CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

"A whirlwind?" Tal shook his head. "Great."

"The whirlwind may not be part of the Old Khamsoul, but merely some form of protective layer," said Yazeq. "There is a pillar of stone at the center of the whirlwind, and some argue that this is in fact the Old Khamsoul. But no one knows for sure.

"If Sharrakor can get into the whirlwind, so can we," said Milla.

Zicka's tongue flickered in and out in agitation.

"No," he said. "The flesh would be stripped from your bones. It is not possible to enter unless the Old Khamsoul allows you. It would not grant that permission if Sharrakor is already there. It never allows more than one being to consult with it at any time."

"There must be some way," Tal protested.

"A Shield Maiden thinks of all things possible and expected, then does the impossible and unexpected," said Odris unexpectedly from above their heads. "I know a way into the heart of the Old Khamsoul."

"Odris knows a way," repeated Adras smugly. "How?" asked Tal and Milla at the same time. "It's a whirlwind," said Odris. "You don't fly into a whirlwind. You get above it and fly down through the eye."

"But the Old Khamsoul is no ordinary whirlwind," cautioned Zicka. "It reaches up to the very margin of the world, high above the clouds. How could you fly above the whirlwind?"

Odris sniffed.

"We can fly higher than anything, if we feel like it," she said. "Up and up and up, and then... a dive straight down through the eye."

"I have climbed high mountains," said Yazeq. "With height comes cold, and there is little air to breathe. You Storm Shepherds may fly high, but your companions would die."

"No we wouldn't," said Milla. "We could make globes of air with green light and warm ourselves with our Sunstones."

"I do not have a Sunstone," said Malen quietly.

"You may use mine," said Ebbitt. He slipped off the Sunstone he wore in a silver ring and held it out to Malen. "I am afraid that I cannot come with you any farther, children."

Malen protested, and Tal started to say something, but Ebbitt dropped the ring in Malen's lap and held up his hand to Tal.

"I am very old and very tired," he said firmly. "And I would undoubtedly lose my false teeth if I went diving into whirlwinds, and with them any dignity I have left. I have almost every confidence in your ability to deal with Sharrakor without my help."

"You don't have false teeth," said Tal.

"That is totally irrelevant," answered Ebbitt. "Now I am going to go to sleep. Good luck."

With that, the old Chosen curled up on one of the thicker rugs and closed his eyes. Tal half expected to see his maned cat slink in and curl up next to him.

Milla and Malen both slowly clapped their fists and then made a sign the others didn't know, crossing their palms one above the other and then gesturing out toward Ebbitt.

"What was that for?" asked Tal.

"He prepares to go to the Ice, in his own way," said Milla. "We honor him."

"He's just tired, that's all," insisted Tal. "Just tired. He's not going to die. Crow, you know him. He's just tired."

"Yes," agreed Crow, but Tal did not know who he was agreeing with. The Freefolk boy did not meet his eyes.

Tal looked back out at the entrance to the roro. He could remember so many times he had gone to Ebbitt, seeking help and advice, or simply to hide away from trouble. It was Ebbitt he had gone to when his father had disappeared, when he had to find a Sunstone...

But he could not let himself grieve now. Ebbitt might have decided to die, but that didn't mean he would.

"Look after my great-uncle, please, Zicka," he said, looking back at Milla, Malen, and Crow. "Perhaps... perhaps he will be better in the morning. When we return."

He tried to say the last three words with the confidence of an Emperor, but it did not come out as well as he would have liked. There was an unspoken if hanging in the air instead of that when.

If we return...

"We'd better plan how we are actually going to do this," said Tal. "Adras, Odris, are you prepared to risk yourselves flying into the eye of the whirlwind?"

"Yes," said Odris. She nudged Adras and he repeated her answer.

"Will we be able to take a boat of light through?"

"No," said Odris. "But we could take it above the eye, then I can carry two if we're just dropping straight down."

The Storm Shepherd's answer chilled the air for a moment as they all visualized dropping straight down the eye of a whirlwind, a whirlwind that rose higher than any mountain.

"We will have the added advantage of surprise," said Milla. "We will be able to strike at Sharrakor before he even suspects we are there. If we manage to actually drop on him--"

A lizard poked its head in and babbled something before she could continue.

"The Old Khamsoul is indeed in the Hrykan Desert," said Zicka. "Two days' march away for one of us."

"A few hours' flying," said Milla. "We could be there by the time the sun falls. What is that time called?"

"Dusk," replied Tal.

"A good time to attack," replied Milla with satisfaction.

"We will surprise Sharrakor and I will cut his throat with the Talon."

Zicka and Yazeq exchanged a look. Yazeq's tongue flickered sideways.

"Please excuse me," said the older lizard. "There is something I must attend to."

"If we're going to get there by nightfall I'd better give Malen some lessons on how to use Ebbitt's...

her Sunstone," said Tal. "Then I guess we'd better make some globes of air. Though... I don't suppose there's any point in waiting until early in the morning, and attacking at dawn?"

"Waiting feeds fear," said Milla. "Courage comes with deeds."

"Let's get it over and done with," added Crow. "Yes," agreed Malen. "The longer we wait, the more the Veil weakens."

Adras and Odris nodded their agreement, huge heads of cloud bobbing up and down.

"The Kurshken wish you good fortune," said Zicka. "And success."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

They came out of the roro an hour later, blinking in the sunshine. All had globes of green light around their heads, and Malen kept flinching slightly as warmth flowed in waves out of the Sunstone on her finger and onto her skin.

Tal was surprised to see hundreds of Kurshken ma.s.sed in the field in front of them. As they emerged, the lizards gave a deep-throated cry and waved their bows in the air.

"What is this?" asked Milla as four Kurshken advanced bearing an ornately carved stone box between them. They knelt before her and offered her the box.

"We are returning something," said Zicka. "Please open the box, Milla."

Milla lifted off the lid and handed it to some more Kurshken who rushed forward. Her hand hovered above the box, an expression of surprise and wonder fleeting across her face before it was suppressed, as she tried to suppress all signs of emotion.

"What is it?" asked Tal, craning his neck.

Milla didn't answer, but she reached in and pulled out a small, shining nail of Violet crystal, the twin to the one she already wore. Milla slipped it on to the forefinger of her right hand and felt the band constrict and become secure.

"The other Talon of Danir," whispered Malen in awe.

"One Danir gave to Ramellan," said Yazeq. "The other she gave into our care. Now we give it back to her daughter's-daughter's-daughter, unto the fortieth generation."

"It is a good omen," declared Milla, holding her hands up in the air so that both Talons caught the sun, glittering violet and gold. "Now we go to slay Sharrakor!"

The Kurshken shouted and drummed their paws, sending water splashing up around them in bold fountains. Milla and Tal led the way down an avenue between splashing and shouting Kurshken, out to the field where they had landed, and where a s.p.a.ce was being kept for the re-creation of the flying boat of light.

"Are you sure you can make it by yourself?" whispered Milla as Tal raised his hand and focused on his Sunstone.

Tal nodded and began to work. Soon the keel of the boat began to shimmer on the water, and ribs curved up and out. Planks of yellow started to weave between the ribs and blue traces arched up into the sky, where they were grabbed by the waiting Storm Shepherds.

"Let's go," said Tal, without looking around. He had to keep most of his attention on the boat and his Sunstone.

When everyone was in, Tal changed the focus of the Keystone's power to lift the entire boat up as well as keep it together. With a lurch, the boat rose straight up into the sky, before the Storm Shepherds were able to drag the traces taut and apply some horizontal force.

Down below, the Kurshken kept splashing and drumming long after the four heroes, the flying boat, and the Storm Shepherds had disappeared from sight. Then they began the process of evacuating Kurshken Corner, to various boltholes and refuges, for they were rational creatures and believed in hedging their bets. They were also lizards of their word, and they carried Ebbitt with them.

It was a long climb to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, to get above the whirlwind that either was or cloaked the Old Khamsoul. It grew colder quickly, but their Sunstones warmed them, and though the air grew thin, they were sustained by their green globes. Tal did worry that they would not last, but he forgot about it as they continued to climb higher and higher and they saw new and strange sights.

First they saw the world curve away beneath them, truly round. Then they broke through cloud, and entered another world again, one where the ground beneath them was white and puffy and constantly changing. They rose above great bluffs of sculptured cloud, and then through long wisps of white that could hardly be called clouds at all.

Wind buffeted them mercilessly at some alt.i.tudes, only to die away completely as they continued to rise. In any case, the Storm Shepherds could work the wind to some degree, and change both its direction and force. Any wind they could not master they rose above, or pa.s.sed aside.

Milla saw the Old Khamsoul first and pointed. From far away it looked like a solid spire of stone, reaching up to the heavens through a permanent and very wide hole in the cloud layer, a great circle that declared a no-man's-land around the whirlwind.

Pa.s.s here at your peril, the s.p.a.ce seemed to say.

Cross the line and be eaten by the spinning wind.

"We are so high, and yet it stretches higher still," said Milla. "And down in its heart lies Sharrakor and our destiny."

Her eyes were shining. Tal watched her, catching glimpses in between focusing on his Sunstone. Truly she was the War-Chief going into battle. He knew there was no such light in his eyes. He just felt scared. Scared that he would die and scared that they would fail. That Sharrakor would kill them and go on to raise his army, return to the Dark World, and finish what he had started.

"Soon!" shouted Odris. "Higher, Tal! Higher!"

"Milla, Crow," said Tal, trying to keep his voice as matter-of-fact as he could. "Blue light into the keel, please. Malen, you just keep yourself warm."

Milla and Crow turned back from the bow where they had both been looking at the Old Khamsoul. They summoned blue light from their Sunstones, sending it pouring into the keel. Tal reinforced it with Violet, and the flying boat shot up sharply, easily keeping pace with the Storm Shepherds' own climb.

"Is it getting warmer?" Malen asked suddenly. "Or am I getting better with my Sunstone?"

Keeping warm with his Sunstone was now so automatic for Tal that he had to concentrate to see how much warmth he was drawing from the stone. He was surprised to find that he wasn't using it at all, though he certainly had been lower down.

"It gets warmer for a while up this high," shouted Odris. "But it will get colder again. We still have a long way to go."

They climbed in silence for an hour or more then, and once again Tal began to be concerned about the green globes. Theoretically the green glow could contain days' worth of air, but they were rarely used for more than an hour or two. If one of them failed now, it would be impossible to do anything. There had to be air around to compress it into the globe in the first place.

They were close to the Old Khamsoul now, the bare patch in the clouds far below them. They were near enough to see that the whirlwind was not made of dark cloud, but solid particles so that it appeared not gray, but black as night upon the Ice. The whirlwind was made visible by dust and rocks and whatever else it had s.n.a.t.c.hed up, all spinning furiously, far faster than the flying boat or even the Storm Shepherds at their swiftest. Anything that it sucked in would be instantly destroyed. Flesh would be torn from bone, all moisture sucked from a magical cloud. Death would be instantaneous, for human or Storm Shepherd.

The whirlwind was broad at the top, Tal was relieved to see. But then it drew in closer and closer, funneling air down to what looked like a very narrow tube near the ground. Tal could only trust that the eye would be wide enough down there for them to get through without being ripped apart.

"Higher!" shouted Odris and once again the Sunstones shone brighter and the flying boat lurched up.

"We're higher than the whirlwind!" announced Malen, who was looking over the side.

"We need to get quite a lot higher," said Tal, who had only just realized what they would have to do. "Because when we dissolve the boat, the Storm Shepherds will have to swoop down and catch us before we get blown off track and sucked into... into that."

He pointed over the side, and everyone s.n.a.t.c.hed a brief look at the churning vortex of darkness.

"Ready!" shouted Odris as the boat pa.s.sed the very center of the whirlwind, the top of the vortex about five hundred stretches below. She and Adras kept the tension on the traces so that the wind could not blow the boat off station.

"This is it, then," said Tal. His throat was so dry the words came out in a deep Kurshkenlike croak. His heart was hammering so fast it felt like it was shifting position inside his chest.

"Tal, Milla," said Crow suddenly as they all took deep breaths, "if anything... if I don't survive... remember the Underfolk. Remember our freedom."

"I swear it," said Milla. Even her voice sounded strained and strange.

"I will remember," Tal whispered. "Everyone ready? Odris? Adras?"

"Yes!" came the answer, from Freefolk, Icecarls, and Storm Shepherds.

"Go!" shouted Tal.