purple-leafed trees, transferring its gripping fingers from the grassy ground to the upper canopy and disturbing flocks of weird flying—or floating—creatures as it passed. It was becoming plainly apparent to me that many of this world’s animals were tremendously buoyant, and used their long tendril-like limbs not to take to the air, but to hold themselves down. A large number of smaller animals, dislodged by the groping hands of the Ptall’kor, slipped out of the foliage behind us and shot upward before jerking to a halt at the end of silken threads, which they’d obviously attached to twigs and branches. Looking back the way we’d come, I could see hundreds of them, like oddly shaped balloons marking our passage, slowly drawing their bodies back down into the leaves.
“Soon we will stop so the Wise Ones can hunt Yarkeen,” Kata told us. “After we have eaten, we’ll travel through the Valley of Reflections to the Shrouded Mountains and the Cavern of Immersion.”
“What is Yarkeen?” I asked.
“That is.”
I followed her pointing finger and saw, between us and the wall of steam, a huge balloon-like gas sac floating high in the air. It was semi-transparent—which is why I hadn’t noticed it before—and resembled an upside-down teardrop in shape. From its base, a long cord descended and, about thirty feet above the ground, flared outward like the mouth of a trumpet, forming into a broad disk, which—as became evident when we drew closer to it—was at least a mile in diameter. Multiple translucent tentacles extended from the edges of this and were probing about in the foliage below.
“How can something that size be hunted?” I exclaimed.
“What, Aiden? What is it?” Clarissa interjected.
I told her about the creature. She banged the palms of her hands against her blindfold in frustration.
“Hunting a Yarkeen is dangerous,” Kata said. “When the Eyes of the Saviour are upon it, it will not purposely attack, but if it realises that it’s in danger, it will defend itself, and it is very powerful.”
“But why bother hunting it?” I asked. “It’s gigantic! We couldn’t possibly eat it all, and I see plenty of smaller creatures all around us, not to mention fruit-heavy trees and bushes filled with berries.”
The Koluwaian nodded. “Only a small part of the Yarkeen is edible but traditions must be followed.”
I don’t know how long it took us to reach the massive creature. Time was stuck. Perhaps I slept again, I’m not certain.
Awareness returned to me when we drew close to the beast. Its vast disk lay off to our right, above low, forested hills. I saw that, high above, around the thing’s buoyancy sac, a cloud of smaller things were flying. They were at such an altitude that I couldn’t make out any details, but I guessed the individual creatures to be about the size of a man. They swooped and turned about each other the way starlings do, forming complex patterns of light and shade, somehow—almost inconceivably—avoiding collisions.
“They are Zull,” Kata told me. “Usually there are more of them. They come to the Shrouded Mountains to die. Look.” She pointed at the ground and I saw there the hollowed and desiccated remains of something that had once been rather humanoid in shape, though multi-limbed. It was lying beside a stream, partially obscured by a dried flap of skin. Tiny maggoty things were crawling from the carcass and disappearing into the fast-flowing water.
The corpse, I realised, belonged to the same order of being as the one I’d discovered in the glade on Koluwai.
“Are Zull dangerous?”
“No. They won’t approach us.”
By means that escaped me, the Yatsill caused the Ptall’kor to pull itself down to ground level, where it settled in a grassy clearing. They then took up their spears, and Yazziz Yozkulu stepped over to us. “You will remain here with the young ones. We will return with Yarkeen meat for you.”
“We shall keep them safe,” Kata answered. “May the Saviour grant you success in the hunt.”
The Yazziz nodded and rejoined the other five adult Yatsill. They jumped from the side of the Ptall’kor and moved away toward the hills, where one of the Yarkeen tentacles was pulling leaves from the treetops. It reminded me of an elephant’s trunk, but with teeth in the opening at its end.
I was surprised by the speed at which the Yatsill moved. With their four oddly jointed legs, they looked somewhat ungainly and walked jerkily, yet progressed rapidly across the sward.
Once they reached the treeline, Yazziz Yozkulu threw one of his spears up