Because a second after the gryphon gulped down the last of his meal, we were off, loping and then running down the hill, before taking off in a whoosh of huge wings and a mental shout from me, because holy crap, that was a rush!

The beast soared effortlessly skyward, and I held on for all I was worth, despite knowing that I was only in some fey’s head. I didn’t understand what was happening, but that had been so true for so long, that I was honestly getting used to it. I knew I needed to get out of there, to find a way to pull back into me, or into whatever version of me had just been dragged out of the leaf pile, but… but I could do that in a minute, right?

Because this… was seriously awesome.

The rider didn’t seem to think so, treating it as pretty ho-hum. But I craned my neck to see out of the corners of his eyes, not wanting to miss anything, and was rewarded with a bird’s eye view of more villages. Some were nestled in snowy valleys, while others were perched on craggy mountain fastnesses as if they’d been dropped from on high by one of the eagles riding the wind currents around us—and carefully keeping their distance.

Unlike the simple architecture of the valley towns, the mountain ones had massive walls and soaring spires, and open ledges beside which half frozen waterfalls gushed into the gorges below. They looked like they’d been magicked straight out of the mountains themselves, and they probably had. The Svarestri were lords of earth, and it never ceased to amaze me what they could do with it.

Like that, I thought, catching sight of a stone creature the size of a small mountain, hauling a pack of wood up a cliff face, toward one of the higher villages.

The pack was woven out of ropes as fat as the anchor chains on an ocean liner, and looked to contain half a forest’s worth of trees. Yet it had been slung over one gigantic shoulder with the same ease that I’d carry a large handbag. That was probably because the shoulder in question, along with the rest of the man-shaped creature, was carved out of what looked like reddish-brown granite, with the stone sparkling dimly despite the haziness of the day.

But it hadn’t been left as plain rock. It was crowned by a hedge of fir trees, giving it the illusion of hair, and had a flock of goats grazing on some dried grasses on one shoulder and down its great back. It turned its head as we passed and lifted the arm that wasn’t clinging to the almost perpendicular cliff.

I saw my gauntleted hand raise in return.