The south drainage steps smelled of rotten eggs and hot chalk. Chaska went first with a rolled square of wet canvas under her arm, testing each slick ledge with her heel before gesturing Pip down behind her. Above them on the ridge, Lilt remained tucked behind the sulfur chimneys with Ysabet, Ashaun, and Osha; the narrow stone chute was barely wide enough for Chaska’s shoulders, let alone a sandray’s wingspan.
At the bottom of the chute lay the outer nursery terrace.
Up close, the sound of the drilling platform was worse than it had been on the rim. Though the four-mule windlass had stopped for the supper horn, the heavy iron auger still hung suspended in the borehole, and the taut wire cables hummed in the canyon wind like bowstrings tuned too tight. A periodic shudder ran through the porous stone floor whenever the underground steam pockets shifted against the drill shaft.
Ten paces out on a cracked shelf of gray travertine lay the young burrow beast they had spotted from above.
It was as heavy as a winter hog, its rear half covered in thick, muddy plates made for shoving through clay tunnels. Its front half, however, had changed too fast and all wrong. Under the ceaseless pounding of the drill over the past week, the animal’s body had reached blindly for an escape from the shaking earth: its broad digging forelegs had stretched and hardened into a pair of rigid, mineral-ribbed wings twice the length of its body.
