Vertigo gripped me as I balanced on the wafer-thin edge of a fatal fall. Wind beat at my clothes. A wild open sky screamed all around. Below lay the receding jungle, a blast of green among dry, brown plains. And pouring up from among the trees were long dark lines of saddle bird riders—Vohanna’s army.
I ripped myself loose from the edge, threw myself at the open frame of the hatch through which I’d come, and grabbed hold. My heart sped like a loom-shuttle in my chest. The black pyramid was an airship, a dreadnought of the skies.
Abruptly our speed slackened. We drifted to a hovering halt. From below, the birds and their riders began to catch up, began to form phalanxes whose spears and crossbows spattered the emerald sunlight. Beyond the farthest such grouping, above the jungle, I glimps
