Turning, gasping, Naä saw flames behind her; between the sounds of her breaths, back in the camp she heard soldiers shouting.
Another sound: the splat of water tossed on canvas (with the sound of the last flies settling) — how close she still was! How little ground she’d covered! And there were soldiers beating loudly in the brush behind the burning tent. Naä pushed herself up and ran again. For a long time.
Qualt’s and his companion’s mischief had also continued on, as you surely inferred. At various places about the town and the camp there’d been four more rains of garbage from the trees. The one Qualt felt most satisfied over was when, during the distraction that the last shower of fish heads, peachpits, and old birds-nests caused, his flying friend, still unseen, had been able to drop two skins of water into the diamond-wired corral where more than a dozen oldsters and infants were sitting or standing, more or less bewildered, in the burning sun.
But now, with the Winged One, in the darkness, Qualt was once more crouched among the trees beside the Myetran camp, listening — rather the Winged One was listening and reporting to Qualt what he heard, for they were too far away from the tent for Qualt to hear directly. Heads bent together in the dark, ear touching ear, the Winged One related: “He asks if you folk are as gentle as you appear …She says, yes, you are …Now he wants to know what town secrets, what petty jealousies, envy, and ire she can tell him of; while she … she says you like her music, and she likes what you have to say… he tells her what a pleasant place his own home, Myetra, is, and how, after they have crushed Çiron, they will go on to destroy HiVator, Requior, Del Gaizo — ”
Somewhat to Qualt’s surprise, it was at this mention of Hi-Vator that the Winged One suddenly went a-quiver in the dark. The wind of his sails set the leaves about them shaking and shushing. And one membrane brushed and brushed Qualt’s back.
“We must go to Hi-Vator — now, we must go! Don’t you think so, groundling? And you can hide there as I have hidden here — and maybe we can even play some tricks as we have played here? But I will tell them of their danger! Though perhaps, after we get there, it would be best if I hid — and you went up to implore the Queen and her Handsman to save themselves; for there are few in Hi-Vator who ever paid much attention to me — and then, most of them, only to curse me. Of course, we could go together …and no one who knew the true import of the message I bring could really think evil of me anymore — do you think?”
“Dost thou think,” Qualt demanded, his hand on the hard, furry shoulder beside him, that flexed and flexed in darkness, “that the Winged Ones there might help us here?”
“Help you?” The beating paused a puzzled moment. “I dare say they could if they wanted. But help you? After all the help I’ve given you today, carrying you here, getting you there, lifting you out of this danger and away from that one, don’t you think it’s time, given the gravity of this turn, for you to think about helping me?”
“Then we must go to thy nest at Hi-Vator! Here, let me mount thee — ” and, rising in the darkness from his squat, steadying himself on the shoulder below him, Qualt stepped over and around to the soft dirt behind. The warm back rose against his belly, his chest.
“Hold tight — we have not gone this far before! But you know now how it’s done!”
In the black, Qualt clutched the Winged One’s neck. Great vibrations started either side of him. Twigs and soft soil dropped away beneath his bare feet. Swinging free, his legs brushed their calves by the Winged One’s rough heels. “But what of the singer?” Qualt thought to call.
“Oh,” and the head strained back beside his, “she has already escaped them — and is off running in the woods! There, look — their tent’s on fire. And all is confusion with them.” And they rose above the trees, Qualt looking down over the furred shoulder, to see flames lapping at the striped wall flare now, then retreat under the slap of water, then surge still again. Beside him, wings gathered up, beat hugely down —
How, Qualt wondered, could such flight be carried on in the dark — even as the first moonlight cleared. Then he forgot the paring of light above and simply clung, sometimes with his eyes closed, sometimes merely squinting against the wind.
They rose before the mountains.
And rose.
And rose — till, beside the rush of water over the rocks, at last Qualt stepped away from his flying companion, arms tingling, oddly light-headed.
“See there — the fire up on that ledge?” the Winged One said, while Qualt tried to catch his breath. “Climb for it, groundling!”
“Climb…?”
“Up the webbing there. See the guy-lines running from under those rocks?”
There was no talk now — and Qualt was glad of it — of either of them continuing alone or either of them hiding. They climbed the sagging net.
As Qualt passed one ledge, a Winged One, very fat, waddled quickly to the edge and, with lips pulled back from little teeth and little lids squeezed closed, followed them with her face from below to above.
They walked along a stone cliff, Qualt picking his way carefully, lagging further and further behind his companion, who, wings wide, bounded ahead, till three youngsters half ran, half soared from the cave-mouth beside him, to freeze, ears cocked and gawking. At a sudden mew within, they retreated. But now his companion waited for Qualt to catch up, making some disgusted comment about the children Qualt didn’t wholly follow.
Steps had been carved into the mountain, that they had to climb. Some of the edges were stone. Some were roots, with earth packed behind them. Qualt moved his hands along the stone walls either side and wondered why his companion, behind him now on the stairs, didn’t fly this last length of the ascent — which was apparently not the last length after all, because now they had to climb up another fifty feet of webbing, with the rush and rumble of falling water invisible below among dark rocks.
Finally they gained a ledge where a dozen Winged Ones waited. Qualt was very confused for a while, since no one seemed to want to speak to them.
Fires burned in several stone tubs. The cave entrances flickered and resounded with wings going in and out, with mewing retreating and emerging. Finally, Qualt heard someone say beside him, in that high, childish voice they all spoke with: “But you can see, that is not the groundling who was here earlier — that is not the one ‘who saved my life. I took him home. He has not returned. They look alike, yes — but not that much alike. Don’t you see how much smaller he is?
“And you — ” which was addressed to Qualt’s companion, who, on reaching the ledge, had suddenly seemed to become indifferent to the whole enterprise and was now sitting on the rocky rim, hanging his heels in space, with his sails drawn in about him and feigning great interest in the night-breezes and the night clouds and anything that was not the confused converse behind him. “Well,” continued the standing Winged One, who wore some sort of flattened chain around his neck (the only dress or ornament Qualt had seen among them so far), “we certainly didn’t expect to see you here, just now — ”
“Please,” Qualt said, suddenly stepping forward, “please — thou must understand. But we heard something — !”