Shadow Read online

  "You'll need it all," the eaglet said grimly. "Ever seen one of these?" He produced a metal cylinder with a black triangular thing on the end of it, and Shadow shook his head.

  The object was very ancient, Vonimor told him, dating from the Old Times, and perhaps even from the Holy Ark itself. It contained air, which he had forced into it with an equally ancient pump, and he showed how the black thing fitted over a man's face and how a twist would release a puff of the air. Such a rarity was beyond price, and Shadow now began to believe that the two men were indeed betraying their duke and not him. There was also food and a great coil of thin rope--and that also must be a sacred relic, for it was made of neither silk nor hemp nor any material he had ever seen. There was a grapnel attached to one end.

  "Kiting?" he groaned.

  "Take it," Vak insisted. "And pray you don't need it. Lad, I would not try that road for anything. I know it's been done, but more have failed."

  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 do
wn, 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 Shadow fighting NailBiter.

  The glacier itself was a rock pile, with only small traces of ice showing and deadly teeth looming unexpectedly out of the night. Some of the boulders were as large as Hiando Keep, small mountains. Those giants provided lee air and slightly easier flying for a moment--and then made up for the respite with the icy fury of their turbulent edge winds.

  Shadow had lost all count of time, and he had no idea how long the battle went on, until he suddenly realized that the ground was right there in front of him, and NailBiter grabbed a rock and stopped. He was finished--a bird could not carry a man far on muscle power. Shadow was lying prone, with his head against the feathered back, and he could hear the pounding heart.

  They rested, man and bird, as the wind moaned its triumph and dug ice talons deeper into Shadow's bones. When NailBiter's pulse rate had dropped to a more normal level, Shadow moved to the next stage. He took a sheep's leg from his baggage and tossed it forward.

  Snap!

  Two minutes later they were airborne once more--the mutton had been doped with a trace of batmeat. In very small doses it acted as a stimulant. That was how his predecessor had died, he remembered, when some young aristocrat had tried the trick while in the prince's company. The difference between stimulation and madness was razor-narrow, and now he risked the same fate as Vindax, if he and Vonimor had misjudged the amount.

  But even batmeat had its limits. Four times he doped his eagle and NailBiter surged forth with new strength. But Vak and Shadow had agreed that four was the most they could risk--a dead bird would be of little use. The final dose produced only a short progress, from which NailBiter took a long time to recover, crouching low to his rock and trembling violently. He could fly no farther.

  The frozen desert of dark and rock and cold still held them, sloping more steeply now, but still they had not reached the crest of the pass. There was only one desperate measure still to try.

  "Good old buddy," Shadow said. "You've done your best. Now for a new trick."

  NailBiter had never been taught kiting; Shadow had never seen it done. He untied his coil of rope and grapnel, slid from the saddle, and started to walk, scrambling in the dark over the boulders. Every step was a torment for tortured lungs, and he needed to stop frequently just to get breath.

  When he guessed that he had come far enough, he wedged the grapnel between two rocks and started to return, paying out rope, stumbling, falling, panting...Idiot! He should have tied the other end first. What if he could not find the bird? The thin air was shriveling his brain.

  But he did find NailBiter, and with fingers already numb inside his mitts, he fastened the other end of the rope to the saddle girths. He threw the rest of it loose on the ground, climbed aboard again, and took a hard grip on the end closest to the grapnel.

  "Okay, Naily," he muttered. "Let's kill ourselves."

  He made the signal that meant "spread wings," and bird and rider whirled upward while Shadow let the rope run through his mitts, waiting nervously for the jerk when it was all gone. NailBiter sensed the drag of the rope and almost panicked. Shadow needed about four extra hands, but somehow he kept control. Then came the jerk, spinning the eagle around, and for a moment Shadow thought they would be smashed down against the rocks.

  They were not; the rope did not get tangled around the bird's neck; the grapnel held. Now NailBiter was a kite--the wind lifted him, and the rope held him. Man and bird rose higher and higher until the tether was very close to vertical. Then Shadow called for a dive. That was the trickiest part of all, for the rope must now stay slack or it would slingshot them into the rocks below. They landed roughly, and NailBiter showed every sign of wanting to become hysterical; Shadow stroked his comb and muttered words of comfort that he knew could not be heard.

  He tugged on the rope, but he could never be so lucky as to retrieve it that way. He clambered down and started to walk. It was not walking, it was rock climbing, but at last he reached the end of the rope, collected the grapnel, and started back. Now it was rock climbing and rope coiling combined. He reeled and choked in the thin air, but at least the exercise helped warm him a little, and eventually he was back beside the huddled shape of his mount.

  Again he stumbled forward and planted the grapnel between two monoliths.

  Two steps forward and one back--time and again he kited, walking his bird up the glacier. NailBiter caught the idea of it, as he always did, but showed no signs of enjoying the process. Shadow's mind was blank with fatigue, his feet and hands numb, and NailBiter was trembling and rebellious. Several times the grapnel slipped and then caught again, jarring bird and rider and threatening to snap the girth. The hardest part of all was paying out the rope away from NailBiter, for feathers and bird skin were not designed to resist friction, and if a wing became entangled, then their adventure would end at once. At last a sudden agony in Shadow's hand told him that his mitt had worn through. He let go by reflex, and the end of the rope came with a jarring crash--the rocks were close below and very nearly caught them.

  That was enough. When that last kite soar and dive were done, Shadow knew that he must stop. Perhaps some food and sleep would revive him enough to try again. Perhaps a break would even revive his bird enough for some more flying. They could go no farther now. The top of the pass must be very close, but it would have to wait.

  They were lucky. They had landed in the lee of a huge rock, and the ground beneath was relatively smooth, although anywhere else he would have called it a rock pile. NailBiter needed little urging to crouch down like a brooding hen; no doubt he was just as tired and hungry and frightened as his rider, although he would be suffering much less from the cold and the lack of air.

  Without dismounting, Shadow reached into his baggage and pulled out NailBiter's reward: one last, undoped sheep leg, a mere snack. He opened the blinkers and tossed the meat forward.Snap!NailBiter waited hopefully, but there was no more.

  Now Shadow climbed down, which was easy when NailBiter was crouched. He was shaking so much with cold that he could hardly unfasten the saddle, but it would be unfair to leave it on any longer. He pulled it around and spread it below the great curve of the yellow beak, which was still higher than his head. He sat down on it and cuddled close to the feathery chest to eat. The food was frozen solid, and so was his canteen. He should have guessed.

  Sleep first, then, and thaw out the food at the
same time. In an emergency, an eagle made a very good tent. It would not be the first time he had played egg to NailBiter, for that was part of standard Guard training.

  He found the bird hood and he had to stand on tiptoe to work it over NailBiter's head. He unfastened the helmet and let it fall.

  "There, Naily," he muttered. "You have a nice nap, also, and we'll try again." He reached up and rubbed the comb.

  His arm spread the bag. The wind caught it and whipped it off and took it away.

  In his numbed, air-starved confusion, he had forgotten to tighten the drawstring.

  Shadow found himself looking into the huge golden eye of an eagle at a range of about a foot. He had never done that. He had never heard of anyone else doing that and living to tell of it. He froze--and for a long moment nothing seemed to happen in the world.

  Hopefully he continued to rub the bird's comb, but he felt no answering rumble of pleasure. NailBiter was probably as surprised as he was.

  At least, Shadow thought, he had undressed the bird. Once he had digested his meal, NailBiter would be free to fly back to IceFire. His chances of reaching Allaban had been slim anyway, Shadow told himself. He was destined to die in this hellish cold, rock-infested darkness, and this way he would provide his bird with nourishment and one of them would escape.

  Still no attack?

  Shadow lowered his hand. Very slowly he crouched, fumbling around his feet to find the helmet. Was it possible that he could get it back in position before the beak bit him in half?

  NailBiter bent his head and nudged, and Shadow fell flat on his face.

  Then there was another long pause.

  "Well, get on with it, you idiot!" he yelled. "Don't play with your supper!"

  NailBiter started to rock, shuffling forward awkwardly, first one foot and then the other. Then a great wing scooped--and Shadow found himself in a warm, musty darkness, pressed between wing and breast, downy feathers tickling his face. The saddle was still below him, and NailBiter was above and all around. The wailing of the wind had stopped. There was only a steady thumping of the eagle's heart.