Spellbound: Book 2 of the Spellwright Trilogy. Blake Charlton

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СКАЧАТЬ sunlight came through the windows here. The hallways leading toward the dome’s center were nearly black. But why had he stopped? Had he heard something?

      It came again. He jumped.

      It was just barely audible. He walked toward it, away from the direction the hierophant had been running.

      It came again. A chill ran down his ghostly body.

      “Shannon.” It was a feeble whisper. “Shannon.”

      Something about the voice was familiar.

      Shannon’s hands began to tremble. Suddenly, he wished he could return to being a fragmented consciousness, distanced from his ability to feel emotions like dread.

      The whisper came again. “Here.”

      With a start, Shannon realized that the voice was coming from one of the hallways to the dome’s center.

      Someone was standing in the dark—a hunched figure leaning against the wall. A thin old man? A creature standing on the figure’s shoulder flapped its wings.

      “Blood and hell!” Shannon swore without sound. He stepped back.

      “No!” the old man pleaded. “No, stay. Please …”

      Shannon halted. The stranger’s voice was raw with desperation.

      “You know me.” The old man took a few halting steps toward him. “You know me.”

      Shannon took another step back but then stopped. The stranger was right. But … the memory, it wasn’t all there.

      Shannon waited. The old man did not move. Shannon took a cautious step toward him.

      “Oh …” the old man said. “Oh, I have missed you …” The stranger took two more halting steps forward. “Please. Please, come back.”

      Now closer to the light, Shannon saw that the creature standing on the stranger’s shoulder was a large blue parrot. The skin around her beak and eyes was bright yellow. The old man had tawny skin, a hooked nose, two blank white eyes, long silvery dreadlocks.

      “Shannon,” the old man whispered and held out a hand.

      Filled with confusion, fear, and longing, the ghost held out his own hand and tried to say “Shannon.”

      Chapter Eight

      As Francesca fell from the lofting kite, her eyes met Deirdre’s. Time slowed, and she could identify every radial fleck in Deirdre’s green irises, every black strand of hair flickering before her tawny face. The immortal woman’s mouth was parted, as if she were just about to say something extremely interesting.

      Then time jumped forward. Francesca plummeted.

      Above her, the air warden’s kite wrapped around its pilot. The hierophant shot downward as if loosed from a giant bow and struck her in an awkward, aerial tackle. The world spun. The sanctuary seemed above her as she fell down into blue.

      Then the kite coiled around her and pressed her close to the air warden. He had raised his veil, covering everything but his light brown eyes.

      It had been three years.

      Francesca’s heart was kicking, but the terror of her fall was melting into giddiness. The pilot hadn’t looked at her face yet; he was distracted by the approaching ground.

      Two sheets of the red sailcloth stretched forward and out to form narrow wings. A tiny adjustment in these wings tilted them to a horizontal position and set them shooting southward as they fell. Avel’s sandstone buildings passed below, then the city’s outer walls.

      The wings broadened, slowing their fall and increasing gliding speed toward a ridge called Spillwind’s Hope. It rose from the intersection of the savanna and the foothills and so forced the wind upward into a lifting draft.

      Francesca’s breathing began to slow. The pilot was an expert. Of course he was. She found that she was smiling broadly, idiotically. They were going to live.

      She looked eastward across the savanna and the receding rain clouds. Two caravan roads cut straight brown lines through the grass to converge on Avel.

      Her giddiness dissipated as she wondered if they would have to land in the savanna. Until she came to Avel, Francesca had never seen grass like that which covered the Deep Savanna. It grew seven feet tall and consisted of thick, bamboolike segments. It reduced vision to a few inches and nearly halted movement. A party armed with scythes could cut a narrow path through the stalks, but the grass soon dulled even the sharpest blade.

      By stepping off a road, one could become lost in the grass ocean. Caravan guards told stories of men who stepped just a few feet into the stalks and became disoriented. The miserable souls would spend days wandering, at times coming within a biscuit toss of the road. Almost always, they died of thirst.

      And that was to say nothing of the hundred-mile grass fires or headless katabeasts or sun-eclipsing bee swarms or savanna lycanthropes.

      Every Western Spirish child knew of the massive, intelligent lycanthropes that moved through the grass ocean as a wolf might run through a meadow. Hidden within the tall grass, the lycanthropes were safe from hierophantic pilots and warkites.

      More insidiously, lycanthropes could sometimes seem human. Some Spirishmen believed the beasts transformed their bodies into human bodies. Others supposed they used spells to appear human. Whatever the case, everyone agreed the creatures and the blasting spells their spellwrights could cast were more dangerous at night.

      The city guards of Avel were constantly resisting lycanthrope attack. The beasts would rush the walls and try to knock them down with their blasting spells. More chilling stories came from the caravan men who crossed the savanna. They described lycanthropes who would cry out like men lost in the grass, only to devour anyone foolish enough to run to their aid. Other caravans described camps of men out on the savanna who would invite unwary travelers to join them by their campfire, only to change into their lycanthropic bodies as soon as the travelers let down their guard.

      As sensational as these stories were, they paled in comparison to those of the Savanna Walker, an ancient monster that roamed the plains. Some said the Walker was an elder god who had inhabited the continent before humanity had crossed the ocean. Others claimed it was the souls of men who’d died of thirst in the savanna. All the stories spoke of an unspeakably hideous body and of its shrill scream. Anyone who saw the beast or heard its voice was driven mad. However, while most Spirish adults knew lycanthropes to be real, most believed the Savanna Walker a mere ghost story.

      Francesca looked back at the infirmary’s roof. The cloud of blindness covered the tip of one minaret. She shivered.

      “Hold on,” the hierophant said. “It’s choppy in the ridge lift.”

      Francesca wondered what, exactly, she was supposed to hold on to when the sailcloth surrounding her disappeared. In an instant of terrifying freefall, they twisted to face upward. Then the red cloth leapt away and with a thump popped into a lofting kite. Francesca found herself hanging in a harness that had been made of the hierophant’s expansive green robes.

      Francesca’s hands tingled.

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