Skyborn

This again. “I know that’s what you think,” Adari said, searching for slow, even tones. “I don’t pretend to know what forces work the world—”

“That’s clear!”

“—but if disagreeable words caused the world to shake, Kesh would rock every time husbands and wives quarreled!” She inhaled deeply. “Surely, the Skyborn have more important affairs than to police our own little disagreements. I know they do.”

Silence. Adari looked around. Dark Keshiri eyes, mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

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once aimed at her, pointed down and away. She’d won a few, that time. Maybe not enough to let her keep her job, but enough that she could keep collecting—

Krakka-boooom!

Purple faces turned west, toward the Cetajan Mountains. Jutting out into the ocean beyond, the range provided the village of Tahv some of its finest sunsets—but now the flames were coming from the mountain peak itself. A pillar of fiery ash billowed from the summit.

It made no sense. Adari helped Izri to his feet.

“That—that’s a granite peak,” she said over the subsiding echo. “It’s not volcanic!”

“It is now!”

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Chapter Two

A rock was a simple thing, but as her grandfather had told her, “By simple things, we know the world.”

Adari had never felt shame for all those hours she’d spent searching the creek beds, or for finding more of interest in the shards of a shattered stone than in her children’s first words. She was teaching them—but the rock was teaching her.

Now, thanks to a simple rock, she was seeing more of the world than ever before—from high above, clinging to the broad back of Nink. It was an unlikely position for either of them, but she’d been in it for most of the night and part of a day. Her first uvak-flight. It wasn’t by choice.

The hours after the explosion on the mountain hadn’t gone that badly, she thought. Audience members at the hearing had fled to their homes. She’d done the same after Dazh and his cohorts left together, quibbling over signs and portents.

By the next morning, however, the mood of the town had changed. The faraway Cetajan peak was still smoking, but it had become clear that it posed no danger to Tahv or the villages farther down the watershed.

It was safe for everyone to go outside—out to Adari’s front yard, to express their feelings about her faithless mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

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words and the smoldering addition to the skyline they had caused. The Skyborn didlisten. What other proof was needed? If the Keshiri couldn’t silence Adari Vaal, they’d at least make sure their voices were louder than hers.

They’d been doing a good job of it when Adari sent Eulyn and the kids out to take refuge at her uncle’s place. The growing crowd, still pelting the house with rocks, had parted to let the i

That had been enough for her. The torches could’ve been for light—but they might have been for something worse. She’d clearly exceeded whatever protection a widow of an uvak-rider was afforded. The Keshiri weren’t big on violence, but they didn’t have a lot of variety in their social sanctions, either. Judging that it didn’t look like a banishing kind of crowd, Adari had turned in desperation to her own backyard, and that least liked portion of her legacy: Nink.

Her departure over the rooftop had surprised the people out front almost as much as the maneuver’s suc-cess had surprised her. The uvak was most surprised of all. With his rider gone, Nink could have expected never to be ridden again. Uvak took to new riders so seldom that they were promptly put out to stud.

Awakening to Adari trying to clamber aboard his fleshy back, Nink could have done anything, gone anywhere.

He went up.

She had spent the rest of that night alternately screaming and dodging pursuit by Neshtovar fliers. The latter feat was made easier by Nink’s insistence on soaring far out over the ocean. Those had been the worst mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

12

John Jackson Miller

moments for Adari, who knew the animal’s past. But something on the uvak’s part, perhaps curiosity, kept him from sending her to Zhari’s grave. Just before dawn, Nink had finally found a seaside mountain roost, where Adari immediately collapsed with exhaustion. Amazingly, when she awoke, the uvak was still there, stuffing his beak with what little foliage there was. Home clearly wasn’t looking that attractive to Nink anymore, either.

Now, on the second morning since the explosion, Adari saw that her directionless night flight had taken her near the source of anxiety. The Cetajan Range was a chain of craggy goliaths slivered from the mainland—a prominent part of the horizon when seen from the interior, but as inaccessible as places on the western shoreline got. An expedition of rock hunters had brought back what little Adari knew of the place—and that had required a sympathetic volunteer Neshtovari willing to fly a sample return mission. Seeing the mountain ahead of her, Adari was overtaken by the urge to see the truth up close. If the explosion wasn’t volcanic, it could set things right with her and the community.

And if the mountain was suddenly volcanic, she was curious about that, too. What was the process involved?

Or were the scholars wrong about the makeup of the range? Had the uvak-rider flubbed the sample?

That was probably it.Adari’s anger rose as Nink did, the uvak comfortably clearing the chain in preparation for an oceanside approach. It would be poetic, Adari thought, if the one project the scholars had entrusted to a Neshtovar had resulted in wrong information.

Cetajan Range samples, nothing,she thought. The idiot probably brought us rocks from his front path!She shuddered, and not just from the chilly air. Why should she be made to suffer for their colossal—

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Suddenly the source of the smoke column came into view. Adari nearly fell off Nink right then. She’d half expected to see an open caldera, steaming like the smokers— smokereally was a misnomer—she’d seen in the south. Instead, a massive shining shellsat in an indentation on the seaward side of the mountain. That was the word that entered her mind, even if the scale was completely wrong: its sharp, corrugated ridges resembled the ancient conchs she’d seen returned from the seabed. But this shell was the size of the Circle Eternal!

And this shell had smoke—not steam—billowing from several ruptures. Tremendous grooves gouged behind the body showed it had struck downward at an angle. The fires inside were now nearly spent, but she could tell from the melted mangle that they must have been far larger once. The explosion producing the plume visible from the inland side must have happened right when it landed, she thought.

Landed?

Before Adari could contemplate this, movement caught her eye. One of the apertures in the shell dis-gorged something, something that struck the gravel below and disappeared in a slide of dust. She nudged the uvak nearer. A flash of crimson light appeared in the small cloud—and at its end . . .

. . . a man.

The man looked up at her. He was pale of face, lighter than the sickest Keshiri she had ever seen. And in his left hand was a shaft of brilliant red light the size of Izri’s cane.