So NailBiter was dressed and the baggage attached; the bird crouched low in complaint, knowing his master was still to come.
The eagler hesitated. 'Did Ukarres say anything about the wilds in Allaban?' he asked. 'About the birds there?'
Shadow thought back. 'No.'
Vonimor seemed surprised--and reluctant to continue. 'Well...he has some funny notions that he got from Karaman. I don't hold with them, but I saw less of Allaban than he did.'
'What sort of notions?' Shadow asked.
The older man shrugged vaguely. 'Just keep your eyes open, lad. There are funny stories--you may see birds doing funny things. Even that NailBiter of yours. Birds act queer when they get to Allaban.' He changed the subject. 'Good luck, my lord,' he said gruffly, holding out a hand.
'I am no lord,' Shadow said. 'Are you going to be in trouble when the duke returns?'
The ruddy, honest face turned dark. Vonimor turned away and then stopped. 'I saw it,' he whispered.
'What? Then why did you not speak?' Shadow demanded.
'There was no time,' Vonimor said. 'It was just as he launched, and I did not believe my eyes.' He stalked away across the aerie floor.
Shadow mounted his bird and launched automatically, his mind pondering the monstrous crime and the agony of followers whose lifetime of loyalty to a noble family had been betrayed. They were blaming the duke. Perhaps they were right.
NailBiter soon forgot his sulks, and Shadow followed the fast route that he had been given, the landmarks familiar to him after the long days of search. Twice he saw lonely birds soaring in the far distance, the patrols still hunting for traces of the missing prince, but they were too far off for him to recognize birds or riders, and therefore he would not be identified either. He discovered that he had become convinced--if WindStriker had survived her frenzy, then she had gone to Allaban, and the only question remaining was whether she had been carrying an unconscious cripple or a corpse. Certainly the latter was more probable, and he resisted an inner voice which told him he was crazy and should be going the other way, to sanctuary and refuge in Piatorra. But he knew that then his burden would not be rope and food and bottled air, but a lifetime of wondering and guilt.
Eventually he was over country new to him. It was the first time he had flown alone since his mad rush over the desert from Rakarr to Ramo on the day he became Shadow, and now he had the same problem he had had then: to find the thermals. In theory any especially warm surface created a thermal, but in practice many of those were dissipated by the cold wind and unusable. Pathfinding was the best test of a good skyman. Now he did what he had done in the desert--he let NailBiter choose, for the birds could apparently see the warmer air. Here, high on the Rand, there was little risk in trusting his mount. In the desert things had been different, for had he sunk too low in the red air and been unable to find a good thermal, he would have died, and long before his eagle did. NailBiter could have killed him easily on that journey to Ramo.
Eagle Dome was farther away than he would have believed, the sheer size of it almost beyond comprehension. From Ninar Foan it had seemed smooth and symmetrically rounded; when he at last grew close, he could see the frost cap and the vertical ribbing of the lower slopes that told of springs. The thermal on the sunlit side must be enormous, and a permanent cloud hung above it, streaming away sunward on one edge, continually reforming on the other. He came at last to the great flanking valley which cut back into the Rand and which would provide both his gateway and his trial.
Choosing a projecting rock above a sun-bright cliff, he brought NailBiter in to roost. Having no shackle, he had to leave the bird blinkered, and the scarlet comb throbbed angrily. Shadow dismounted and stretched aching joints; he estimated he had already flown almost a full watch from the caste. Shivering and panting in the cold, thin wind, he sat down in the lee of the rock and ate some of his rations.
He studied the great valley before him. He did not need Ukarres's description to warn him that a monstrous torrent of cold wind flowed down that gully--if he were caught in that, he would be swept out into the darkness over the plain and would die.
But if the cold wind dropped low, then the hot wind must drop also, and also the shear zone between them. Rarely, it was possible for human eyes to detect the shear zone, and he convinced himself at last that he could see it now, faint whirls of mist, vanishing almost before the eye made them out. His objective, then, was to climb as high as he dared and then glide NailBiter into that valley and hope to ride the hot wind around to the dark side of Eagle Dome.
It sounded simple.
The climb in the thermals was easy; NailBiter did not care, for his lungs could handle the altitude with ease, and perhaps he was even impatient with the rider who held him back, easing gradually to humanly impossible altitudes. The top of Eagle Rock seemed no lower when Shadow reached his nose-bleeding limit and tried a twist of air from the ancient bottle. It smelled foul, and seemed to do very little to clear his head. He risked a few more minutes' climbing and a few more puffs, then signaled for a dive. He probably blacked out briefly after that, but a sudden surge and a torrid breath told him that he had entered the invisible trough of the shear zone.
It was like riding a batted bird--NailBiter was hurled and buffeted and tossed. At times the two of them were turned right around and thrown toward the plains. Then a saving upwelling would loop them over and swirl them back again. Shadow's head throbbed, and his stomach heaved--he had never experienced anything like this before. He suspected NailBiter was enjoying it, but the strain on his wings must be immense. How much of their progress was due to his eagle instinct and how much to Shadow's skill and how much to sheer luck was impossible to know; all they could do was try to climb in the ups and avoid the downs, with neither visible in advance and their mutual boundaries unpredictable--a great game for lunatics.
Just once, and only briefly, they caught a sky wave, a smooth ripple between hot wind above and cold wind below, moving in the right direction, and for a few minutes they rushed in silent flight up the valley. Then it ended abruptly, or they lost it, and it was back to the turbulence again.
Inch by inch, it seemed, they fought their way up the narrowing gorge. The sun sank lower, the plains behind began to shrink, framed between the mountains of the Rand and the flank of Eagle Dome, and the land below was a darkness faintly glimmering with traces of ice.
Yet the topographic valley climbed relentlessly, and the invisible valley in the sky climbed also. Eventually the shear zone was too high for Shadow, and that came just where Ukarres had warned it would: where the valley swung around the mountain and the black bulk of Eagle Dome cut out the sun. The air bottle was exhausted. Shadow put NailBiter into a dive, and they plunged down through the icy wind toward the side of the mountain.
A jagged spur loomed out of the darkness, and he signaled for NailBiter to perch.
He had never experienced such cold; it soaked through his flying suit like ice water--and met the cold of fear working outward. NailBiter clutched fiercely at the rock and hunched down, his feathers fluffed out and rippling in the hurricane. The valley was lit by a dim reflection from immense sun-bright peaks on the High Rand, ragged and taller even than the Dome. On one side the black valley, on the other an equally black cliff stretching up...
Stars! Shadow had never seen stars, but his eyes had adjusted to the dark, and the sky above him glittered with billions of tiny points of light. He had heard of them--and there they were. Even in his terror and exhaustion he was overwhelmed by their beauty. The poets and the ancient texts had never done them justice.
But if he sat and looked at stars for very long, he would freeze to death. Somehow he had to fight his way up the next stretch of this valley. Eventually, Ukarres had said, he would come to a junction, where the torrent of cold wind from Darkside flowed down off the High Rand and split against the back of Eagle Dome. After that, it would be downhill all the way to Allaban. Until then, it was upwind and there were only two ways to travel upwind: on the power of NailBiter's wings or by kiting.
'Let's go, fellow,' Shadow said through chattering teeth, and pulled on the reins.
NailBiter did not want to go--he could see no reason whatsoever to fight against the wind into darkness. Food and warmth and his mate were in the other direction, and he balked and argued and struggled and was kicked as he had never before been kicked. The wind would be least strong near the ground, so the first leg was easy--a nearly vertical, ear-bursting dive toward the surface of the glacier to traverse the cold blast as quickly as possible and gain maximum speed for a glide--but after that it was powered flight all the way, NailBiter fighting the wind and
