For the first three breaths after leaving the rock, the gorge floor rushed up toward Lilt’s belly, and then the broad leather membranes under Chaska’s knees caught the rising column of valley air with a deep, hollow thrum. Lilt leveled out without a single beat of her wings, banking left along the dark slate cliff just below the shadow line of the eastern ridge.
Cold wind watered Chaska’s eyes behind her horn-rimmed goggles. She leaned forward over Lilt’s neck, keeping her weight low and her left hand on the braided guide-loop while her right hand held a short charcoal stick tucked inside her glove. Down in the towns, merchants always talked about flying as if a courier simply drew a ruler-line across a parish chart and floated along it like a cloud. In real mountain air, every hundred yards was work: feeling the cold sink pouring off a patch of snow in the shade, riding the warm bubble rising off dark ironstone, and watching the tips of Lilt’s wing-claws for the first tremble that meant a rotor was curling off the ridge above.
Below them, the switchback trail looked like a dropped gray thread winding past an old, scarred bowl in the mountainside.
