It took Gavin's breath away. He'd only experimented with the condor over water. He hadn't even thought about how the ground beneath where he was gliding would affect the air above it. Now that he had experienced it, it made sense. Why else did birds of prey spiral so often in the same places? Gavin had assumed they were good hunting grounds. Now he knew. Updrafts.
"Can we make it over the mountains?" Karris asked.
From this new height-Gavin looked down, gulped, and immediately looked back to the horizon-he was certain that what they had seen was smoke. And for it to be visible from this far away, it could only be one of two things.
Let it be a forest fire. Please, Orholam.
"We can. But if we do, you're not going to meet the man who was supposed to get you into Garadul's army. And I can't get the condor back into the air without the sea. I'll have to float all the way down the river."
"Gavin, when I see that much smoke, I think red wight. A Torch could be burning down an entire city. You're heading out to stop a color wight near Ru? These people aren't worth any less than the people of Ru. If it comes to it, there are a lot of drafters in Ru who could work together against the blue wight. These people have no one."
In his mind's eye, Gavin was comparing the land below him to the maps he knew of Tyrea. It was surprisingly easy, given that he was closer to the perspective most maps were drawn from than most people ever got. He looked at the mountains, the not-quite-pass through them, and the position of the rising smoke. A thought struck him with a greater force than mere intuition. He wasn't here on accident. It wasn't coincidence that he was gliding in the one place where he could see this fire, or that he had Karris with him. That was no forest fire. It wasn't a red wight either.
That fire was rising from Rekton. It had been a beautiful town before the war. It was the town where Gavin's "son" was. Gavin knew it, even though they were so far away there was no way to know it. If Orholam had actually existed, this was the kind of punishment he would devise for Gavin. Or test.
Whatever it was, it was a choice.
Five years left, and five great purposes still to accomplish. And one of those actually was mostly selfless: to free Garriston, which had been crushed because of him. Which was suffering still, because of him.
If Gavin went to Rekton, he'd have to face that crazy woman, Lina. He'd have to face her son Kip, and tell him that he wasn't his father: Sorry, you're still fatherless. I have no idea what your lying slut mother is talking about.
That would doubtless go over well. They would also be close to Rask Garadul's army, so Karris would open her orders, and everything would get messy fast.
All Gavin had to say was, "I've got my orders." Karris would understand. She'd always been dutiful. To a fault.
But you aren't Karris. This isn't her test.
He opened his mouth to say it, and it tasted like cowardice. He couldn't force the words past his gritted teeth.
"Let's go see," Gavin said. He banked the condor, and saw that he hadn't made his decision a moment too soon. It would be a near thing to clear the gap between the mountains.
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.