The journey was a repetition of the one they had taken on that pair of swamp dragons when he and Aket-ten had gone up to spread the dust—but without quite as much of the buffeting inside the clouds as the last time. As Avatre was hit by contrary winds, by unexpected updrafts and even a downdraft or two that made his stomach plunge and his passenger scream with fear, he thought that the turbulence was perhaps half that of the initial storm. And if that pig of a swamp dragon could handle it. . . .

His steadiness seemed to give Avatre confidence, and she fought her way back after every obstacle. Finally, she lifted her head a little as if she sensed something.

At that moment, it seemed to Kiron that the rain-filled mist above him was marginally brighter.

With a mighty surge of wings, and the added help of another unexpected updraft, they burst out of the clouds and into the sunlight.

Despite their head start, and Re-eth-ke’s lighter burden, it was a moment or two after that before Aket-ten and her passenger lumbered up into the light, and they did so a good six furlongs away from Avatre. Following Kiron’s signals, Avatre wheeled toward them; he wanted to be closer before they tried the next part of the journey.

It was then that he noticed that his passenger was clutching him around the waist so tightly that, if he had not been wearing the Altan Jouster’s broad, thick, leather belt that protected the midsection, he’d have been having trouble breathing.

“Are you all right?” he called back over his shoulder.

“No,” said a strangled voice in his ear. “But don’t stop.”

He spared a brief thought of poor thing for her, but had no time for anything more; the next bit would be tricky and required a lot of concentration. As he now knew from experience, the winds up this high were layered; while he had never yet come across one layer going in the completely opposite direction of another, he had encountered winds moving at right angles to each other. The Magi probably paid very little attention to their magic once they set it in motion, and as long as the rains went south, that was all they cared about. There was a single channel of wind up here, above the clouds and rain, that Heklatis had “purloined,” deflecting it so that instead of going north to south, it curved off to the west. It would be high, Heklatis had told him. Perhaps higher than he had ever flown before, and Avatre, who could read the winds better than he, and who had more experience than Re-eth-ke, would have to find it. He signaled to Aket-ten, who nodded vigorously, then sent Avatre up.

She was not at all averse to this idea; this clear, dry air was much more to her liking than spending the day trying to fly through the pouring rain.