City of Jade Read Online Free Page B

did Valké see as he soared above Hunter loping below.
     
     
    Four leagues and a mile did the Draega run, circling wide of the dark stronghold and into the steeps in the north. Up he ran and up, the falcon sailing above. And then the ’Wolf came to a sharp rise, and up this he sped, and he topped the slant to trot onto a circular flat, and ahead and curving three-quarters ’round to the sides towered the hard face of a sheer stone bluff, trapping the small plateau in its looming embrace. To the midpoint fared Hunter, Valké spiraling down from above. And darkness enveloped the Draega, from which Bair emerged.
     
     
    The lad stretched out his arm, and Valké landed on the padded leather sleeve.
     
     
    Bair glanced to the south, where a league and a mile away stood the black fortress, central to the four in-between crossings—central to the nexus—for equidistant to north and west and south and east respectively lay the way to Vadaria, to Adonar, to Mithgar, and to a land unknown.
     
     
    Bair shifted Valké to the pad on his shoulder. Then, gripping the ring in his left hand, Bair began chanting, canting, pacing, turning, pausing, singing, gliding, while Valké on his shoulder glared down at the distant dark bastion, rage in the black raptor’s eye. . . .
     
     
    . . . And then they were gone from Neddra, their disappearance witnessed only by the yellow-brown snow drifting down from the umber-clad sky.
     

 
    5
     
     
    Vadaria
     
     
    NEXUS
LATE AUTUMN TO EARLY WINTER, 5E1010
[THE FINAL YEAR OF THE FIFTH ERA]
     
     
     
 
Yet stepping and chanting the rite of the crossing, Bair and Valké emerged onto a nearly identical stone plateau to the one they had left on Neddra; but, unlike the brown-tinged air of that world, here the chill atmosphere was pellucid and bore the faint aroma of the clean-smelling pine forest drifting up from the vale below. Snow lay upon the crests all ’round and along the slants ’neath, the white winging scintillant glitter to the eye in the light of the bright sun above.
     
     
    Valké sprang up toward the cerulean sky, while darkness enveloped Bair, from which Hunter sprang forth to run. Down the slope and across the vale he sped and toward a distant knoll, snow cascading in his wake, Valké above following, watching, warding. They were heading for a mountain cabin in which a Seer dwelled—Aravan’s beloved, Aylis.
     
     
    And in and about that cottage an assembly had gathered, Magekind all, and they waited for a falcon and a Draega to appear. Some rested before their tents, while others ranged the slopes, and a foursome sat at an oak-wood table out beside the steep-roofed cottage. But all watched the skies for the appearance of a black raptor.
     
     
    And as they did so, bearing a tray of steaming mugs, Aylis stepped out from the cabin. Reed slender she was, and dressed in brown leathers. Her light brown hair was cropped at the shoulders and seemed shot through with auburn glints in the bright sunlight warming the day. Her complexion was fair and clear, but for a meager sprinkle of freckles high on her cheeks, and her eyes were green and flecked with gold. She was tall for one of Magekind, the top of her head but a hand or so less than six feet. She bore the tray to the table.
     
     
    Sitting at the board were Alamar and Dalor and Branwen, all of whom had been at the in-between crossing when Bair and Aravan had first come on Winterday a full year past, with Valké terribly wounded nigh unto death. Dalor the Healer had managed to keep the bird from dying, and Branwen the Animist had discovered how to change the unconscious falcon back into an Elf, after which Dalor had saved Aravan.
     
     
    As Aylis began handing out the steaming mugs, “A Silver Wolf, a Draega, you say?” asked the fourth one sitting at the table—a somber-faced Mage. “The boy a shapeshifter?”
     
     
    “Aravan, too, Sorcerer Cadir,” said Aylis, “though he does not come by it naturally, as does