Sable Ashwick's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

The grove fell behind them. The storm belt opened ahead, a wall of gray cloud stacked to the top of the sky. Sable pushed the glider east and climbed. The falcon flew off her right wingtip. Sylvara Greenweave, the fairy who had bargained passage in exchange for storm guidance, rode on her shoulder with one small hand fisted in the collar of her flight vest. The first gust hit like a shove. The glider tipped. Sable dropped her weight and leveled it. Rain came sideways. She pulled her goggles down over her eyes. "Left," Sylvara said in her ear. "Now. Hard." Sable banked. A knot of black wind punched past her right wingtip. She would have flown straight into it. "Good," the fairy said. "Up next. Ten counts." Sable climbed. They cleared the shear. For a stretch it worked. Sylvara read the currents ahead and called them out, and Sable moved the glider by her voice. Then the belt swallowed them. The wind changed pitch. It stopped whistling and started to roar, low and flat, the way a river sounds under a bridge. Sable felt Sylvara's mouth at her ear, felt the shape of words, heard nothing. She turned her head. The fairy was shouting. The roar ate every sound. "Louder," Sable yelled. Sylvara shouted again. Her voice did not carry an inch. A downdraft caught the nose. The glider dropped. Sable hauled the bar back and felt a rib creak. She had no warning. She would keep having no warning. She could fly the storm blind for another minute, maybe two, and then it would kill her. She looked at the falcon. He held his line off the wingtip, steady in the chop. Her father had trained him to work weather. He read air the way a hound read ground. "Sylvara," Sable shouted. "Ride him. Point with him." The fairy understood at once. She let go of the vest and dropped off Sable's shoulder into the wind. Her wings caught. She shot forward and landed on the falcon's shoulders, small hands buried in his neck feathers. The falcon screamed once and pulled ahead. Sable watched him. He banked left. She banked left. He climbed. She climbed. He tucked a wing and cut hard right around something she could not see, and she cut hard right after him and felt the shear pass under her belly. She did not need to hear Sylvara now. She only needed to keep the red bird in front of her. They punched through the worst of it in a long, ugly climb. The roar dropped a step. The rain thinned. Ahead, through a break in the cloud, she saw dark shapes on a ridge far below. Broken masts. A hull split open on stone. Her father's wreck. The falcon circled it once and started down. Sable followed him in.