Karris squeezed his hand and her eyes sparkled, those jade green eyes with red diamonds in them. For some reason, her joy struck him more deeply than any disappointment could have. That joy was a reminder of sixteen years of joy he should have given her, joy stolen. He turned away, his throat tight.

The mountains loomed, and Gavin realized for the first time just how fast they were going. There was no hope of a splashing wet landing here. If the updrafts he’d expected didn’t catch them soon, he and Karris were going to paint a large crimson blotch across the face of these rocks.

Orholam, if there isn’t any wind at all, then there isn’t any wind to get thrown upward, is there?

He was beginning to draft a red cushion—hopelessly, knowing no matter how big he made it, it would be too little at this speed—when the updraft caught them. They were hurled skyward, the wings of the condor straining.

Karris shouted with exultation.

The force was incredible. It was hard to estimate how fast they were rising, but Gavin shortened the condor’s wings both to take stress off them and because Rekton wasn’t so far away that they would need that much height. The higher they were, the more visible they were. But it did make him think. With all the height he could get off of mountains, the condor’s range was vastly greater than he had assumed.

It was a thought for another time. Right now the problem was to stay low so they weren’t visible to all of Tyrea, and to lose some of the tremendous speed they’d built up. He drafted a bonnet the same blue luxin he’d used for himself when he jumped from the Chromeria. It popped open instantly, throwing both him and Karris forward, then ripped away almost as fast.

When they regained their balance, Gavin tried again. Green this time, and much smaller. He sealed the bonnet to the luxin of the condor so it didn’t tear him apart. It worked, sort of. They slowed a little. Now they were headed downward at merely ridiculous speeds. Gavin struggled to expand the wingspan again.

“What can I do?” Karris shouted.

Gavin cursed. He’d barely begun to experiment with changing the condor’s wings. In all his trials, he’d merely leaned to one side or the other and caught himself before hitting the ground or the water. Grunting with the strain, he lifted the front edge of the wings skyward. Point up to go up, right?

It was exactly the wrong thing to do. They pitched sharply downward. By the time he leveled off the wings, they were heading straight down. Worse, the suddenness of their drop meant his feet weren’t even touching the floor. He had no leverage to push against to continue to manipulate the wings. He threw luxin up to the ceiling to force his body down, and began locking his feet to the floor, but the eucalyptus trees were looming huge. He was too slow.

Then he was slammed to the floor. The condor dipped below the height of the trees, in a meadow, and then began to rise. It wasn’t going to make it.

Gavin reached into the luxin as the condor crashed through the branches. The blue luxin cracked and would have shattered if he hadn’t grabbed it. For another instant, he couldn’t see anything as they knifed through the trees, then again they were airborne. Heading up and up, steeper and steeper.

He finally looked at Karris. Her skin was a war of green and red. Her hands were braced against the ceiling and the luxin lines traced from both hands to the back of the condor. She’d taken control of the tail. It was flared, green, bent up. She’d saved their lives, but her eyes were closed with the effort, muscles straining to hold the tail up against the force of the wind.

“Karris, level it off!” Gavin shouted.

“I’m trying!”

“You’ve already gone too—”

Then they were upside down, heading back the opposite direction. Gavin’s shirt fell in front of his face, and when he pulled it out of the way they were leveled off—upside down.

“Don’t level off now!”

“Make up your mind!” she shouted. She was standing on her hands on the ceiling. Gavin locked her in again and together they turned the wings and tail once more. They were crushed to the floor as the great luxin bird swooped out level once more, only twenty paces above the trees.

Gavin breathed freely for the first time in what seemed like hours. He checked the condor. It seemed well enough.

“Did they see us?” Karris asked.

“What? Who?” How was she able to see so many things at once?

“Them,” she said, nodding.

Gavin looked toward Rekton. They were only a few leagues east of the town now, and it had indeed been burned. All of it. That meant either an incredibly strong red wight, or something else entirely.

And they were looking at the something else. There was a small army encamped around the town. It could only be Garadul’s men.

Orholam have mercy.

“No,” Gavin said. “They’d have to stare almost straight into the sun to see us.”

“Huh. Lucky, I guess,” Karris said.

“You call this lucky?” Gavin asked.

“What’s that?” she interrupted.

Below the town, after the falls fed into rapids and the Umber River’s rage finally cooled, there was a group of homes. Almost a village, but all the building were smoldering. There was a green drafter, skin filling with power, facing several of King Garadul’s Mirrormen.

“That’s a child!” Karris said. “Two! Gavin, we’ve got to save them.”

“I’ll bring us down as close as I can. Roll when we hit.” They leveled off ten paces above a plain of rock and brush and tumbleweeds. Gavin threw out a small bonnet to slow the condor again. It snapped open, but this time they were both ready for the whiplash and braced themselves. Gavin threw out another and another. They slowed down faster than he’d expected. The condor pitched toward the ground.

Gavin flung his hands out, blasting the condor to pieces. As they fell, he wrapped Karris and then himself in an enormous cushion of orange luxin, rimmed with a shell of segmented flexible green, with a core of super-hard yellow.

They slammed into the ground, the orange and green luxin slowing them before exploding from the force of their landing. The yellow luxin was formed into a more rigid ball around each of them. Gavin crashed through some bushes, bouncing and rolling half a dozen times before the yellow luxin cracked and spilled him unceremoniously onto the ground. He wiggled his fingers and toes. Everything worked. He jumped up.

“Karris?”

He heard a yell. Not a good one. He ran.

Karris sprang to her feet, twenty paces away. Her hair was askew, but he didn’t see any obvious injuries. He came to stand by her. “What is it?” he asked.

She glanced down. There was a rattlesnake at her feet, as long as Gavin’s spread arms. A dagger through its head pinned it to the ground. Karris’s dagger.

As Gavin stood there, mouth open, Karris put a foot behind the snake’s head and pulled the dagger out—with her hand, for Orholam’s sake, not with drafting. Sometimes Gavin forgot how tough Karris was. She wiped the blood off on a black kerchief the Blackguards carried for such purposes—black didn’t show hard-to-explain bloodstains. She shook slightly as she tucked the kerchief away, but Gavin knew it wasn’t fear or nerves. It took a body time to relax from the amount of adrenaline imminent death triggered.

Karris didn’t blame him for nearly getting her killed. She grabbed her bag and bowcase, strapped her ataghan belt around her narrow waist, checked to make sure neither blade nor scabbard had been damaged in the fall, and threw her bag on her back. It was like the sudden violence had reminded her of what she was—and of what they weren’t. Back on the ground, back to reality.