The Elves of Cintra (Book 2 of The Genesis of Shannara)

It was like nothing she had ever experienced. The earth dropped away as they ascended into the midday sky, trees and rocks and rivers and lakes growing slowly smaller, the landscape spreading away in miniature.

Save for when Simralin used the compressor to feed more hot air into the bag, they were enveloped by a silence so deep and intense that it felt to Angel almost as if she had left everything terrible in her life behind. The basket bobbed softly on the wind currents, but mostly it just hung there, steady and smooth as Simralin steered it toward the mountains north and west.

“How do you like it?” the Tracker asked her at one point.

Angel grinned and nodded. “Any danger of the bag collapsing?”

Simralin shook her head. “The fabric is one we developed.

Very strong, very tough. Rain doesn’t bother it. Even resists blades. A lightning strike is the biggest concern, but our weather is good.” She smiled.

“Much better than walking. We’ll be there by sunset.”

They flew at a steady pace toward a gap in the mountain chain, the winds favoring a northwest flight. But Angel could tell that Simralin had considerable flying experience, working smoothly to keep the balloon on a course that carried it in the general direction required, maneuvering flaps that opened and closed in the bag, releasing small bursts of air to gain momentum or adjust height. She had learned to read and measure the movement of air currents and, after attaching the extra hoses to side ports in the basket, was able to change direction. It wasn’t a perfect science, even when all of it was cobbled together. At times, they drifted off course, but the Elven Tracker always seemed to find a way to bring them back around, tacking first one way and then another.

The hours crawled by, a passage that felt desperately at odds with the urgency of their undertaking. Angel scanned the ground they passed over, searching for something more than changes in the terrain. Signs of life. Signs of pursuit. Something of the dangers she knew she couldn’t see, but were there, nevertheless. It felt safe flying hundreds of feet in the air. But she knew the feeling was false.

They gained the far side of the peaks and caught prevailing southerly winds along the west face of the chain that carried them north. The winds waxed and waned with the passing of the afternoon, gusting at times, dying away completely at others. They flew over miles of blighted forests and foothills, keeping clear of the chain’s taller peaks, avoiding the canyons and defiles where the winds were treacherous and might blow them into the cliffs.

Although Kirisin was full of questions, his natural curiosity demanding explanations that his sister was hard-pressed to provide, Angel was content just to observe, preferring the luxury of the silence that this wondrous flight afforded them. Silence was not easily found in the city. Until you were dead, of course, like Johnny, and then it was forever.

It was nearing sunset when they reached Syrring Rise. The winds had picked up a bit, and they were encountering gusts that knocked them about, requiring that Simralin abandon her efforts at answering Kirisin’s unending questions in favor of keeping them stable. Angel found herself gripping the sides of the basket tightly. They caught sight of the snowcapped peak all at once, a huge block of rock and snow and ice rising up against the horizon as they came out from behind a group of smaller mountains, its mass rising far above where they flew, towering over lesser mountains, over broad stretches of land, over everything for as far as the eye could see. It was the biggest monolith Angel had ever seen, but it was also the most beautiful. Here, unlike everywhere else she had been on her travels, save in parts of the Cintra, the air was clean and clear, and the details of the mountain and its surroundings jumped out at her in sharp relief. She stared in disbelief at how pure everything surrounding this volcanic giant seemed, as if Mother Nature’s hand had swept away from this one majestic setting the whole of the world’s pollution and sickness.