He picked up small anonymous stirrings that were certainly animal or bird and were too far from the general thought pattern for him to follow. But of anything stronger, more threatening, there was not a hint now. Lord-One Krip, the globe half-muffled in his hand, led again, but Lady Maelen clung to his belt rather than accept Farree's assistance and the winged man was alone. Cautiously as he went he fanned the wings slightly, not daring to trust to them but sure that they needed that stretching and drying. He had peeled the rest of the rags of the shirt from his body and used those to sop up the runnels of moisture which dripped down his shoulders across his chest, which was no longer squeezed forward but was slowly coming into line with his shoulder points.
Winged! What was he then: some species so far removed from those with whom he now traveled that they would find him utterly unnatural? He watched the two moving through the dark, outlined only by the feeble glow of the light, and wondered what would happen to him now. In some ways he longed once more for the familiar weight on his back, the old knowledge that he was handicapped by something that could be understood.
Now he needs must keep those new appendages clipped close lest they scrape against the stones between which many times they had to squeeze a narrow passage. Yet they went so slowly, perhaps because of the Lady Maelen's deep fatigue, that his awkwardness had time to disappear. With each step he took there was a new confidence rising in him.
The fact that this rift among the heights must once have had meaning grew more and more evident the farther they went. The dark openings on either side were so cleanly cut that he knew them to be of the same fashioning as those in the valley where the Thassa had their meeting place. What lay within those portals the two he followed apparently had no desire to see, for their path was ever on.
They came at last to a place where the narrow slit widened out into something which was a sky-roofed valley. Yet not one like unto that of the Thassa meeting ground, for here the desert aridity was lacking.
Above the radiance of Sotrath and the third ring was once more open, and the land before them was brightly illuminated. There was the glisten of moon rings on water, for the whole center of this basin appeared to be a lake. That body of liquid was buttressed about by a thick cloak of vegetation such as Farree had seen nowhere else on this world.
Large growths of trees which supported looping and tight vines made a wall about the lake. Farree, without ever thinking of what he did, eager only to see ahead, used his wings for the first time – fanning the air and leaving the ground.
He immediately discovered that flying was an art that must be practiced, as any other exercise. His initial soaring was too abrupt and carried him up too far, the rhythmic beat of his newborn wings was something he had not mastered, and he made leaps in the air rather than sustained flight.
Still, those leaps had been enough to show him that the lake encircled an island that was so centrally placed that it might have been the pupil in a great unblinking eye. On that island there were walls and a tower not too unlike that from which the flitter had lifted him days earlier.
His two companions made no attempt to force a path into the thickly cloaking growth but had collapsed rather than seated themselves on the last space of open ground before that dense stem and branch began. The Lady Maelen sat with her head turned up to the sky, her eyes fixed upon the glory of the third ring, her mouth a little open as if she now drank sip by sip from the brilliance. As Farree watched, perching a little above the two on a last outcropping of fallen rock, she stretched wide her arms as one waiting to embrace something or someone before her.
Lord-One Krip sat with upturned face also, but his eyes were not on the glory in the sky but on Farree, as the winged one realized. And there was wonder in his face which was slowly overcome by an expression of purpose.
"What lies beyond?" he spoke rather than thought. Perhaps he feared that thought send might interrupt what the Lady Maelen was doing.
"A lake and on an isle, in a ruin, a tower." Farree answered promptly.
"Can you reach it over that?" Lord-One Krip motioned toward the thick intertwining of the growth. It was only too plain that without some form of cutting tool they could not hope to blast a path farther on.
"I can try." But still Farree was distrustful of those wings. They were too new, too far removed from all he had ever knowledge of, for him to truly believe that they could be successfully used to climb into the sky more than on the short soarings he had already attempted with more than a little bemusement and uneasiness.
Purposefully now he fanned them slowly, turned his head as far as he could to sight their sweep. They were not feathered—he had already determined that with his hands reaching behind him – rather they seemed to be covered with a skin which had a soft, velvety texture almost like close-shorn fine hair. Now he stood and dared to take a small leap into the sky using the wings to support and sustain him. He had discovered a bit of the beat which would lift him and applied that rhythm.
Up he went into the splendor of the ring-bright night. When he was sure, having rounded in a circle over the other two, he ventured out above the growth, fearing to have his wings fail and let him fall down into the matted vegetation. But awkward as he was, he was learning with every movement he tried, more and more of what it took to steady himself in the air, to do what humanoids had always wanted: reach the clouds.
Only there were no clouds here – just the darkness of that tangled wood which ringed the lake, the sparkle of the water which reflected the third ring, and the island beyond.
Out over the lake he beat his way, not trying any high soaring as yet. Then he was above the island. There was growth here, too, but not a matted wall of it such as grew on the shore. Here were tall plants scattered in clumps, heavy with flowers wide open as if the moon instead of the sun brought them their nourishment. From them came a heavy perfume so that Farree, as he flew over them, felt as though he bathed in the scent. And his mental search brought no hint of life here.
He came in, to settle on the wall which ringed the tower. Now that he was close he could see that time had not struck so heavily here as it had on that castle where the Guild had taken up their den. Rather this surface was smoother than any stone he knew of and it was near white in color, veined darkly with straggling rivers of lines and splotches. There was glitter, too, from points along those paths of darker shades, and when he touched a near one he felt a roughness as if there were some other thing, perhaps a gem, inset in the veining.
Along that wall he walked, using the wings to steady and balance himself, looking down into the interior of the place which was wide open to the glory of Sotrath. There were no other buildings within. Only that tower, and it was thickly agleam with the sparks of fire such as passed beneath his feet.
He had kicked off his boots before he had taken off, and under the long-hardened soles of his feet he felt small sparks of heat, as if every one of those small stones was a flare of a tiny fire. Having made a complete round of the outer wall, he dared to glide down to the pavement below. As he had noted from aloft, here the small bright stones were set in patterns, not following any twist of veining. And each was different. As he landed in one such design, which was a concentric series of circles, there came that which almost sent him soaring again. A flap of wings did carry him upward so that his feet no longer touched the stone, for out of somewhere – the tower, the very sky above him – there had sounded a sharp note of sound as if he had struck two knife blades together.