Aenir (10 page)

Tal's shoulder sockets hurt so much he wanted to land long before Adras got tired of carrying him. By then they were already well beyond the sand dunes of Hazror's realm. The country below them was now a jungle, a canopy of green, broken here and there by taller trees thrusting out.

Under the starlight, the canopy looked black rather than green. It reminded Tal of the Veil and the Seven Towers, which was comforting. But it made it difficult to land. Tal kept thinking he could see a clearing, but it was always a trick of the light, just a dip in the canopy.

Tal thought his arms were actually going to fall off when he finally saw a large expanse that had to be a clearing.

Adras landed him gently, but Tal still fell over. All his muscles hurt, not just his shoulders. Even so, he forced himself up out of the wet leaf-litter. There was no time to rest. Now that he had the whistle he felt closer to the Codex somehow. But that only increased his anxiety. What if he found the Codex, and found out who was keeping Gref captive, but it was too late?

Tal got up and looked around, raising light from his Sunstone.

He was in a clearing, but the leaf-litter was still knee-deep. There were shrubs and ferns almost as tall as he was, but none of the enormous, vine-circled trees that filled the jungle proper.

"I like it here," boomed Adras suddenly, making Tal jump. "Lots of moisture in the air. Ahhh!"

Tal didn't like it so much. There were lots of things moving in the darkness. He could hear squelching and crackling and slithering, though whenever he shined the beam of light from his Sunstone there was nothing to be seen.

Even worse than that, he'd suddenly remembered the last game of Beastmaker he'd played, and one of the cards. The Jarghoul, the giant strangling snake of the Aeniran jungle.

This was the Aeniran jungle. This was exactly where you could expect to find a thirty-stretch-long Jarghoul that would be thicker than he was tall.

It could be a Jarghoul making those slithering noises over there!

Tal spun around, intensifying the light from his Sunstone.

Light reflected back from two enormous, pale yellow eyes. Eyes that bulged on stalks above slimy blue flesh that continued to glow even when Tal's shaking hand moved the light away.

"Jarghoul!" Tal screamed, and he turned to run. He'd gone several steps when his panicked brain properly processed what he'd seen.

It wasn't a Jarghoul. They weren't blue and they didn't glow in the dark.

It was a Gorblag, a sort of slithering toad. Or at the worst, its close cousin, a Klorbag, which spat disgusting but harmless slimeballs.

"A what?" asked Adras. "Do you want me to smack it?"

"Ah, no," said Tal, after he took a deep breath. "It's… it's only a Gorblag. They're harmless."

The glowing blue toad hadn't moved. It just sat there, its long-finned tail slithering from side to side. Then it slowly inflated the fleshy bags under its stomach and became twice as large.

Tal got out of the direct line of fire in case it was a Klorbag preparing to spit.

It didn't. Its eyes clouded and its mouth pursed in a way that no Gorblag's mouth had ever pursed before. Then its airbags started to deflate, and a whistle came out of its mouth.

Tal had already realized it had been taken over by the Codex. Even so, he was surprised that the whistle was actually a reedy, high-pitched voice.

"What is it?" he asked. "What do you want me to do?"

"Tal. Aim one hand left of the blue star and fly. Milla at Four Rivers Meet by dawn. Follow Zicka to Cold Stone Mountain. Have a Storm Shepherd blow the Pipe. You and Milla fetch me from under the Mountain. No Aeniran can touch me. Go now!"

"What?" asked Tal. "But Milla will kill me!"

"No!" the Gorblag whistled. "Go! Four Rivers Meet. Zicka. Cold Stone Mountain. Blow Pipe. Fetch Codex from under Mountain."

"Milla will kill me," protested Tal. "And how am I going to get under the mountain?"

It was too late. The Codex had lost contact.

The Gorblag's eyes cleared. It stopped pursing its lips and opened its mouth wide. An instant later a huge gob of sticky, foul-smelling slime whizzed past Tal's face.

The Klorbag dived down into the leaf-litter and squirmed away before Tal or Adras could retaliate. Tal watched its dorsal fin snaking through the rotting vegetation, to make sure it wasn't going to turn for a parting shot.

Then he held up his hands.

"We've got to get going again," he said to Adras. "The Codex wants us to go to somewhere called Four Rivers Meet. And it has somehow got Milla to help."

"Milla?" asked Adras eagerly. "The other one? With Odris?"

"Yes," said Tal. "We have to aim a hand's width left of the blue star, so once we're up out of this jungle I guess I'll have to hang by one arm and try"

He stopped talking, as it was obvious Adras wasn't listening. He had reared up and had his head cocked to one side, as if he were listening to something that Tal couldn't hear.

"Find Odris, find Milla," the Storm Shepherd announced. "That's right?"

"Yes." Tal sighed. "If you know where Odris is." "I know." Adras bent down and gripped Tal's forearms, not noticing the boy wince with pain. "The wind tells me."

"Good," said Tal faintly. His shoulder sockets felt like they'd had molten metal poured inside them, and the pain was spreading through to his neck and head. But the Codex had said to go on, and so he must.

As Adras rose up out of the jungle, Tal's thoughts turned to Milla. He hoped the Codex had told her she wasn't going to kill him.

He also felt the slight twinge of guilt he'd had previously grow stronger inside him.

Tal still thought he'd done the right thing. The only thing. But now he was wondering if Milla could ever see it his way. Maybe making her swap her shadow for a Spiritshadow was like a Chosen not having a Spiritshadow.

Maybe… maybe he'd turned her into a sort of Icecarl Underfolk.

He'd really destroyed her future, he realized, when all he'd given up was his choice of Spiritshadow.

She would want to kill him, Tal decided. But he couldn't let her, because right now saving Gref and his family was more important than anything else.

No matter what it cost.

It took Tal and Adras all night to fly to Four Rivers Meet. They had to make frequent stops for Tal to massage his arms and rotate his shoulders. Eventually Adras had to actually carry Tal, the Storm Shepherd's arms wrapped completely around the Chosen boy. It was somewhat humiliating, but Tal had long since given up caring about that. He was merely glad that it didn't hurt.

They sighted Four Rivers Meet shortly after dawn. At least Tal presumed that's what it was. Certainly he could see four rivers flowing in from north, south, east, and west, to meet in a crazy four-way delta of black mud and thousands of channels that made no sense to Tal.

How could four rivers all flow into the same patchwork of channels? The four deltas should end in a lake, but they didn't. At least one of the rivers should be flowing the other way. But none did.

The rivers just kept on spreading and dividing, their many fingers stretching across a wide plain. A completely flat plain, Tal thought at first. But then as the sun rose higher he saw that there was something in the very middle of the delta.

A mountain, surrounded on all sides by narrow streams and reedy islets.

None of it made sense. The water from the four rivers had to go somewhere. But the mountain was sitting where a lake should be.

Tal looked away and blinked and then looked back. But everything was still there. A huge mass of gray stone in the middle of a vast channel system that couldn't possibly work.

That's Aenir,

Tal told himself.

Aeniran Magic.

"Odris!" Adras exclaimed. He started to point, but remembered that he was cradling Tal and stopped.

Tal looked down. There was a ship below them, moving quite quickly along one of the larger channels. It sparkled in the morning sun, and Tal's trained eye picked up the glint of Sunstones. Many Sunstones.

He could see a dot on the deck that he presumed was Milla, and Odris was quite clearly the cloud that was twined about the mast. There was something else moving on deck, too, something small. Tal couldn't see what it was at that distance.

Adras started to descend. Tal closed his eyes and tried to think of what he was going to say to Milla. Would it help if he apologized? Did Icecarls apologize? Or would she just think less of him?

Should he try and stun her with a Blue Slap before she could do anything to him?

He wasn't afraid exactly. He just felt terrible. No matter how he tried, he simply couldn't think of Milla as someone whose life didn't matter.

Then he felt a bump as if they'd hit something solid, and he opened his eyes. They hadn't hit anything, but Adras was suddenly climbing, very quickly.

"Adras!" Tal shouted in sudden panic. "What are you doing? We're supposed to be going down!"

"Updraft!" Adras boomed. "A hot air current, too strong for me to fly against. I am only a cloud."

"What!" Tal screamed. Desperately he tried to think of something he could do. They were rising so rapidly that he was beginning to feel faint. They must already be thousands of stretches up, as high as the Seven Towers back on the Dark World. Far too high to build a Stairway of Light.

"How do we get down?" he shouted.

"When the air cools, we will fall," Adras roared. "Have patience!"

"But I can't breathe!" gasped Tal.

Adras was silent. Tal had already noticed that his Storm Shepherd companion had trouble when he had to think new thoughts or consider how other beings lived.

Cool air, he thought. Somehow he had to make the air cooler. But how? He could make it hotter with his Sunstone, but not cooler.

Then it came to him.

"Adras!" he shouted. The shout took most of his breath, and the next words came out as little more than a whisper. "Rain! Rain will make it cooler!"

"What?" "Rain!"

"Ah! Rain!" bellowed Adras. He swung his arms forward, so quickly Tal thought he was about to be thrown off into space. But he was only shifting him out of the way. The rest of his cloud-body roiled and rippled, spreading out into a broad circular shape and becoming even puffier.

The cloud grew blacker. Tal rolled onto his side so he could see. He could already smell the fresh scent of rain, and the temperature dropped several degrees.

It got colder still and there was a hideous grinding noise inside the Storm Shepherd. Tal saw flecks of white appearing in the darkness of the cloud. Then large chunks of ice started to fall.

Very large chunks of ice. In fact, gigantic hailstones the size of Tal's head. Some were thrown out at a sharp angle, narrowly missing the boy as he twisted and turned in the Storm Shepherd's arms.

With the hailstones, the temperature dropped to freezing. Slowly at first, the Storm Shepherd began to fall.

"I said rain!" shouted Tal as they fell faster and faster. "Milla's down there somewhere, you idiot! She could get killed by a hailstone!"

Then the cold really took effect, and cloud and boy dropped as fast as the hailstones.

"S000000000rrrrrrrryyyyyy!" boomed Adras.

"Slow down!" shrieked Tal. But his voice was lost in the rush of their descent. He was shivering uncontrollably now, the chill of the wind making the icy temperature even lower. He felt as cold as he ever had out on the Ice.

But now he had a Sunstone, Tal thought. Several in fact. He hadn't really had time to examine the ones he'd taken from Hazror and he wasn't going to start while he was dropping like a stone from the sky.

Tal held out his hand. His fingers were already blue and he could hardly feel them. But the Sunstone glinted there. He focused on it, willing it to warm the air around his body.

At first he thought he'd failed. It was one of the simplest spells that almost any Chosen child could perform with a Sunstone. But he was still freezing.

Then he realized that he just couldn't feel the heat, because the cold was so intense. He'd have to increase the amount of heat the Sunstone put out.

He concentrated again and felt a wave of heat come off the top of the Sunstone and blow back around him. Some went into Adras as well.

They were still falling almost straight down. Tal risked a look, but his eyes instantly filled with tears from the rushing wind. Even through teary eyes, he could see that the river was very close.

Tal told the Sunstone to put out even more heat, but there was a limit to the amount it could radiate outward without heating up the ring and burning his finger. Waves of hot air billowed off it, but it was not enough to counteract the cold.

"Haaaaannnngggg oooonnnnn!" yelled Adras, and the Storm Shepherd reared back. Their vertical descent turned into a long glide. They were still dropping but it now looked like there was a slight chance they would pull up before smacking into a channel or one of the muddy islands.

But they didn't.

Adras roared and Tal shouted as the water loomed closer and closer. Tal just had time to take a deep breath, a breath that was knocked out of him a second later as they hit the water.

Storm Shepherd and Chosen boy went under, a long way underwater and actually into the mud of the river floor.

Tal found himself trapped not only by Adras's arms but also by sticky mud that refused to let go. He couldn't breathe and he couldn't see. He flailed his arms and his legs as he tried to break free.

His whole mind was filled with panic. He just wanted to take a breath. He had to breathe. He had to suck something into his lungs.

Even if it was water.