An eagle plunged past, the reeve in its harness whipping a flag signal at her that she did not understand. Tumna kept going, heading for the mountains. Off to her right the sea spread flat with the sun’s light gilding the waters. Eihi! So beautiful!

The winds rumbled at crosscurrents as they rose over the foothills, heading straight into the black clouds. Thunder muttered above the mighty peaks. Lighting spiked.

“I don’t—! I don’t—!”

She had no cursed idea what to do; she was at the raptor’s mercy, likely to get her head ripped off or—

She screamed as Tumna folded her wings and plunged down, down, down, wind shrieking in her ears. The wings unfurled, and they jerked up hard and Nallo began to laugh and sob together as the raptor found another rising stream of air and they sailed up along the face of the massive peaks of the thunderheads until the hair on her neck rose.

A dazzling form of blue light—not lightning—sizzled into being an arrow’s shot away. It winked, and vanished.

Winked back, and vanished.

Winked back, and vanished.

All in the space of her taking in a shocked and heaving breath and letting it out.

The hells! It had eyes, of a kind, and it was looking at her.

It winked into being, and it boomed—like a laugh!—and vanished.

Tumna cut right, and they beat away from the face of the storm and glided down on the winds running before it. They dipped toward a valley cut deep into the foothills. Threads of light spun where a waterfall spilled over a cliff to cut a pool. A stream gushed through luxuriant vegetation. That same prickling feeling crawled on her skin, as though they were about to plunge back into the storm, but instead Tumna swept a wide turn and headed back toward the east. The sea glimmered in the distance. Nallo could not spot the settlement, but a strange web of light sparked to their left where two rocky hills joined in a saddle. Tumna swooped, and thumped down on the bare ground of the saddleback ridge.

Nallo was still laughing and crying as she wiped her eyes and looked around. Wind roared over the span of earth. A pattern carved into the rock glittered, tracing a labyrinth. Aui! Her skin went cold and she thought she would faint.

The eagle had brought her to a Guardian’s altar.

“We can’t stay here, Tumna! It’s forbidden!”

On one side, an overhang offered shelter. Coals and ash smoldered in a fire pit, wood stacked neatly against one wall. Someone was living here, where all were forbidden to walk. All except Guardians.

“The hells! Move! Move!” She tugged on the uppermost jesses.

Tumna thrust, and they were up again, battered in the swirling currents, turning toward the sea. The winds fronting the storm buffeted them as they glided east, and once over the water the eagle had to beat her wings. It was getting dark, the setting sun occluded by the storm rolling out of the Spires. She banked, and ahead Nallo saw the flickering lights of watch fires and of scattered lamps and torches being lit against the gloom.