CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
HEART OF WAR
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 g
