Day turned to night, turned to day once more. At dusk, the team settled on the trail of the roosting demons, camping as they had done before. They ate their petals and the pitiful remnants of the jerky, supplementing their diet with the edible leftovers that the Shrikes had abandoned. On the next night it rained, and they were soaked but grateful, stretching out the Catoblepas pelt to catch the water and refill their flasks.
So it went, the jungle rolling beneath them in a seemingly endless carpet of green. Fletcher had never imagined such a sight, for it stretched from horizon to horizon on a flat terrain that was devoid of landmarks, rivers or clearings. Only to their far right was any semblance of a break from the trees: a thin red line denoting where the jungle ended and the deadlands began.
On the fourth evening they dined on the haunches of a freshly killed Yale, a demon that looked like a cross between an antelope and a billy goat, with a curved pair of horns that could swivel at will. The beast tasted like aged mutton, tough but flavorsome, and far tastier than the remains of their poorly smoked jerky.
It was that night that they saw the first carnivores that prowled behind the flock, skirting the edges of their makeshift barricade in the darkness, attracted by the light and scent of cooking meat.
The team watched the approaching predators through their scrying crystal, as Athena perched in the trees above. A single zebra-striped Leucrotta trotted by at dusk, a strange mammalian creature with cloven hooves, a lionlike tail and the head of a badger. Later, a pair of mangy Lycans slunk past. The bipedal wolves howled mournfully as they settled down no more than a few dozen yards from their camp. Nobody got much sleep that night.
It was the next morning that they saw their first volcano, the great column of smoke belching into the sky. The sight quickened Fletcher’s heart. The land was becoming similar to Hominum’s territory, rugged and with a sky darkened by the same clouds of ash he could see now. Only there was no way to tell. They could fly right over it and never notice.
Worse still, Othello had reminded them of something else, sitting up in the middle of the night and coming to a terrible realization. The average time a summoner could open a portal into the ether was brief, perhaps a half hour at the most. The area in which a portal might appear was vast, so that even if they were in the right area, their chances of coming across an open portal as they passed by was even more unlikely.
Their only hope was to somehow spot one as they flew, an impossibility given the thickness of the canopy. So Fletcher was glad that the Shrikes seemed to be migrating toward the deadlands, where they might catch a glimpse of a spinning orb. By now they were skirting the red wastelands: a good sign. The Shrikes had been near the deadlands when Valens had been attacked two years ago. Could this be the same place?
They spent hours flying along the edge of the jungle, peering into the red sand bowl, hoping to see the spinning blue orb that would take them home. But there was nothing.
Defeated, they settled down for the fifth night since they had crossed the desert, their eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed from the wind and dust. The others all looked as if they had been crying, and Fletcher supposed they might as well have been. It was hopeless. They were condemned to the ether.
Forever.
CHAPTER
21
“FLETCHER, WAKE UP!”
Sylva’s voice hissed in his ear. He yelped in pain as her nails dug into his shoulders.
“Whuh—” he began, but a hand clamped over his mouth. Above him, the first rays of light were already appearing in the sky above, casting the world in the faintest tinge of yellow.
He was lifted into a sitting position, and the scrying crystal was laid in his lap. The others were already awake, crowding around him—pale, ashen faces, lit by the glow of a tiny wyrdlight.
“There,” Sylva whispered, pointing at the stone.
For a moment he thought he was looking at the dim reflection of the wyrdlight above. But it wasn’t. It was a flicker of indigo, somewhere deep in the deadlands. Too far to see the source.
He tried to sit up, but Othello’s arm was like an iron bar across his chest. The image on the crystal panned down, to the jungle’s edge.
Shrikes. Hundreds of them, their black forms roosting among the branches as if the trees were laden with rotten fruit.
Othello leaned in and pointed silently upward. Fletcher lifted his head to see that Pria was hovering just above the canopy. The Shrikes were directly over them!
“There’s a dust cyclone where they were before,” Sylva whispered, her voice barely more than a breath in his ear. “They must have moved back here to avoid it while we were sleeping. Athena woke me a few minutes ago.”
Fletcher shuddered and looked for the Gryphowl, and she jumped into his arms. He thanked the stars that she had been on watch. Othello leaned in, so close that his beard tickled Fletcher’s cheek.
“If it’s a portal we don’t have long,” he murmured. “It’s your call. You got us this far.”
Fletcher’s heart was racing uncomfortably in his chest. It was as if he had been drenched in cold water, shocked out of his sleep and filled with sudden terror.
“It could be Will-o’-the-wisps,” Fletcher said softly, looking them each in the eye. “It could be anything.”
“And it could be our best chance at making it home,” Cress replied, biting her lip. “If we don’t leave now, we’ll miss it.”
It was an impossible choice, with the worst possible timing. The Shrikes could begin to wake any minute—dawn was coming soon. If the team left the cover of the trees they might be spotted by an early riser.
“Othello, send Pria to check it out; the rest of you, pack up,” Fletcher ordered, trying to keep his voice low and steady. “We need to move away from here regardless.”
Pria darted off, making for the deadlands. Already her carapace had turned red, to blend with the dusty plains.
“So we’re doing it?” Cress asked, suddenly fearful.
“If we find out it is a portal, we’ll know that we’re in the Hominum’s territory,” Fletcher whispered. “That’s a blessing in itself—we could have flown by here and never seen it. It might take us a few weeks of searching the area to come across another portal, but it means we’d find one eventually.”
“Weeks?” Othello uttered in a low groan.
“If the Shrikes move on before it closes, we should be ready to go for it,” Fletcher murmured. “Otherwise, we wait it out. It’s not worth dying over.”
There were two minutes of hurried packing, then Lysander and Ignatius were cajoled out of their sleep. The team waited by their prospective mounts, peering at the scrying crystal clutched in Othello’s hands.
“Pria’s going slow,” Othello said, his voice so quiet that Fletcher could barely make out the words. “Some of the Shrikes are awake, so she’s hugging the ground.”