Within minutes, she had turned east toward the Valley of Rhenn.
Which was what the creature had been looking to discover all along, and what its attack had been designed to reveal. It had counted on the attack to disrupt the concentration of the three and cause them to react rather than think.
That way they wouldn’t bother trying to hide their choice of escape routes.
The creature bounded away, moving swiftly into the deep woods. Less than a mile away, a distance it covered in less than ten minutes, it reached a small, windowless blockhouse. The building was constructed of heavy stones, its walls sealed up save for a single iron door that was chained and barred. The roof consisted of heavy metal grates that could be removed if you knew where the locking devices could be found and if you could avoid the poison darts that would be triggered if you stepped wrong. Inside, a clutch of arrow shrikes—the messenger birds favored by magic wielders since the days of the Warlock Lord—huddled together, waiting to be dispatched.
The creature leapt onto the roof, lifted off one of the grates, and chose a bird from the second pen. There were two pens; the birds in the first were meant for the mistress and those in the second for her man. How the bird managed to find either, the creature neither knew nor cared. Holding the bird gently, the way it had been taught, the creature told the bird without speaking but with images formed in its mind what it wanted the bird to tell the man.
Then it released the bird, waited until the winged messenger was out of sight, and silently bounded away, back toward the city.
18
It was just after midnight when Wend-A-Way lifted off, a sleek and silent shadow silhouetted against a sky rapidly filling with dark clouds that already blocked away the quarter moon and stars. Cymrian was at the helm, and the crew of three worked the lines and sails, channeling the power from the diapson crystals nestled in their parse tubes port and starboard, drawing down stored power in the absence of direct light. They rode a southeasterly wind that blew chill and brisk from out of the deeper darkness of an approaching storm that promised heavy weather within the next several hours. Cymrian ordered the light sheaths rolled back and the radian draws made fast as the wind quickened and the yaw of the vessel increased from slight to heavy.
“This won’t be pleasant!” he shouted over the wind’s whistle to where Arlingfant and Aphenglow huddled together forward of the pilot box.
Neither had to be told. Both knew enough of airships and storms to recognize what was coming, but Aphenglow, as the more experienced flier, was especially concerned. The size of the front and the strength of the wind told her this would be very bad, and they might even have to put down somewhere until it passed. If that proved necessary, it would remove any advantage they might have gained by leaving Arborlon in secret and under the cover of darkness.