me.
Noon came above the Shadowmarch mountains. Below, the land sloped down in a long basin, east to where Hell’s Maw had been, where Pfarb Durim still stood—unless it had vanished in the years I had been gone. I had not flown above it on my return to Jinian. West the basin bent to run both north and south; north into a cul-de-sac rumored to be the site of a Bamfug Demesne, southward to the Blot. The cavern lay north of the Blot, hidden in a curl of broken mountain, the way to it blocked by falls from the time the mountain had exploded, when the Magicians were destroyed. My doing, at least partly. And mother Mavin’s. I found myself glad that Quench and some of the other techs had escaped, but I was not generally sorry the place was gone. An evil place; based on an evil custom.
Ahead and to my right a swimming dot plunged about the sky in erratic flight. I Shifted eyes to see it, making telescopic lenses, wondering what would make any flier dodge about so.
It was the Flitchhawk! Jinian’s Flitchhawk, coming from the west, carrying something large, pursued by shadow!
It dropped and darted, dived and soared, mighty wings pumping hard as it fought to gain altitude. Behind it the shadow came, effortlessly, fluttering, dropping as the Flitchhawk dropped, soaring as the Flitchhawk soared. I beat my way toward it, hurrying, wondering even as I did so what possible help I might be, answering myself immediately that I might carry part of the Flitchhawk’s burden, for it was very heavily laden.
I came beneath it, calling to it as I came. “Flitchhawk! I will carry one of your baskets!” It had two, one in each mighty set of talons. I beat upward, slipping sideways to avoid a flicker of shadow at my side, then the other way as it closed on me. Gamelords, but this shadow was persistent, and fast.
I came just beneath the mighty bird, heard its heaving breath, heard the thunder of its heart. There was something almost like panic in its eyes.
I don’t know what made me do it. It wasn’t reasoned out at all. Just memory and instinct working together. I saw the shadow. I remembered how the Daylight Bell had driven it away, how at dusk the Daylight Bell’s sweet resonance had cleared the city. I changed the chords of my throat and cried out, cried with the voice of the Bell. .
Once, twice, and the shadows fled.
We dropped from the sky, Flitchhawk losing one of his baskets as he fell. It tumbled down and down, breaking upon the earth to shed a sapphire radiance far upon the dusty ground. When we landed, I stood near him, panting. I heard the thunder of my own heart. I had never flown so high.
“Where did you hear the Bell?” cried the Flitchhawk in a voice of heartbreaking woe.
“In the Maze,” I mumbled. “In the Great Maze, from a time very long ago.”
“I had never thought to hear it again.”
“You will hear it again,” I promised. “We will recast it in the Old South Road City. We will build the Tower once more.” I was not at all certain of this, but it seemed a comforting thing to say.
“We will build little unless we can gather up again what I have spilled,” it cried. I remembered the crystals then and began wandering aimlessly about, looking for them. There must have been thousands of them in the basket.
And as we were wandering all futile in the underbrush, trying to pick up the crystals, we heard voices coming through the trees. I faded into the shrubbery. Flitchhawk somehow vanished. I crouched.
“I heard your voice, Peter, Mavin’s son,” cried the voice. “Come out of there.”
Someone else was mumbling, a rhythmic kind of chant. It ended with four words spoken loudly, clearly. “Where Old Gods Are.” Abruptly the Flitchhawk stood forth, looking surprised, as though unable to help himself. The bushes shook at the edge of the clearing, and six women came through. Two old ones. Two middle-aged. One not much older than I, one younger. They did not need to introduce themselves. I knew at once who they were. The other members of Jinian’s seven.
“Well,” said one of the middle-aged ones with some asperity in a clear, demanding voice. “What were you hiding from? Ghosts?”
I bowed. This could only have been Cat Candleshy. “We have just escaped the shadow, ma’am. And dropped a valuable cargo in doing so.
Now we are faced with gathering up thousands of the blue crystals, scattered over leagues of earth, no doubt.”
“A well-spoken thing,” said the beautiful one, who was little older than I. Margaret Foxmitten. It had to be. “Is this flying thing really Jinian’s Peter?”
“Should you call him a thing?” This was the shy one, Sarah Shadowsox.
“Why not? It
