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ORIGINAL DRAFT - PRE-EDITING

This story was written as part of the 2016 National Novel Writing Month. It was written without edits between 12:01am, November 1st and 11:59pm, November 30th.

This story was written by David J Rust, aka Sylvan Scott, and is in a pre-edited state. The characters, situations, and concepts herein are property of the author and may not be distributed or altered without express, written permission.

Skylands: the Scorpion Spear, Prelude: "Winds of Ice"

©2016 Sylvan Scott

Ice chips and freezing, sharp needles broke against Rith's thick, white coat as he squinted against the storm. His tatters of clothing barely kept his body warm, battered as they were by the elements. Even his oxen-hide boots, the gift of a sympathetic tradesman from Elmwall trading post, barely kept his paws from fading into numbing cold. But he had heard the call and ignoring it would be impossible.

The winds had come unexpectedly out of clear, late-winter skies. And while unseasonably bitter and violent storms were not rare, the duration and ferocity of this one was beyond his twenty-some years of experience. But it was that experience that kept him alive. He had started towards Bartharran three days before there was any whiff of unusual weather. He had managed to leave Elmwall without trouble. That, by itself, should have told him that bad times were ahead. Indeed, his trek across the ice-shrouded, summer trade roads had gone so well, he figured he had put nearly fifty miles behind him in ten hours. He had travelled that well, going deeper and deeper into dagdarra territory, for two more days. It was a shorter route but more dangerous. Still, it was what he was used to. Cast out the summer before adulthood, he had spent the ensuing decades traveling far from where most ramessin would tread unless on the hunt.

And he, small and weak as he was, would never be mistaken for someone called to a hunt.

The winds, though, had shifted.

In less time than it took to dig a furrow, the skies had begun to darken. Thin, wispy clouds billowed into bulbous, ugly giants--ominous and scowling over the distant mountains--and spiraled to intersect his path. The snow that began to fall was, at first, unusually thick and warm. It matted against his white fur and stung his sensitive nose. He licked at it, absently, and it even tasted different from other snows.

In what way, he could not articulate. It was wrong, somehow. Not just its large wetness in tundra lands where it should be thin and dry but its very taste smelled of something alien and wrong.

When he had been young, others of his clan at Outpost Fayre, had seen him as an outsider. He'd been touched, branded as both weak and unclean from birth, but not without reason. He saw things others did not. His sense of smell was even stronger than that of other ramessin. His hearing, though, was strangest. He heard things others did not. He heard whispers in the night and shrill cries from under the ground. It was spirits he heard, the priests told his parents. But his markings, dark against his people's normally fully-white fur, identified him as one of a dark aspect. It would be unlucky to kill him, or allow harm to come to him, but Rith was avoided from the day he first told mother he had seen the raven-like form of the goddess pointing into the sparse woods up towards the dam.

When it broke, two days later, and flooded half the town, everyone avoided him.

He had experience with being unable to describe what it was that he sensed. This snow fit into that category. It had been wrong from the beginning: carried on winds that smelled just as alien.

Blue skies faded to grey and, soon, swirling snows darkened his horizons.

In the six days that followed, he went on all fours like ramessin's wolven cousins, and pushed towards his goal.

He wished, not for the first time, that he knew from where this compulsion arose. Something about the great, northern trade city called to him for the first time. He had seen it before, like most ramessin who lived in the northern wilds. Those rural folk, like those of his clan and family, sent all young men there to fill their duty to the state. They were trained with rifle and sword from age thirteen through seventeen. Then, based upon aptitude, they would either return to their clan or seek a life in military, politics, temple, hunting, or trade. He hadn't been accepted for any.

It still hurt, and not merely from the additional memories of wounds from thrown rocks or cutting jeers. Being cast out of one's clan was one thing. He had never felt like he belonged in the strong, wilderness town of his birth. But to be told in the heart of northern civilization that his accursed demeanor had no place there, either, cut him as badly as the freezing winds did, now.

For half a generation he had lived on the fringes. He smelled many strange things; heard many secrets whispered from under the earth. But none of those things had felt as wrong as this storm.

Despite it, he made his way onwards. His sense of direction was excellent and although hunger gnawed at his ribs from within, it wasn't unfamiliar. Bartharran could be no more than a day away: even in the storm. His early clear-going had helped, significantly. And although the strange, dark storm had persisted for a week, his shift into quadrupedal form had helped.

The sharp hills and cliffs that stood stalwart to the northwest of Bartharran were now behind him. Thin stands of redwood and ember formed bulwarks to protect him from the worst of the tundra's rage. He knew he must be getting close. But the longer he ran, nose to the skies to catch any scent of the bronze city's forges, the more confused he became. He had passed several old, boarded-up mines. There were hundreds to the north of the city. They were twisted and broken, providing some shelter but not enough to warrant him stopping. Rith didn't smell any food in the air and the few creatures native to the woods kept out of his detection. He felt turned around, like he was coming at the city from the wrong direction. But then he would find a trail or a small, rural road and be reassured that he was, indeed, on the right track.

The tremors started that morning when he woke.

He started awake and ran from the now-suspect safety of the old mine he'd sheltered in. Few ramessin slept in wolven form; it was considered uncouth. But he was already an outcast and, besides, he often had to run at a moment's notice. Rith found himself in his four-legged form far more often than not.

The tremors came and went sporadically as the dim, storm-shrouded daylight pushed towards a dark approximation of noon. He shivered constantly and felt weakness gnaw his stomach. He ate six pinecones, forcing them down to fill his stomach with the illusion of sustenance. He needed meat and he needed it, soon. If he could get to Bartharran, his accursed appearance would make him unwelcome but would also ensure no one simply let him die. That double-edged sword tinged his life, cutting as it saved. He could only hope that the fact he could smell nothing on the storm-tossed wind of the enormous city, that he was heading in the right direction.

Empty mine after empty road after empty trail spoke that he was going in the right direction.

He descended the hills. Ahead, he saw a dark, granite ridge. It looked like the Shield Fan but that would mean he was coming from the west and not the north as he had thought. He had been turned around, after all. But it also meant he was close.

Up ahead, a scissor-like cleft pierced the steep cliffs and, sure enough, there was the Shield Road coming along the base to climb via switchbacks towards the top. From there, he would be less than two hours from the western gate.

A beggar's hope spurred him on. Storm assailing him from all directions, he made his way to the road. Pushing against cold and hunger, he climbed towards the top. After an hour, he arrived.

Old watchtowers from the Ulri Dynasty still stood, carved into the cold rock on either side. But despite them being historic monuments, they appeared abandoned. All windows were shuttered and there was no sign anyone had been here in several days. He briefly considered breaking in but he was no thief. Below, blotted out by the wind and snow, was the city. There, he would find a temple. And although they would despise him, he would have food and respite before they turned him out, again, to live in the wilderness.

He blinked against the wind and sniffed the air.

There was still nothing.

There were remnants of something, of his extended people and their trappings, but they were only that: remnants. It was as if the wind was scouring them away.

He shifted to his two feet, wolf fading into wolven as he stood. His clothing emerged from the magic of the transformation, cloaking him in a bit more warmth. The winds swirled with curtains of white fading into grey. He couldn't see any shapes beyond them.

Then, for just a moment, they separated. For a few precious seconds, he saw down into the Bartharran valley.

He was, indeed, standing at the western apex of the Shield Road. To his right, he could just see the frozen shores of the Semm river as they clattered down in waterfalls to meander to the Fourth-Water river, at the valley's floor. There, where they converged at Upper Lake Alva, Bartharran would stand looking south where the waters, frozen but still moving, would forge the vast, meandering, Iseine Way as it made its way south.

But Bartharran was not there.

There was nothing at the bottom of the road. The icy Semm waterfalls clattered over rocks and cliffs and splintered hills to fall into...

Nothing.

The Bronze City was gone.

Granite Heath, as well as Lowpass Vale, had become lost in the storm. Moreover, the world above them along the mountain slopes, was nothing but swirling, dark grey. The winds muffled the settlement's sounds while the swirling ice and snow muted its taste in the air. Even the distillery was lost to distance and the weather. Ered Watchword did not allow his concerns to show. Although only two of his party were new to his command experience taught that the most threatening rifts grew from such fertile ground. He was not about to give it any opportunity.

"Check the leaward side," he said. Chiding Oben seemed most of his duties on this trek. "Dig deeper; you'll find sign of bulbs big enough to eat in seconds, if they're there at all."

The young dagdarra nodded and knelt. He dug his two, thick fingers into the snow while splaying his hand's two thumbs like spades to dig, deeper. Both antlers and rear cuspid horns cast slightly darker shadows over his work. And although he dug in earnest, Ered knew that Oben would find nothing. The spire of ice jutting up from the sub-ice ridge was angled in the wrong direction. He was, indeed, digging into the snow opposite the wind but this wind was blowing in a slightly different direction. After Oben showed no signs of stopping, Ered snorted and shook his heavy head.

"That's enough; if you've not found any bulbs by now, there aren't any."

"Are you sure?" Oben's voice was higher and lighter than most. Were he not dagdarra, repleat with thick neck and barrel chest, his words could have come from one of the rammesin. Not that Oben spoke their tongue, to Ered's knowledge, but like the wolves his tone was more high-pitched than was proper. "It could be deeper."

"If you dig any deeper, you're likely to turn up a tundra scorpion nest," Onid said.

Oben pulled his hands back, swiftly. He scowled, searching for signs of the poisonous pests. Of course, there were none.

Oben's sister, she was the more cautious of the two yet still qualified as one of the two in the band Ered worried could be spooked by the unnatural weather or their slow rate of travel. Yet her steadiness of heart also meant she would be less fearful than her brother. Also, her training under Balmyrra in the temple, would have her stoic in the face of most dangers.

"Do they live around here?"

She shook her antlered head and idly rubbed her left, forward-curved mandibular horn. "Oben: even if they did, they would be sluggish in this weather."

He looked skeptical.

"Besides," Ered said, "what have you to fear from a scorpion stinger? Your fur and thick skin would turn aside any bite or scratch."

He looked unconvinced and joined Orven who was digging, more successfully, near a knob of wind-smoothed stone. Orven was the largest spearsman in the party. He also was the most experienced on treks across the Blue Ice. Not that it was blue, now. The storm cast everything in a monotonous white and grey.

They had been slow to depart Granite Heath and the weather had decimated their travel. Had the skies been clear, not only would their home be visible by distant columns of smoke at the horizon but so would be the fortresses that climbed the three vales up towards the peak. But the skies were not clear. The Blue Ice tundra was not blue. And their shaggy brown and tan coats, even protected with heavy cloaks, did much less to assuage the cold. Ered snorted and watched the faint mist of his breath escape his nostrils and quickly become lost in the storm. Normally, no mist formed at all from a dagdarra's nostrils but in this weather, it was painfully cold.

Damn the seer for her visions.

Damn all those in the temples who sat warm, by their fires, while soldiers and those less secure in their social standing, had to go out to satisfy curiosity. Seven days' longstride from where the Dead Hills tumbled down from the lower slopes of the Salt Sisters were before them. Seven days now magnified many times over by the weather. Saechi'i had sworn her vision from B?nor was urgent. And all it took was the word of that old, withered priestess to send Balmyrra running to the elders with word that a troop must be mustered and sent to see what could be seen beyond dagdarra territory at the Alapak canyons.

Dagdarra, when motivated by urgency, could traverse sixteen leagues of tundra in a single, winter's day. Their long stride and crescent hooves supported a steady yet swift travel. Their muscle and layers of fat also meant they could walk for long times without tiring: relatively warm in their tundra home. But there were enemies out on the Blue Ice. Although usually eastward and not west, the direction in which Ered led his troop, the ramessin hunted these lands. And with speed being an issue, they had few weapon-bearing hands between them. If there were any wolves out here on the Ice...

But it did no good to dwell on such eventualities.

Right now, it was most important to increase their speed. Pausing for Balmyrra and Tel to dig them ice domes to sleep in for the night had been a luxury but it would give them chance to better plan their way, tomorrow. The storms, as some had predicted, had not broken while on their first day. And, so, teaching Oben and Onid to find peckt bulbs, preserved in the frozen ground beneath the pre-spring snows, had been a sufficient diversion. Having not found any, though, it had become annoying.

"We should head back," he said.

By now, the priestess should have finished blessing the site of their camp and Tel would have the first two layer of snow-packed bricks in place. They would eat from their rations rather than find any frozen vegetation. B?nor's gaze was clearly upon them.

Damn her ever-hungry eyes.

The four dagdarra rejoined the other two at their camp. To Ered's pleasant surprise, Tel was finishing the third wall of ice blocks while Balmyrra had completed the consecration and moved on to arranging their sleds into a wedge against the wind. She had started a fire in between them to keep their rations from freezing to the core.

Dagdarra ate large amounts and, as such, only tended to travel well-provisioned. The stores of roots, grains, rices, and dried fruits would get them most of the way to their destination but their bodies would feel it if they couldn't supplement their journey with foraging. The storm and the season were playing havoc with that plan but Ered had faith that once they were in the shadows of the the Salt Sisters, their chances would improve. Hardy mountain apex wandered the foothills and, despite the barren appearance of the landscape, hosted them well enough through the winters that dagdarra could find food, too.

"Orven: take over for Tel. Tel: warm yourself and take a break."

Tall, even for a dagdarra, Tel smiled gratefully and made his way to the fire. Balmyrra, wordlessly, gave him a clay cup of hot tea she had been brewing. He smiled to her and bowed in reverence to her station.

"Thank you, Almara," he said. "Blessings upon your shadow both here and next."

She did not smile in return. Her blunt muzzle, if anything, drew into a tighter line of expressionlessness. She nodded in Onid's direction as she came into the fire wedge.

"Unpack my pots and herbs," she said. "We'll starve and freeze at this rate, unless I call us some warmth."

"Yes, Almara," Onid replied. Quickly, she busied herself at untying the priestess' packs and rooting about for her dried herbs and holy tools.

Ered helped Orven pack snow into ice blocks for the fourth ring of their overnight shelter. "What do you plan, Balmyrra Almara?"

She raised her brow and frowned. "Ah, so you have become a priest since last we spoke, eh?" she rasped. "Know the ways of the temple, too, no doubt?"

"As much as you know the ways of scouts," he said. At her expression souring, he quickly added, "Much more, I think, than I." Pleasing the old, sour priestess would make their night go more smoothly and, honestly, it cost him nothing to heap false blandishments upon her aged shoulders to keep her moving in her own circles and away from his.

She snorted, flaring her nostrils and narrowing her eyes. He had no doubt she knew he did not respect her. But she respected herself far too much to make a scene.

"I will craft us a path," she croaked, trying to clear her throat. She edged her way closer to the fire. "High Seer Saechi'i may have seen fit to band us together under your guidance but for all your experience in the ways of the tundra, we still fall behind schedule." She took three bundles from Onid, brusquely. "A brew that will lend our strides greater strength such that even the coldest of B?nor's farts won't slow our passage."

Ered spied Onid hide her face in shame at her teacher's words but also noticed her brother hide a smile. He didn't need practice hiding his expressions of amusement at the old priestess' heretical blasphemies. It was, honestly, the one thing he liked about her. She showed as much respect for the goddess as he held veneration in his heart. He didn't doubt her sincerity of belief but he also didn't think her as enraptured as most of the temple set. It would be interesting, he thought, to see what would become of Onid as her apprenticeship continued under the old priestess' tutelage.

"Surely, Almara," Tel said, "you do not compare our blessed lady's seasonal winds to such ...base... expulsions!"

Tel, Ered knew, also didn't put much store in holding a prayerful tongue, despite the sincerity and piety of his beliefs. But he also liked to rile the priesthood when he could. It seemed the one, sure way he had of assuring himself that life was nothing more than the small happinesses one encountered on the way to the grave.

"You think B?nor thawing from her eternal death sufficient to not smell?" Balmyrra said. "When the dead no longer smell is the day I will admit our goddess of death's farts do not cut us to the bone every damnable winter."

Again, Onid hid her face. This time, though, Oben was unable to stifle his laugh.

Balmyrra ignored them all, though, and began unwrapping her belongings.

Dried leaves and roots, carapaces and dessicated spiders, powders and dried wax of unknown origins, and even frozen blood inundating a swath of frost cotten; she unpacked them all and began the slow process of measuring and combining them in exacting order with specific utterances beneath her voice.

Ered motioned for Oben to help with placing the lightweight roofing arch above the walls the others had raised. In all, they would be a tight fit that night. But they would be safe from the wind; warm in their bodies' heat.

The worked diligently, positioning the framework of light branches beneath their tarp of cotton cloth. Then, they piled mounds of snow atop it and pressed it from on top and from within the snow dome. When they were done, it was sturdy, even against the brutal winds. The fire wedge reflected heat towards the arched entry.

The sun, unseen beyond the darkness of the clouds, had faded considerably.

"We had best conceal the light," Ered said.

Oben looked about to speak when all of them heard it. Shivering across the tundra and slicing between shards of fractured, upturned ice and frozen plants, came what sounded like a howl. So similar to the ramessin's hunting cries, it even sent a chill down Ered's spine. All of their ears perked up--even old Balmyrra's--and swivelled to find the source of the sound. Eventually, though, Ered snorted derisively.

"The wind; nothing more," he said.

"Are you ... sure?"

Ered was a Watchword of Granite Heath and sixteen season leader of the Blue Ice patrols. He was not used to having his word questioned, especially not by a young buck only having just this past spring finally grown his adult antlers. But before he could chide Oben, Onid stepped up and snapped one of Oben's ears with a fingertip.

"Show respect!" she admonished her brother.

"But it sounded--"

"Respect!" she repeated, snapping his ear, again.

Oben frowned but said nothing more. Instead, he bowed his crown of antlers towards Ered.

Ered nodded and motioned for the others to move inside. Even Balmyrra did not voice dissent, despite her brewing and concocting clearly not yet complete. She took some hot stones from the fire and placed them in an iron pot to keep warm and went inside, first. One after the other, the rest entered for the night leaving Ered to cover their fire and take stock of their surroundings.

Even with Balmyrra's priestly rituals and strange magic, they were far behind. The seer had not said what they would find: only that they must find it.

A rumble shook the ground and, for a moment, Ered felt fear. So turned around had he gotten during the day's trek, he briefly worried that he and his patrol had wandered out onto a frozen lake that was, now, threatening to break beneath them. But, no: there were tufts of brown grasses poking up, here and there, from the snow and ice. They were not so turned around that he had led them into bad camping grounds. But the rumbling, the tremor, was joined by others before they finally faded.

He stared into the night, wishing for starlight by which he could see.

Of course, there was none.

For a moment, he thought he heard the strained wind howl, again, but it vanished as quickly as it arose.

He buried all but the easily-rekindled embers of their fire and squeezed in to join the others.

"Three gods," he heard Balmyrra telling the others, heretically. "Three deific dictum approach. That is what she told me. I know nothing else."

Ered wondered what question she was answering or even if anyone had spoken at all. At times, he wondered if the old priestess' mind was going. B?nor, their one--true--goddess waited for them all at the end of their lives. Perhaps it could be that Balmyrra's mind had gone ahead of her body.

It was said that it could happen.

"Three," the old woman repeated, and turned her attention to her alchemical creation.

Outside, the wind howled.

White crystals, like smokey quartz, studded the brown and grey rock in deposits the size of buildings. Each radiated a pale light as if, deep within, colonies of glow bugs danced and flew. But the illumination was broken by strokes of blue lightning, bursting from the the stormwall edges and lancing across the sky. Even from the distance, safe on Erryth's shores, it was a daunting and terrifying sight. The height of the clouds reached up to fade into the blackness of the night sky. Thin strips of high-altitude clouds seemed stretched--torturously stretched from their lazy paths--to feed the roiling, rotating storm. Even ten miles way, the sounds of it were reminiscent of a rock quarry.

None of the observers, however, were scared.

Awe, would have been a better word, had Marek felt like describing the impact the monstrous storm had upon him. Although never having seen one this large, he had seen many before. But even if he did admit to the feelings of respectful fear that such weather always arose, a greater emotion was that of resentment.

He doubted the others felt the same.

It had taken them a week to hike this far into the aptly-named Tempest Hills and they had camped, here, for an additional fortnight before the clouds had begun to form. Lady Cyan, bringing her bodyguards and her scribe, had paid good coin for Marek's guidance. She said it would be at most a month although she had not stated what they were waiting for. Marek wondered if she had even known, for sure, before it appeared.

And while their equipment had included telescopes and three every expensive modus navigati, he thought the lady's interest had been, at best, purely astronomical. When the clouds appeared, however, and began to descend from the edges of the distant sky edge, that was clearly not the case.

Bennet sat at his small, collapsible table on a three-legged camping stool. He had gone through a full inkwell already, today, and was nearly halfway through the next. His quill moved with a swiftness as his small, brown eyes watched the weather, intently. Although gusts of wind buffeted him, he held his parchment down and seemed not at all distracted by his fine, brown fur being ruffled by the weather. Even his long, hairless tail did not move. His whiskers twitched but, by now, Marek had realized they did so when he was particularly focused and intent. A third Marek's height, the mouse-like scribe was nothing if not dedicated.

The weathered fabric of the lady's pavilion tent whipped and rustled in the gusts. Her scaled fingers poked through the tied-shut flaps and deftly undid them before sliding out to join the others. Her long, lower body undulated in a side-to-side serpentine pattern.

"Six days," Marek said to her. "You sure know how to charter a fascinating expedition, my Lady."

"Words are insufficient," she agreed.

Coming to stand next to him, her upper third put her head about equal with his. Two-thirds of her body stayed upon the ground. Bundled in a thick coat, with her serpentine lower body also wrapped in bands of warmth, she crossed her arms and gazed through golden, slitted eyes at the sky.

Marek did not bow to the jessai'id. She had disabused him of that formality upon hiring his guidance services.

"Tell me, my wolfen friend," Bennet said, without removing his eyes from the sky, "how do you normally define 'fascinating'?"

Marek smiled, his grey fur being tossed by the wind just as much as the scribe's. "Out of the ordinary."

The thaylene, nodded, and kept writing.

"It certainly is that," Lady Cyan agreed.

Her name suited her. While most jessai'id were a deep green, her hide and scales were more bluish and tinged with red. Her blunt, short muzzle only displayed her sharp fangs when she spoke.

"Did you expect this?" he finally asked. Marek had wanted to know for a while, now.

She shook her head. "No. I knew there would be ...something... but even the derros did not reveal specifics to me."

He nodded.

"Have you noticed something odd?" Bennet said, after another few moments.

"Aside from a storm stretching north and east beyond all sight; hundreds of miles, if not more?"

The thaylene took his eyes from the sky and nodded to Marek. "Dragons," he said, simply.

Confusion briefly crossed the wolfen's face but Lady Cyan nodded.

"There are none," she said.

Bennet nodded. "Exactly. So where did the storm come from?"

Marek scowled. "Perhaps they're above it? It's so large, that--"

"There have been no storm dragons at all," Bennet said. "I've been watching the sky since we arrived. I logged every observation in the days leading up to the appearance of the stormwall." He put down his quill and steepled his delicate, small fingers. "Besides, storm dragons have mile-wide wingspans. You think we'd miss them after nearly a week of watching the sky?"

"But then, how--?"

"Who knows?" Lady Cyan said. "And perhaps that's the reason my derros sent us here."

Marek did not put much stock in the divine servants of the gods but Cyan had a fragment of one guiding her, dwelling within her soul, and he had seen her invoke potent effects from its presence. She wasn't a priest, really, but the derroni seemed to eschew most classifications: even theological. Priesthoods tended to revere them, sometimes instruct and bring them into the clergy, but the derros chose from all the people of Talvali: not just the religious.

He glanced up towards the sky, seeing movement from the corner of his emerald eyes. "Look! Skyships!"

Indeed, two galleons soared with full sails extended--both above and below decks--catching the winds and lifted aloft by the elemental air crystals studded in their hulls. They paralleled each other for a short time before one with crimson sails peeled off to the north.

"If they attempt to pierce the stormwall, they'll be destroyed," Marek said.

"Without a doubt," Cyan replied. She curled one clawed finger tip beneath her chin, as if pondering something.

"Lady?" Bennet asked.

"It's a risk they may take but one we must."

Marek looked surprised. "Are you joking?"

"No." Pausing in thought, again, she watched as the nearest of the skyships climbed, higher, while growing farther away. "No, I am not joking and you, Marek, are under contract to lead us where we need to go."

The wolfen couldn't stop himself from a short, sharp laugh. "Then if you are not joking, you're mad," he said. He ignored Bennet's scowl at his remark. "Lady, I am an expert on Erryth. You hired me, here."

"You also told us you have travelled to many cloudlands and lightlands; that you were experienced in their varied conditions and peoples."

He nodded. "Yes, but that doesn't include driving a ship through a stormwall!"

"That is why I have Reita and Keerg with me," she said of her bodyguards.

"They're experts in piloting skyships?"

"They served as raiders before entering my service," she confirmed.

Bennet now looked a bit concerned. "Lady, forgive me for saying so, but serving on board a skyship is worlds different from piloting one."

"Besides," Marek added, "even the best pilots always wait before attempting passage through a stormwall. Days after they appear, they weaken enough to make such passage possible. Even then, it's dangerous before the dragon storm has fully died down. Are you saying your bodyguards are expert, enough, to take a ship through?"

The jessai'id smiled calmly. "Your concerns are noted; they are even welcome. Arrogance often accompanies derroni. I appreciate you bringing your doubts to me. But Reita was a pilot for more than two years before leaving her guild and Keerg is the most skilled flier I've ever seen."

"They're gryphons," Marek objected. "Flying under wing power is not the same as flying a vessel. A vessel, I might add, we don't have."

Lady Cyan looked back to the skies, running her finger under her chin, once more.

Above, the vast storm swirled and roiled. The bottom of the largest new island any living person had ever seen, emerged. Rubble dropped from its edges, ground by the winds into dust. Mist trailed the vast land and plumes of snow streamed behind it in narrow bands. The land was unknown but it was a cold one. Ten or twenty times the size of a normal lightland, it was daunting. In thousands of years of recorded history, no one had ever seen a dragon storm of this size. But, then again, this one had not been conjured by dragons.

The mounting mysteries and coincidences bothered Marek, more, and his awe was starting to turn to fear.

"Three," Cyan muttered in her soft, lilting voice.

"Beg your pardon, Lady?" Bennet said.

"Nothing; just an ... insight. A voice in the back of my mind..."

Marek frowned. Despite knowing she had a fragment of a godly messenger in her soul, voices in the head was more reason to distrust the derroni than follow her guidance. Before he could speak, however, Bennet shouted and pointed to the sky.

"Look!"

In the afterglow of a stroke of lightning, each of them spied the sight of a small airship--barely a flyute--skimming the underside of the emerging island. It had come too close and scraped along one of the rough spires of stone beneath the new land. Already, an aerial lifeboat was being launched as the yellow-sailed vessel began to go down.

Lady Cyan nodded. "Make yourselves prepared," she said. "Bennet, fetch Reita and Keerg. We must pack to go."

"Where?" Marek asked, dreading her response.

"Why to catch our ship, of course," the serpentine woman replied.