Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [47]
I did not wait to hear his answer.
The forest giant that I chose to climb was thinly barked and smooth of branches for the first twenty feet up its redwood-sized trunk. So many vines wrapped it, though, that the climbing was easy enough until I reached the lower limbs. Those limbs were massive, three feet wide or more at the base, tapering only gradually after that. But they made the work go even faster and I soon forged my way into the very top of the tree, relishing the physical action after so long in the saddle.
All above me the olive-green dome of the sky was deepening toward emerald as the night closed in. But light would linger for a while yet over the treetops.
I called a signal to Graye and heard him shout, “Haieee!” at the sabruns. With chattering cries, they whirled up. I saw them rise above me and then try to settle to ground once more. Rocks flew from Graye’s position and the birds lifted again, circling wildly. I shouted at them too, from my hidden perch, and they shied and headed further away over the forest.
I watched them wheel and dip. Then one of them steadied and beat its wings off toward the northwest, toward the center of this odd jungle. The other followed. Trees grew at the center that overtopped their neighbors, and it seemed to me that they stood like a battalion of guards around some sort of building that was no more than an outline under the setting green sun. Our sabruns circled there, swinging lower and lower until I could see them no more. Though I could not be sure, I thought they had alighted.
Noting eagerly the direction and distance, I began clambering down from my eyrie. It was already full night beneath the canopy of leaves. I heard Graye moving around below, dumping equipment and supplies at the base of the tree I had climbed. We’d camp here tonight, in the forest to avoid the ghyres. Tomorrow we’d head inward toward the jungle’s heart, leaving the saddles behind but carrying our food, water, and weapons.
A low, trilling whistle sounded, lingered...died.
I paused at the lowest limb on the trunk, my heart rhythm jumping from slow and steady to thud-thud-thud. The forest floor was swathed in darkness twenty feet below. I could see nothing.
“Graye?”
There was no response, though I heard movement clearly. A lot of movement.
“Graye?” I called again.
A flat, savage growl answered me.
Hair curled at my neck. I wanted to shout, to scream for Graye. But the words had fossilized in my throat and I sat very still.
More low growls rippled through the dark. There came the padding of light feet on leaf-covered ground. Then sparks of wine-red flared up all around the base of my tree, dozens of pairs of sparks.
Eyes, I realized, eyes glittering with internal heat, with no light in this dark forest to reflect from them. The bodies of the beasts could not be seen.
In the background came a gagging sound, a choking groan of physical and mental agony. In the next instant it broke off. There in the trees, the skin went tight over my knuckles and fear knotted in my chest. My mouth had been reborn a desert.
Then there was light. It flared up suddenly, a sallow, yellowish gleam from a thin pile of twigs that had been set to burning. Diken Graye bent over that fire, blowing gently on it. He looked up at me and smiled, though he should not have been able to see me among the tree limbs. His lips were a thin, hard line, and the scar at his chin seemed to pulse. Behind the sullen, bloody glow of the red eyes I could see nothing left that I could call my friend.
“Vohanna!” I cursed in a whisper, and rage began to pluck my strings.
How could this “goddess” have possessed Diken Graye? I had seen her take Eric Ryall, but she’d had a link to Eric, had been able to project her power through the milkstones embedded in his flesh. Graye bore no such stones.
Or did he? Had he been implanted somehow? If so, I could only