For the first mile down the southern chute, the warm current carried them like corks on a millrace.
Below their boots, the grey battlements of the Fortress of Sleeping Wings shrank until the keep looked no bigger than a swallow’s mud nest stuck to the cliff, its broken iron spikes left behind on the rafters while tiny dark figures in temple surcoats ran out onto the empty launch wall too late to loose a bow. To the right of the wedge, Chaska and Lilt banked gracefully on the outer rim of the thermal, the sandray’s broad grey fins flexing in unison with the light linen sail-frame as she shepherded two wobbly young moths back into the elders’ slipstream.
Then the gorge bent around the northern spur, and a vicious cross-gust off the high glaciers slammed straight into the side of the warm column.
The air turned into a churning washboard of cold downdrafts and boiling steam. The old female moth beneath Ysabet and Ashaun grunted—a deep, whistling puff from her breathing slits—and beat harder to hold her altitude. Twenty yards to their left, the big russet male carrying Osha hit an icy pocket and dropped ten feet like a stone.
