The Gossamer Plain (33 page)

“How close can you fly without raising their ire?” Vhok shouted to their guide. “I’d like to get a better look.”

The young man raised an eyebrow in wary surprise, but he nodded and guided the hippogriff closer. The trio circled the palace twice, not quite flying within the perimeter of the walls. Vhok spotted a female efreeti standing upon a balcony. She appeared to be watching them through a long brass tube. Her robes were colorful and gaudy, and he supposed she might be some vizier or advisor to the sultan.

On the third pass around the palace, Vhok leaned out as far as he dared to gaze into the inner sanctum of the sultan. He sought a particular locale within the palace, a great open courtyard.

He spied it.

The courtyard lay at the base of a large tower. It formed a semicircle around the spire, and a single causeway spanned it, leading from the door of the tower to a middling defensive wall beyond. That was their destination.

Vhok had seen enough, but needed a view from ground level. He leaned forward to shout instructions to the boy to set the hippogriff down near the purple fountain, but the words died in his throat as a crackling blast of blinding white energy engulfed them.

The hippogriff screamed in agony and lurched sideways in the sky. Vhok felt the pannier tip sideways and he began to fall out. He grabbed frantically at anything and his fingers locked onto the rim of the basket, but he felt no resistance, no

gravity pulling against him. He looked up and saw that the entire saddle and pannier had broken free of the hippogriff. Zasian huddled inside the other basket, but the guide and his mount drifted free.

Vhok spun himself upright and reached across the baskets. “Grab on!” he shouted to the priest.

Zasian pulled himself hand over hand along the ruined saddle and panniers until he caught hold of the cambion’s hands.

With a death-grip on the Banite, Vhok summoned the innate power within himself to slow his descent. As the cambion felt the two of them ease into a hover, the saddle and pannier tumbled away. A heartbeat later, the boy and his mount zoomed by, also falling from the sky. Neither of them flailed as they fell.

The half-fiend struggled to keep himself and Zasian aloft. With the priest’s weight, the cambion could not find the power to rise, but he felt certain that their landing would be slowed enough to avoid deadly injury.

Unless they were attacked again before reaching the ground.

Vhok whipped his head about, searching for the source of their misfortune. He spotted a figure above and behind him, riding upon a most unusual conveyance. The mount was a huge black fly that hummed and buzzed as it circled, coming closer to the pair of hovering companions. Vhok squinted to get a better look at their attacker.

Myshik grinned and steered his magical mount closer. The half-dragon raised his dwarven axe to strike at them as he passed.

The hardest thing to adjust to inside her son’s body, Aliisza realized, was being unable to fly whenever she wanted. Wings were as much a part of the alu as her eyes. Instinct made her want to leap into the air and soar with a thought. Remembering that she could not was more difficult than she imagined.

The transplanted half-fiend stood on the outskirts of a small village where Kael—she had finally learned her son’s birth name—was staying while visiting the House of the Triad. The village rested on one of the myriad floating islands in the celestial plane, larger than most and covered with lush green forest.

Tauran had brought her there, still cloaked in Kael’s flesh and blood, after he had tucked her own collapsed body into bed. He had seemed concerned about Aliisza’s condition at the time, but she noticed that he tried not to reveal his worry to the young man. He assured Kael that his mother would be fine, that she only needed more rest. Rest, and time to adjust to everything that was new.

Aliisza had done her best to play along, though she spoke as little as possible. She possessed but one chance to slip away

from the deva. If she revealed that it was her consciousness inside her son’s body, Tauran would learn the truth about her, about Kaanyr s journey, all of it.

If he discovered the deception, the angel would certainly prevent the alu from completing her part in the gambit.

After transporting Aliisza to the village, Tauran had left. “To attend to your mother,” he had explained. The alu was thankful for his quick departure, though she knew time was of the essence. Sooner or later, the angel would figure out her trick and come looking for her.

The others living within the small woodland community were all servants of Tyr who had journeyed to the House of the Triad for some reason or another. They had not died, Aliisza realized. They merely had business on the home plane of their deity and lived there while visiting.

Most of the residents were human, though she met one odd creature that named its kind leonal. That one exhibited traits of both a human and a lion, and Aliisza could sense its celestial nature. All of the folk living there seemed to accept Kael without reservation or prejudice. Though she suspected that her son had been among them for only a short time, they treated him as a life-long friend.

She slipped away the first chance she could, as much to put some distance between herself and all of that warmth and friendliness as to begin her tasks.

She hiked through the woods on the outskirts of the hamlet. She sought something quite ordinary, but she feared that she would be unable to find what she needed.

Who knows if mushrooms grow on this plane? she wondered. Did Zasian think this through?

She carried a small flask made of iron, with a stopper fitted into its opening. It was merely a beat-up container she had borrowed from an old woman who had spent much of her life

as an herbalist. The sweet crone hadn’t even asked Kael what he might need with it.

There, she thought, spotting some fungus. Perfect.

Quickly, Aliisza gathered the mushrooms, stuffing them into the flask. She crammed as many as would fit; she had no idea how many would be sufficient.

When she was done, she tucked the flask inside Kael’s tunic and considered how best to begin her journey. Again, the urge to leap up and fly hit her. The sensation of being grounded aggravated her a heartbeat later, and she nearly cursed in exasperation.

Then inspiration hit.

She had no wings, but that did not mean she couldn’t muster a means of flying. All she needed was a few bird feathers.

Aliisza spotted a nest in the lower branches of a strange, tangled tree ahead of her. She approached it and confirmed that it was occupied. She opted to disturb the birds only as a last resort, and instead scanned the ground beneath the nest. When the alu spotted the wing feather, she grinned in triumph. It did not take her long to locate three more.

Four ought to be enough, she thought. If not, then I guess I’ll be stuck out there. Until Tauran hunts me down, at least.

With feathers in hand, Aliisza drew a breath and focused her mind. Pinching a feather between her thumb and forefinger, she swept it across both her shoulders, as though stroking the place where her own wings might have been. At the same time, she incanted a phrase of magical power, invoking the arcane forces she needed.

When the litany was finished, Aliisza felt the magic snap within her. She knew, without being able to explain why, that she could fly. She trotted forward a few steps and jumped into

the air. Immediately, she soared up among the treetops and shot through a gap in the canopy.

The grace and deftness of the magical flight was superior to the alu’s natural talent. She had occasionally used it, despite her own wings, to maneuver more adroitly when needed. The only drawback to the spell was its limited time. She did not have a moment to waste.

Sailing over the tree-covered island, the half-fiend surveyed the landmarks she could see in the early morning sun. She spied one of the great mountains jutting up from the lower layer of clouds, disappearing again in an overhead blanket of white. She wasn’t certain which peak it was, but she knew the four of them huddled together, so that was het destination. She mentally urged herself forward.

The alu pondered her newly restored memories. She reviewed Zasian’s instructions about her destination. She remembered thinking that the seneschal’s words had sounded odd, his description nonsensical. But having spent so much time on the celestial plane, she better understood what the man had been trying to communicate. The explanation still struck her as bizarre.

As she flew, Aliisza watched for other denizens of the House. She did not want a confrontation with some angel wondering where Kael might be going. She knew that her chance of crossing paths with a local would increase as she drew closer to the floating islands, so she evaded them as much as possible, adjusting her course and altitude.

As the alu drew closer to the great peak, she saw that it was indeed the central mountain, Celestia. The divine crag seemed to have no beginning and no end, only endless slopes leading ever upward or downward into the cloak of clouds. The half-fiend followed the closest slope upward, ascending in earnest.

Within moments, she vanished into the thick haze of a cloud bank. As before, when she had yearned to escape the prison Tauran had ensnared her in, she continued to fly. Higher and higher she rose, but she no longer expected to reach the upper limit of the fog. She kept pushing the magic, struggling to attain greater elevation.

The air grew cold and dark. Moisture coated her skin— Kael’s skin, she reminded herself. It made her clothing soggy and chilled. She ignored it and kept rising.

The wind picked up, buffeting her. The rumble of thunder, still distant, reached her ears. She climbed, fighting fatigue, knowing her flight would fail soon.

When the arcane power waned, Aliisza felt as if she were trapped in a swirling maelstrom. A storm lashed at her, tossing her about. Rain and wind pummeled her borrowed body, and arcs of lightning crackled all around her, blinding and deafening her. The magic gave out, but it didn’t matter. She was no longer in control of her motion.

The storm itself held the alu aloft.

Aliisza gave in to the tempest. She allowed it to carry her wherever it willed. She didn’t resist, didn’t try to fight it. Those had been Zasian’s instructions, but the act took more courage than she could ever remember drawing from herself. She was sure she would die, ripped apart by the storm or dashed against the slopes of the great mountain.

After a while, the tumbling and spinning completely disoriented the half-fiend. She had no idea which way was up or down. She couldn’t even be certain she traveled in a single direction. For all she knew, the wind simply swirled her in circles, tossing her along in gusts like some rag doll trapped in a hurricane.

She closed her eyes to keep from screaming in terror.

When the rain and wind and crackling lightning suddenly

ceased, it startled Aliisza. One moment, the storm raged at its mightiest, and the next, she was skidding across a cool stone floor. The body she had borrowed tumbled to a stop in what felt like a shallow puddle of water. She flopped there, too exhausted to move.

For many moments, Aliisza lay where she halted, panting. Her heart thudded in her chest, and she could not muster the courage to open her eyes. The storm still roared, but it was distant, muffled. The smell of rain was strong and the air felt damp. At last, she worked up her nerve and took a peek.

The alu lay on the edge of a broad, still pool of water. A faint mist covered it, so that it blurred in the distance and Aliisza could not see the far side. A white marble floor veined with gold formed the edge of the pool, gently sloping down to the water like a sandy beach. It, too, faded into the wispy fog on either side of her.

Massive fluted stone columns made of the same stone rose from the water, rows and columns stretching into the mist. They held up nothing. No ceiling covered the pool—only a blanket of night sky filled with stars loomed overhead. The columns had no tops, nor were they jagged, broken things. They merely faded as they ascended, like ghosts shifting to some ethereal state.

No walls surrounded the space—the edges of the marble floor simply stopped, and the tops of great storm clouds stretched outward from there, rumbling with dull thunder and flickering with lightning. The light illuminating the place seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere. The water gleamed darkly and reflected the sky, and the mist hovering over it glowed with a pearlescent and heavenly essence.

The alu felt queasy in that place. The same sickness that had affected her in the presence of Tauran early in her stay washed over her again, even more acutely.

Slowly, with much trepidation, Aliisza sat up. She ached from her rough landing, but no part of her son’s body seemed seriously injured. Gingerly, the alu rose to her feet. Standing ankle-deep in the water, she listened for signs that she was not alone. The half-fiend detected only the faint dripping of water from her own clothing, and the muted rumble of the furious storm beyond.

Drawing a deep breath to steady her nerves, Aliisza took one tentative step farther into the water. It was neither warm nor cold. It merely felt wet, like a tepid bath. She took another step, and another, each one carrying her away from the marble shore and into deeper depths. After five steps, the water had risen to her thighs. After ten, it reached her waist. Three more, and she kicked off, swimming instead of wading.

The alu paddled slowly, listening. The luminescent fog wafted all around her, but was not so thick that she couldn’t still see the shore she had left. The water smelled clean and fresh, not foul at all, but it was utterly lightless and murky. The myriad pinpricks of diamond white in the night sky reflected in its surface, shimmering and bouncing as she disturbed it.

The half-fiend swam close to a column. The pillar was huge, the width of a cottage. She reached out and touched it, felt where it descended below the surface of the water. She dragged a toe against it, searching for a lower end, but it continued on. Taking a gulp of air, Aliisza dived downward. She kicked with her feet and ran her hand along the column. Down she thrust, pushing herself deeper and deeper, seeking the base of the column and bottom of the pool. She could find neither.