Aoth looked around, found Gaedynn, and held up his hand to signal him to stay in the air. The Aglarondan acknowledged the order with a casual wave. Then Jet swooped toward the firestormers.
Drakes hissed and shied as the griffon touched down. It pleased Aoth to see that Cera didn’t have any more trouble controlling her mount than most of the genasi. She’d said she needed a break from being carried around like a sack of flour, and she was evidently getting the hang of managing a reptilian steed.
“So,” said Yemere, “our august captain condescends to descend and mingle with his underlings.”
Yemere was a skinny, slouching fellow with a petulant cast to his features, a silvery-skinned windsoul but, in Aoth’s estimation, much like his friend Mardiz-sul nonetheless. Both were young aristocrats, drawn to the Firestorm Cabal by idealism and a thirst for adventure-or what they imagined adventure would be-and granted a measure of authority despite their inexperience. No doubt it was hard to deny rank to a nobleman, especially if he offered to pay for rations, weapons, mounts, and other necessities.
The major difference between them was that Yemere hadn’t fought a dragon or dragonspawn yet and hadn’t had any of the arrogance kicked out of him. Aoth wouldn’t have minded attending to that chore himself. But there were times when it was better for a captain to ignore insolence, lest he appear thin skinned or malicious. And now when he was still trying to win the trust and good will of the firestormers might be one of them.
So he simply asked, “Why are we stopping?” His fire-kissed eyes notwithstanding, it wasn’t impossible that folk on the ground had noticed something he hadn’t spotted from the air. Although even now that he was down here with them, he still didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
It was Mardiz-sul who answered. “Son-liin thinks we should turn off onto another path.”
Like Zan-akar Zeraez and Arathane, Son-liin was essentially a stormsoul. Unlike them, she had some affinity with the elemental force of earth as well as lightning. Some of the lines that ran through her purple skin were gold instead of silver, and so were the translucent crystalline spikes that took the place of hair.
That likely meant she knew an extra trick or two. But at the moment, it was her knowledge of the Akanapeaks that interested Aoth. Though still an adolescent and small-in her brigandine, with a lance in her hand and a quiver on her back, she looked like a little girl playing warrior-she was one of the few firestormers in the band who’d grown up in the mountains and, with her father, a trapper and prospector, wandered them extensively. It had been a stroke of good fortune that led her to Airspur at just the right moment to join the expedition.
She smiled as though attention embarrassed her. Meanwhile, her drake, a breed with black- and green-pebbled skin, twisted its head, tracking a dragonfly as long as Aoth’s hand. The reptile’s long, pink tongue shot out, slapped the insect, stuck to it, and snatched it into its mouth. The drake slobbered as it crunched the morsel up, and Aoth felt Jet’s flicker of amusement.
“Up ahead,” Son-liin said, “there’s a trail that leads down into a valley. If we take it, we can reach the Old Man’s Head a day or two sooner.”
The Old Man’s Head was the mountain where Vairshekellabex probably laired. If not, his refuge was at least in the vicinity. Or so Alasklerbanbastos had maintained.
“Why didn’t you mention this route before?” asked Aoth.
“Because I didn’t know what the weather would be like,” Son-liin said. “It’s not a path you want to be on if it storms. A flashflood can sweep you away. But now we’re here, and it’s not going to rain.”
Aoth suspected she knew because she was a stormsoul. He wasn’t, but like any commander worth his pay, he’d learned to read the weather, and he agreed with her assessment. The clear blue sky showed no signs of clouding up anytime soon.
“I’m against this,” said Yemere. “We made a plan. We should stick to it.”
“Moving over these peaks and ridges,” said Mardiz-sul, “we can be seen from a long way off.”
“But if we’re going through a valley,” replied Yemere, “an enemy could easily get above us.”
“Don’t worry about that,” rasped Jet, startling a fresh round of hisses out of the drakes. “Those of us in the air will spot any threat before it can come within a mile.”
“Still,” said Yemere.
Mardiz-sul turned to Aoth. “What do you think?”
Aoth thought that it would be nice to consult Alasklerbanbastos about the best way to approach the Old Man’s Head, but it wasn’t feasible. He hadn’t even told the genasi about the dracolich yet, and they needed a decision.
“We’ll take Son-liin’s path,” he said. Why not? She was the one who knew the Akanapeaks, and Jet was right that the griffon riders should still be able to spot any potential problem from a long way off.
Yemere scowled as though the folly of his companions verged on the unbelievable.
“Let’s get them moving again,” said Mardiz-sul. He urged his drake into motion and rode down the column to give direction to the warriors who, when their leaders halted to palaver, had climbed down off their mounts to stretch their legs.
Aoth smiled at Cera. “Want to fly for a while? Someone can lead your drake.”
“No, thanks. I’m enjoying myself down here, and I suspect Jet is enjoying not having to carry double.”
The familiar grunted. “As his females go, you’re more tolerable than some.”
Cera grinned. “High praise indeed.”
It took only a little longer to reach a narrow, branching trail that switchbacked down a mountainside into shadow. Aoth watched with a certain amount of trepidation as the drake riders headed down one at a time. But the reptiles were more surefooted than horses, and they reached the shallow, brown creek at the bottom of the gorge without so much as a stumble.
Then they trekked on southward, plodding over sand and smooth, round stones, splashing through the rippling current, and bounding over the occasional tangle of driftwood or whole fallen tree deposited by one flood or another. Sometimes Aoth and Jet flew high enough to survey the tops of the cliffs that towered to either side of the brook. Sometimes they swooped to see what was lurking on the ledges and in the crannies lower down. Gaedynn and Eider did the same and surprised a goat. The skirmisher put an arrow in it, landed on the outcropping where it lay, and quickly dressed the carcass before returning to his proper task.
Aoth would have done the same, had he been the one to come across some game, because so far the way seemed safe enough.
But after another half mile of twisting canyon, that changed when, for a heartbeat or two, a smear of blue glimmer flowed across a barren scarp like a luminous fish swimming beneath a sheet of ice. Aoth raised two fingers to his mouth, used them to whistle, and pointed with his spear. Gaedynn looked, then turned to Aoth and shook his head to indicate that he couldn’t see anything unusual.
Aoth pointed to the top of the cliff to the east. Jet furled his wings and swooped in that direction, and Eider followed him down. Once they landed, their riders could talk without shouting over the distance that flying steeds needed to maintain between themselves.
Gaedynn swung himself out of the saddle and started slicing pieces of raw, bloody goat meat off the carcass he’d tied behind it. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“For a moment I saw blue fire inside the mountainside,” Aoth replied.
Gaedynn tossed a piece of goat to Eider, and the griffon snapped it out of the air. “How in the name of the Black Bow did I miss that?”
“You needed spellscarred eyes to see it,” Aoth replied, stretching. His spine popped. “Maybe it was more like the memory of blue fire.”
Gaedynn tossed the other piece of meat to Jet. Perhaps thinking it beneath his dignity to catch it in his beak, the griffon reared and snatched it with his talons. “And what does that mean exactly?” the bowman asked.