Suhail and I had never attained any tremendous altitude in our stolen caeliger, and much of our time had been spent over open water, where there are no features to threaten disaster or show you how far up you are. This time, we knew precisely where we were—especially as the lead craft carried a device called an altimeter which measured our vertical position, and the senior pilot, one Captain Adler, continually signaled to the others with flags when he decided to climb or descend. He did not test the upward limits of the caeligers, not yet; but we flew quite high in the air, the better to hide our presence from people below.
Any such people were mere specks from that height, difficult to see unless heralded by a dark stream of yaks making their way across a high meadow. We saw settlements, but steered clear of them when we could. Below us, the ground rose and fell, rose and fell … but rose more than fell, and we climbed yet again to keep our distance.
And ahead lay the mountains.
Even though I knew better, I had thought of them in terms of the mountains I had seen before, during my first expedition to Vystrana. I thought of dark trees, and those were there; I thought of alpine meadows, and those were there, too, fringed with snow in areas too sheltered for it to melt.
But in Vystrana, the peaks were little white hats atop the green beauty below. In the uplands of Tser-nga, life threaded through the valleys like branching fingers, clinging to the base of the mountains as if they might lose their grip at any moment. Above towered pinnacles of ice and snow and stark, unforgiving stone. There were fields of scree where nothing grew, passes which rose to sterile heights before descending once more to a level where humans might grudgingly be allowed to persist. I would never have guessed that so frigid a place might remind me of Akhia … but only in the Jefi have I encountered a landscape so indifferent to my presence. Men and women might easily die here—indeed, they have done so—and the Mrtyahaima would take no notice.
The higher we went, the more likely that fate seemed. In order for the propellers to gain much purchase in the thin air, we could not fly too high; but flying lower meant subjecting ourselves to the fickle winds, sculpted into diabolical knots by the terrain. In the early stages of our flight Captain Adler had chatted casually with Suhail: now that gave way to silence and the occasional barked command for a new signal, which Suhail rushed to post. Watching the pilot’s hands (for I could not long keep my eyes on the nearby peaks and slopes), I saw his knuckles whiten from the force of his grip. Tom’s own knuckles were even whiter, gripping the nearest hand-holds, for the caeliger frequently jerked one way or another, slammed to and fro by the changing winds.
I crouched next to him. “I can fetch more laudanum—”
Tom shook his head in a tight gesture. “No. I may be needed after all, and quite soon.”
In his shoes, I would not want to be drugged into a stupor either. It was obvious that matters were not going according to plan. Thu was nearby, clinging to the flapping edges of our map; he frowned and called out to Suhail in Yelangese.
My husband shouted something back. I could not understand his words, but his tone was clear: whatever Thu had said, Suhail had short patience with it. He bent to speak to Captain Adler, and I made my way to his side. “What is it?”
“We’re too far south,” Suhail said. “At least, Thu believes we are—who can be sure, with so little to go by. But there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. Heading north would require us to fly directly into the wind, and the engines don’t have the strength for that, not at this altitude.”
Ahead of us, the greenery ended in a forbidding wall of black and white: a range of peaks that might delight a dedicated mountaineer, but spelled death for us if we met them in flight. Below us lay the western fringes of Tser-nga, the scattered villages and herdsmen who fell under the authority of the Tser-zhag king only because there was no one else around to claim them. “What do we do?”
“Look for a place to land,” Suhail said. “If we can.”
My first two caeliger flights had ended in crashes. I drew in a deep breath, reminded myself of the later flights that concluded in perfect safety, and tried to believe they would be my model today. My heart, already racing from the altitude and thin air, kept up its pace.
The caeliger lurched. Adler swore. I wanted to ask Suhail how far we might be from our destination, but kept silent. The answer was irrelevant. We would land where we could; only after we were safely on the ground did anything else matter.
“There,” Suhail said, pointing.
“I see it,” Adler said through his teeth.
Up ahead lay one of those fields of scree. It was not exactly level—but given a choice between sliding on loose stone and risking our balloon’s integrity on a treetop, our pilot clearly chose the former. The only problem lay in the preposition: the field lay up ahead. To reach it, our caeliger would have to climb once more.
Were it not for the cold, thin air, I might have thought myself back in the Keongan Islands. With the same blind faith as before, I followed the instructions of Suhail and our pilot, doing what little I could to assist. Our craft banked and rose, but not as quickly as the slope ahead drew near—and we were too far to starboard, I could tell. “If we keep on this way,” I called out, “we shall miss it entirely!”
“Wait—” Adler shouted back, intent on the terrain ahead. He could not spare the attention for more.
Just as we drew abreast of our target, a gust of wind caught us and slammed us sideways. The caeliger’s frame crunched with bruising force into the scree, knocking us all off our feet. For one irrational instant, I was certain our landing had broken the gondola—but of course dragonbone is not so easily cracked.
“Kill the lift!” Adler gasped, scrambling back to his feet. We were sliding on the scree, partly forward, partly down, and would soon come loose if we did not settle.
Suhail made it to the valve before I did, and the caeliger’s movement lessened. I drew in a steadying breath. One of the other caeligers soon came to a halt above us on the slope; but the other overshot. Adler spat a curse, watching it go. We all stood, not breathing, until the third caeliger dropped out of sight behind a ridge.
It was, of course, the one carrying the majority of our gear.
But if only one caeliger were to suffer misfortune, I had rather it be the one with fewer people on board. In the meanwhile, as the lightest member of our brigade, I leapt from the gondola with a sack in hand and began to fill it with scree. The craft shifted ominously and slid several meters away as I turned to hand my bounty to Suhail, and I had to fill a great many more sacks before its position was secure.
Finally both caeligers were settled into position. I was by then tired enough to lie down on the rocks and declare my day over, but of course we could not do so. Lieutenant Chendley immediately tightened his boots and declared his intent to hike in the direction of the third caeliger. “I’ll go with you,” Tom said, lurching to his feet.