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The day was stuffy and sticky, and Albryan’s horse seemed full as irritable as himself. The tall grey mare tossed her head over the dewy grass and only picked at the oats he offered her. The entire situation made Albryan uneasy.
The late cold had not lasted long; only a day after he had taken leave of Thinas in Tenna, rain had fallen from a leaden sky, and the day after that, the heat had settled in, growing ever worse as Albryan rode to the southeast. Back in Tenna, the breeze coming off the still-snowy peaks of Svanlyn might serve to stir up the air and lave the heat somewhat, but in the marshy dwarf forest he travelled now, there was no such relief. The trees were low and stunted here, an abundance of thorn-bushes and wild figs and long plains grass all crowding in for space on the boggy soil. The land curved downwards, forming a bowl-shaped valley with slopes so gentle you would never notice the swamps until you were right on top of them.
Albryan kept well clear of the known swampland, traversing the very edge of Morgein territory, the cool forest sometimes seeming so near that he could smell it. Yet he well knew that he was no longer in Qwu’Mallorn. He had passed the border three days ago, and had felt the comforting touch of the country-wide magical shield leave him, along with all the magic of the forest that sheltered behind it.
The swampland around here was not a friendly place to bring an army. Yet there had been skirmishes here recently, hordes of Arran’s nonmage soldiers suddenly appearing out of the brushwood to challenge the patrols. Thinas did not know if they were amassing somewhere near the swamps, or whether their command lurked somewhere close by. That was what Albryan was hoping to discover.
Sweat dampened the auburn curls over his brow and trickled down his neck. The stubbly beard that he had grown since leaving Tenna prickled his skin in the heat. He was dozing in the saddle, and had to sternly shake himself awake. His horse passed a pile of dung lying in the long grass, and he bent to take a look. More than a month old, disintegrated. There were tracks, but they were old, and petered out after a few feet.
Albryan passed a hand through his hair, vainly hoping that some air might stir and cool his head. As yet he had found nothing to follow. A few traces, months old, faint tracks that led nowhere. The traces had become more numerous as he travelled south, but the men who had left them seemed long gone.
The sun was nearing its zenith, and Albryan decided to stop for lunch, allowing the mare to graze. The heat had sapped his appetite, but he forced himself to chew on a sticky nut-cake, washing it down with swallows of water. Even the wild berry bush he sheltered under seemed to have wilted with the heat. For a moment, he entertained the idea of stripping off his armour, but decided against it. Something made him uneasy, despite the fact that he was almost certain there was no-one else within range.
He would have dozed, but there was a prickling on the back of his neck, a feeling as if he were being watched intently. He could not shake the idea that something was lurking in the long grass, watching from the shelter of the thorn-bushes, ready to strike.
Albryan stood up. Ignoring the instinct which entreated him to glance over his shoulder, he closed his eyes and rooted his stance, letting the magic flow through him, connecting him to the earth beneath his feet and the world at his fingertips. His breath slowed and evened out. The world dimmed, the bright sunlight beating on his eyelids and the hum of miscellaneous insects in the bushes.
In this half-trance, with the physical sensations of his body muted, Albryan could pick up what his magical senses were trying to tell him.
The answer came immediately, and so strongly that he cursed himself for a fool. All through the scrubby bushes and long grasses that surrounded him, the slimy sense of an alien magic rustled.
Albryan opened his eyes and the world rushed back. Every inch of skin felt as though it were prickling with sorcery, now. This was no magic from the Forest of the Morning. He could feel the difference, the unease, whereas within his homeland the constant background of Mage-Gifted felt only normal and familiar.
Albryan had never actually faced one of Arran’s brood before, never tested their magic for himself. One of the blood sorcerer’s children was somewhere nearby, had walked in this bush only a few short hours ago and left their residue for anyone who had the Gift to sense.
He had time. Time to decide what to do. If the source of this magic were close enough to harm him, he would know it. And yet this uneasiness had been growing on him all day, and even now was intensifying with every moment that passed. It could only mean that this blood sorcerer was drawing closer.
Albryan walked over to the horse, unsaddled her, drew the riding bit out of her mouth. It was pointless to try and hide. Anyone with even a trace of the Gift could sense another. The stronger the Gift, the stronger the presence in the ether felt to others. This one was very strong, and Albryan was sure that they could feel him just as surely.
Spurred by instinct, he wandered along a narrow path that he had taken for an animal track. He had not gone far before he was jolted to a halt. Before him, stretched between two trees, a silvery spider’s-web wavered and glinted in the sunlight.
Albryan drew a deep breath. No spider had spun this web, even if it were possible for a spider to have grown to that size. Magic clung to the webs like dew. A lovely trap, he knew. He thought of slashing at the web with his sword, which was edged with silver, but decided against it. Although magic gave way before silver, there was an edge to the magic that made him uneasy. It was more than likely that whoever had created this spell had woven some kind of failsafe into it, a trap in case he tried to break it using this simplest of resolutions.
He wandered around for another hour, during which he discovered more of the magical webs, nearly a dozen in total. He returned to the horse, paced around and wondered whether he should leave this place. Those webs were set up to catch something, and their creator was drawing closer.
But Thinas was relying on him not to flee. If he could meet one of Arran’s children face-to-face—kill them—
So then it will come to a showing of strength, the magic of the blood sorcerer against the best of Qwu’Mallorn.
Albryan held no pretensions regarding his own Gift. The magic had been strong in him since birth, and had only been fine-honed during his nine years of military training and practice. He was the best soldier that Qwu’Mallorn had to offer: how would he fare against one who had augmented their natural Gift with the life-force of others, drawn through blood sacrifice?
He shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed up at the sky. Clouds were moving over the sun, damping the heat. Albryan knew that it would be past nightfall before the blood sorcerer drew close enough.
As the day drew to a close, Albryan found the tallest tree in the area and scaled it, settling himself against in a nook where three branches came together. With a commanding view of the surrounding countryside, he felt safer. After securing himself to the tree-trunk, he drifted into a doze. The air was not so clammy up here, and sleep took him quickly.
––––––––
He awoke with a start, and stared out into the night. It was pitch dark. He was anchored securely against the tree, though one foot trailed off the wide branch into space. Albryan brought that foot up, wincing slightly at the scrape it made against the branch in the night’s silence.
He glanced up to find the moon. Nearly full, it had moved past its zenith some time ago, and now lay close to the horizon. It must be early morning, though the birds had not yet begun to sing.
The presence of alien magic lay thick upon the earth, so strong that Albryan could taste it in the back of his mouth. It tasted disgusting. Albryan had never felt anything but comforted by sensing magic before. Even on the occasion when he had practised duelling against others, when a sudden flare of sorcery had stood his hair on end and burned metallic in his mouth, Albryan had never felt this sense of revulsion. “What does magic taste like?” Elithan had once jested to him. “Like copper pennies.”
This magic, thought Albryan, tastes a lot more like fire and blood.
The promise of battle beckoned. Albryan fumbled with the knot that held him to the tree. A cool breeze came up, and he shivered for a moment. He had slept in his armour, and the silver-plated steel of his breastplate was icy cold to the touch.
He lingered in the tree, making sure his sword was within reach. The bush below was pitch dark, and he could faintly hear the snoring of his horse. Any descent from the tree would be heard immediately, if anyone was down there. Albryan wished, not for the first time, that his magical senses might be more precise. He knew that the enemy was close, maybe even within his range of vision, but he could not pinpoint their exact location.
Magic, however, was not the only resource available to him, and Albryan gently chided himself for not simply using his mundane senses in the first place. He waited in the tree; watched, listened. Like any experienced scout, Albryan knew when to trust his gut, and this was one of those times.
All his senses, his gut, his eyes and ears and even his nose, were telling him that there was no-one at the foot of the tree.
Albryan dislodged himself from the branches, and hopped down from one branch to the next, making a lot more noise than he would have liked. His boots finally hit the ground with a thud, and he swivelled, scanning the uncertain shadows of the brush around, hand on the hilt of his sword.
There was no-one within sight, and Albryan relaxed infinitesimally. He tended to his most urgent morning ablutions and looked for the horse. She was sleeping under the tree where he had left her. Albryan retrieved his saddlebags from where he’d hung them in the tree before sleeping. He took a handful of trail mix to eat, chewing as he paced in the humid air, washing it down with water from his tin flask.
This was all the preparation he could spare. It was time to find his foe at last. Albryan began to circle the stand of stunted trees, looking for any sign of an intruder, ready for whatever might come at him.
He had not gone far, only a few dozen paces, when he saw the spiderweb.
Albryan halted in his tracks, willing his racing heart to calm down. Though the entire area around was criss-crossed with these sticky magic webs, there had not been one this close to his tree last night. The sorcerer had been here whilst Albryan was sleeping, and had woven this without waking him. The idea of someone wielding such subtle magic, of moving so quietly beneath the trees, made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His mouth went dry.
Albryan approached the web, looking carefully for any signs of the sorcerer’s passage, which way they might have gone. This sorcerer was as good a woodsman as magician, however, and had cleverly concealed their tracks.
He turned away from the web. Something glittered in the corner of his eye.
Albryan’s hand had already been on the hilt of his sword; now he drew it in one fluid movement. He arranged himself, instinctively, into a defensive stance as she stepped out onto the trail before him.
Her armour was beautiful, exquisitely tooled and fitted to her slim, athletic body. The silver plating dazzled him as the dawning sunlight reflected from interlocking scales that covered her from head to foot. The armour Albryan wore was well made and quite expensive, but it could not match something like this. This was the kind of armour that noblewomen on the Council commissioned for their daughters; the kind that tended to hardly see any fighting, but was sure to do its job if ever it did.
He had the feeling that this woman’s armour had seen more fighting than its owner could rightly reckon up.
Above the gleaming mail, a face as perfect as the armour she wore peeked out from beneath a decoratively tooled, close-fitting helmet. She was grinning, and Albryan registered her beauty even as the blood in his veins turned to ice. Long hair the colour of spun gold flowed in a silky braid from underneath the helm, and slanted eyes the intense blue of sapphire regarded him with something like amusement. She was as lovely as a carefully polished and faceted diamond, and just like that diamond, there was a hard edge to her beauty. How could there not be? Albryan’s breath hitched as unbidden fear caught in his throat. She was her father’s most favoured child, the most ruthless killer he would ever meet. There was nothing tender or soft about her, no matter how deceptively feminine her beauty. She was Dannine Sylvaissen, once Dannine Ebraskaia, the shadow who hunted by night.
That she had appeared before him at the break of day only made Albryan all the more uneasy.
“You may as well put your sword away.” Her voice was melodious, as lovely as the rest of her. She had not drawn her own weapon, a slim, curving sabre sheathed at her hip. A smile played around her lips.
“No thank you. I prefer to have something against your magic.” Half surprised by how steady his own voice sounded, Albryan shifted his pose, wishing that the magic spiderweb were not quite so close behind him.
“As you wish.” She drew her sword, the silvered blade gleaming in the early rays of waking sunrise.
Even though Albryan was tense with anticipation, he still could not believe how fast she advanced upon him. In a heartbeat, she was close enough to strike. The slim sword flashed towards his face then back again, searching for an opening, forcing him to parry wildly and fall back. She moved like a dancer. Albryan matched her, the two silvered swords clashing together like the sound of ringing bells.
She drove him back, step by step, towards the spiderweb.
There was no escaping it; her advance was too aggressive, too fast, and he could not find an opening against her.
Albryan pivoted, letting the tip of her sword nick the leather of his thigh armour, and slashed his blade in a great stroke across the tendrils of the web. As he had hoped, the magic parted, curling up into the still air and dissipating like smoke. He launched himself through the opening where the web had been, and turned to face Dannine again.
Her smile did not falter for a single moment; in the face of death, Dannine Sylvaissen reflected only joy. She came on again, pressing the attack without even pausing for breath. She drove him halfway down the trail, hammering at him, appearing in openings he couldn’t anticipate.
She was driving him towards another web, he knew, and he dove to the side, landing in the long grass beside the trail. She threw a web of magic from her hand, glowing in the ether. He dodged it, but silvery tendrils snaked towards him all the same. The web made contact with his right hand, dug its tendrils into him. He could feel a numbing pain in his fingers. The web snaked up towards his wrist, clawing itself further into him, threatening to crawl beneath his armour.
Albryan dropped his sword and seized a silver-edged dagger from his belt, knowing that he must stop the web before it was able to embed itself. With a swift movement, he drew the silvered blade down his wrist, severing the tendrils of magic from his skin, flicking the web aside as if he were skinning a stubborn tropical fruit. The blade of the dagger nicked the back of his hand, and droplets of blood flicked away along with the web.
There was no time to recover, for Dannine had already sent another, larger web flying towards him. Albryan let go of the dagger and dove for his sword, rolling clear of the approaching web. As it hovered in mid-air, reaching for him, he swept the sword around and through it in a wide arc. The magic dissipated, and the web withered.
Dannine approached again, driving him back towards the trail. Albryan spared a moment to gather some energy, and threw a firebolt at her. She deflected it without even pausing in her advance.
Albryan cursed himself for a fool. That had been an unnecessary expenditure of energy, and he could already feel the drain on his resources. He was not thinking straight, he realized. She had sapped his fighting energy; she had the upper hand. Every move of his was made in desperation.
She was upon him again. He could not believe how a fully armoured fighter could be so fast.
He had gotten disoriented, Albryan realized, and he didn’t know in which direction he was moving.
Albryan quickly glanced over his shoulder. A sticky spiderweb stretched out behind him, waiting close.
That one glance had cost him; there was an opening for her to strike at his face. All in half a heartbeat, Albryan steeled himself for the blow, though he knew it would probably kill him regardless.
The blow never came. She continued to press him further back. She hadn’t taken the opening.
She didn’t want to kill him. She wanted to capture him alive.
The idea of being taken alive was far worse.
In the last heartbeat as she drove him back towards the web, a memory flashed across Albryan’s mind.
Three years ago, he had been leading a small group of scouts, most of them around nineteen, fresh out of training. It had been his first command as captain. Nothing too challenging: reconnaissance. They were to locate a contingent of Arran’s soldiers, watch their movements and send word back to the senior officers. Everything had been going well until Albryan’s second-in-command, a young sergeant named Niaston, had suddenly disappeared.
Albryan had never seen Dannine, nor even gotten close enough to sense her magic. Their position had been given away; they won the ensuing fight with the soldiers they had been tailing, but at the end of it, three-quarters of Albryan’s brave young scouts lay dead. Afterwards, he had gone out on his own, injured and heartsick, to find out what had happened to Niaston.
Dannine had taken the young sergeant, interrogated him, then left him for dead whilst she vanished to only her dark goddess knew where. Niaston had still been alive when Albryan found him.
Albryan was no stranger to death. He had dealt death himself, in many varied and savage ways. He had buried more soldiers under his command than he cared to keep count of. What Dannine had done to Niaston—that was beyond savagery, beyond any necessity of war. Albryan had stayed with the young sergeant until the bitter end, unable to touch him, nor even to mercifully hasten that end. Watched as Niaston’s own magic unravelled from him like the stinger of a bee would unravel its own viscera, just as fatal, and inevitable. It was the first time that Albryan had seen what blood magic could do. It had seared itself across his memory—what Dannine Sylvaissen did to those she took alive.
Anger boiled up inside Albryan, and with it came steel-cold determination.
Pivoting to the side, narrowly avoiding the clutches of the sticky web, he offered Dannine the same opening once more. Once more she failed to take it, and Albryan struck into the space when she hesitated, his sword raking the gleaming scales at her breast. She fell back, surprise naked in her eyes, and he struck again, sending her reeling. Her sword fell from her hand as she staggered back.
Albryan turned and brought the sword down to sever the web behind him.
In a flash of silver, Dannine interposed herself between him and the web, catching the sword blade in her gauntleted hand.
Albryan heard the crunch as the gauntlet shattered into her palm, saw blood spurt from her hand as she caught the sword. She did not even flinch.
She was a breath away from him, the end of her braid flicking close enough to touch. She was tall, for a Morgein woman, but Albryan still had several inches on her, with the corresponding weight. He let go of the sword and lunged at her, catching her on the shoulder when she dodged the heavy blow aimed at her face.
She pivoted, allowing him to bring his arm around, and landed a blow in his chest with her knee. He came on, undeterred, and she raised her hand, made a clenching motion with her fist, spoke an arcane word of command.
The magic web behind him unfurled itself from the tree and wrapped around Albryan, sinking into every inch of exposed flesh. Sudden numbness enveloped him, and he could not even scream as all feeling was sucked from his face, his arms, his legs. He collapsed, coiled in the web as securely as a fly wrapped in spidersilk.
Dannine was panting, but the brilliant grin was back on her face. “I’d won the moment you saw the web,” she said. “You were only too stubborn to see it.”
She peeled the shattered gauntlet off, standing over him. Blood dripped from her hand. “All that silver in your armour is hindering my spell, though. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll have to do something about that.”
She picked up her sword and pivoted the hilt towards his face. She crouched down, hefting it in her hand.
Albryan saw nothing but blackness, and heard only the rattling of Niaston’s last breath.
––––––––
When he regained consciousness, he was swaying. There was a hollow, sick feeling in his gut, and his head hurt. He opened his eyes and saw bushes going by beneath him. How could that be?
A wave of dizziness and disorientation washed over him, and he closed his eyes again. He was moving, he realized at last, but his hands and feet were bound. The web-spell was wearing off, and he could feel his body again. He realized, all in a rush, that he was trussed up and slung over a horse’s saddle.
He opened his eyes again, and this time there was no disorientation. He was slung over the saddle of his own horse, and as he looked ahead, he could see that Dannine was leading her by the reins. He was being taken somewhere, doubtless for her to question at leisure. Albryan’s gut went cold at the thought. He knew more of the army’s movements and secrets than most common soldiers, although Thinas had always taken care not to trust him with too much information for this very reason.
What did she want to know? Was it possible for him to mount a defence? Albryan struggled against the chains that bound his hands. He recognized the cold-burning sensation of silver against his wrists. It was a simple yet highly effective way of preventing a sorcerer from casting any spells—simply chain his hands and feet with silver.
Dannine looked back as he squirmed, that irritating grin on her face again. “I’m sorry I had to do that,” she said teasingly. “But you wear far too much armour. Think of all the weight I’ve saved you.”
She had stripped Albryan of everything except his shirt and pants and shoes. His armour and weapons had vanished; he supposed they were back in a bush somewhere. Perhaps a passing patrol would find them and realize what had happened to him. Albryan could only hope. He was close enough to Qwu’Mallorn that they might mount a search for him. He might be rescued.
The horse gave a loud whinny of distress and jerked to a halt, half-rising onto her hind legs. Dannine gave her bridle a savage jerk and pulled her head down, glancing at Albryan mockingly as if she had overheard his private thoughts. Albryan lifted his head as far as he could, craning to see what had distressed the mare.
There was a clearing in the brush in front of them. Albryan’s breath caught in his throat as he saw what lay in the clearing, and he knew all his hopes of rescue were futile.
The creature was at least twenty feet long, from its clawed hind feet to the top of its bulbous, grotesquely overlarge head. It was an oddly formed thing, covered in iridescent blue-green feathers, with two powerful hind legs and a short humped back. Its twiggy front legs supported a pair of enormous feathered wings, which fanned out ten feet to either side as it crouched on all fours before them. Its muscular, reptilian neck was as long as a great tree-snake from the jungles of Sanghui, and thick enough to have swallowed either of them down in a single gulp. The bulbous head supported a gleaming-sharp beak that added eight feet to its already impressive length. As Albryan stared, it opened that savage beak wide and gave an ear-piercing scream directed at Dannine, who stood her ground. Albryan’s horse gave a panicked neigh and danced back.
Albryan knew the beast from a picture in a book: it was a quetzal, a flying lizard-bird from the faraway Pirate Islands. As he watched, it reared up on its hind legs, almost twice as tall as any of the trees in this scrub woodland, flapping its enormous, brightly-feathered wings wide against the air. The horse rolled her eyes in panic, straining to move against an unseen compulsion. Albryan realized that Dannine was holding the mare with magic, preventing her from running.
The quetzal gazed down at Dannine and gave another insistent scream. Dannine lifted a hand. The monster flinched back, showing fear despite the fact that it could easily have lifted Dannine in its beak and snapped her in half.
Dannine released the horse’s reins and strode over to where Albryan hung. The horse sweated in fear as she worked a simple magic to lift Albryan’s body and set it down some distance away.
Dannine looked the feathered quetzal in the eye, making a movement that was something like a bow and something like a gesture of allowing. From his prone position on the grass, Albryan thought fleetingly that there was actually something rather beautiful about the creature. Its feathers sparkled like jewels in the midday sun, and its enormous wings folded and unfolded with a queer grace as it moved on claw-tipped feet towards Dannine.
Dannine stepped away from the horse.
The quetzal pounced with a deafening shriek, catching the horse’s head in its beak, severing it with a sickening rip and crunch of bones. Blood sprayed like treacle across the grass as the dead mare collapsed. The quetzal swallowed its bite whole and moved back in. This time it went for the horse’s belly, reaching in with its sharp beak to withdraw mouthfuls of ripped hide and bone and gore.
Dannine stood near him, watching the quetzal feed with folded arms, the surface of her calm demeanour completely unruffled. She looked over at him with a smirk.
Albryan found his voice at last. The effects of the web were wearing off, though he still hurt all over, especially in his head.
“Why did you do that?” he demanded. “That was a good horse. War-trained.” One of Albryan’s jobs as a recruit had been to groom and feed the horses of the army, and the grey mare had been born whilst he was still a skiff in the stables. Albryan had attended her dam at her birth.
She raised a pale eyebrow. “I have my reasons. And I have no use for a dumb beast of burden.”
The horse’s carcass was gone now; only blood-smeared grass and some ribbons of tack remained. Albryan felt queasy. If they sent a search party out for him, and came upon that... they would be baffled, but they might assume that the blood was his, and give him up for dead.
“Come on.” Dannine dragged him to his feet, using magic to augment her strength. She pulled him forward by the chains around his wrists, nearly yanking his arms from their sockets.
The quetzal shrieked and cowered away from Dannine, almost as if it feared a slap. Albryan could guess that the slap the creature feared was in truth one of magic.
“Shut up,” Dannine growled. The quetzal fell silent, and bowed its long neck in a gesture of submission. Albryan saw that a kind of leather riding harness had been fixed to its humped back. Handles were fixed to a ring around its lower neck, and this in turn was attached to a saddle, stirrups included, that draped over its withers. The saddle stretched out over its back with plenty of space to carry baggage.
Albryan froze, fighting Dannine’s grip. Now he knew what she planned. Despair settled in his gut and rose up to suffocate him. It didn’t matter if they sent a search party. They would never find him. Not when he was being taken through the air, as though snatched up by a great bird.
“Where are you taking me?” he demanded, trying to pull back. This had never happened before. Arran Sylvaissen had never shown the slightest interest in taking hostages. Whenever men disappeared, they were always found soon afterwards, dead or alive. Sometimes the blood sorcerer’s armies would kidnap civilians, mostly children too young to fully control their magic, or village people whose Mage-Gifts were extremely weak, but that was a different matter.
All of Albryan’s struggling availed him nothing, as he should have known. With silver encircling both his wrists and ankles, the circulation of magic through his body was cut off from both the physical world and the wellspring of the ether. Like it or not, he was going to be strapped to the back of that thing, and this trip would be infinitely more terrifying than the one he had just endured athwart his own horse.
“You ask too many questions.” Dannine wrested his body into place like a sack of meat, strapping him down over the quetzal’s back.
“Couldn’t you just let me sit upright?” Panic tasted bitter in the back of Albryan’s mouth.
Dannine smirked. “Why on earth would I want to do that?” She paused a moment, checking that all the straps were secure. “I suppose I could tell you where we’re going, if you haven’t figured it out for yourself. It should be obvious. Whom do I serve?”
Arran. She was taking him to Armour City, four hundred miles away. As the quetzal flies, anyway. He felt giddy with despair. He wanted to close his eyes, but they remained transfixed upon the ground.
Dannine seated herself in the flying saddle. Albryan could feel his pulse pounding against the bonds that held him.
The quetzal spread its mighty wings, tucking its bloodstained beak down in front so it sliced like a rudder through the air. It began to run. Slow at first, ponderous, then gaining speed, faster and faster. It skimmed over the ground like a destrier on a cavalry charge. Grass and mud blurred before Albryan’s vision as he lay head hanging downwards. He was utterly terrified, and yet a tiny part of him was also exhilarated. The quetzal was faster than a horse, faster than anything he had ever experienced. Ten times faster. Fifty times faster.
The quetzal’s great wings began to flap, beating the air before it, as if it were forcing substance into utter nothingness.
There was a moment of lifting, a great exhilarating leap into the unknown. Albryan’s insides, which were hanging upside down, rushed sickeningly towards the wrong place. There was a pounding pressure upon his head, and he could see nothing but a grey blur, hear nothing but the creak and beat of the quetzal’s wings. He wanted to vomit, but there was far too much pressure. It surrounded him like a great hand, squeezing the breath out of him.
Somewhere above, somewhere around, Albryan thought he heard Dannine laugh in childlike delight. But that couldn’t be. Dannine was death in human form, and nothing more. The air was rushing past him, too fast for him to breathe. He was hallucinating, hearing things.
Blinded and deafened, Albryan lost consciousness as the quetzal soared into the sky.
