The Nomad - By Simon Hawke Page 0,72

to follow them? Valsavis wondered what Nibenay had meant by that. How could he possibly follow them? Could the Shadow King bestow upon him the ability to fly? And at such a distance? Nibenay was a powerful sorcerer, but surely not even he could cast a spell clear across the Great Ivory Plain and the Mekillot Mountains! Obviously, however, he intended to do something. And he was apparently willing to forgive him for his mistake. That was no small thing. One thing was for certain. Nibenay would not forgive him twice.

Remain where you are, he had said. Well, he could do that. Especially since there did not seem to be anything else he could do. But how long was he to remain? Until Nibenay did whatever it was he was going to do, quite obviously. Valsavis had not had any breakfast yet. He went to his kank and took out some of his provisions, sat down on the ground and began to eat.

An hour later, he was still waiting. Most of a second hour lapsed. And then a shadow passed over Valsavis. He looked up. The shadow passed over him again. It was a roc. The huge bird was fifty feet long from head to tail feathers, with a wingspan of over one hundred feet. It circled, cried out once, and swooped down.

Valsavis grabbed for his sword. Then he realized that the creature was not stooping at him. It was gliding in for a landing. This was the means to follow them that Nibenay had sent, all the way from the Barrier Mountains. Valsavis grinned. The creature landed and stood there, cocking its huge, fearsome looking head at him.

“One moment, my feathered friend,” Valsavis said, as he removed some of the supplies from his kank and slung the pouches over his shoulders. He would have to leave the rest behind, along with the kank, of course, but he could only take what he could carry. It would suffice. He no longer had to cross the desert and go around the inland silt basins. He would fly over them, just like Sorak and Ryana and the pyreen.

He climbed up onto the massive roc’s back, straddling its thick neck with his legs. The huge bird cried out and beat its giant wings, lunging up into the air. The others would arrive in Bodach, thinking they had lost him, confident that he could never catch up to them in time.

Valsavis smiled. They would be wrong.

Chapter Eight

As they flew on the rushing wind, the moonlit desert spread out all around them, a wide and all-encompassing vista. The light of the twin moons, Ral and Guthay, sparkled on the salt below, giving the Ivory Plain a ghostly and ethereal appearance. It was much cooler at this higher altitude, and the wind rushed through their hair and clothing, making them shiver as they huddled together on the airborne raft.

“It’s so beautiful!” Ryana said, enchanted by the sight despite the cold. At first, she had been frightened as the ground had dropped away, receding farther and farther below them, and she could not resist the rising panic that they were going to fall. But the air elementals were strong, and with Kara there to hold them together and guide them, Ryana soon relaxed and gave herself completely to the experience.

Beside her, she heard a sudden burst of utterly joyous and completely unrestrained laughter, and she glanced at Sorak to see his face shining with delight. His lips were stretched wide in a grin of pleasure, his nostrils flaring, his entire face animated in way that told her this wasn’t Sorak anymore, but Kivara, his mischievous, childlike, female entity, whose personality was ruled by the thrill of novelty, the hunger for pleasure and stimulation of sensation.

“I’m flying!” she shouted, happily. “Oh, Ryana, this is wonderful!”

Despite knowing that this was not really the Sorak that she loved, but another personality entirely, Ryana could not help feeling a lightness at seeing “him” so transported. Normally taciturn and stoic, sometimes grim and often moody, Sorak had never really given himself over to the emotion of joy. Perhaps because whatever part of him could do that had been the basis for what became the entity Kivara. She had none of his other qualities. They were two completely different people, of different ages, different genders even, who just happened to share the same physical body.

Kivara was like an irrepressible young girl ruled only by her passions and her curiosity. She didn’t know any