Half an hour later, the boat made a turn toward the shore. The hills rose high here, a dark wall sloping sharply to the water. Dense vegetation covered the nearly vertical surface, shrubs, strange-looking grasses, and dense, thorny thickets of rudberry. The boat slid to a small dock, and we disembarked.
A soft high-pitched whir came from the cliff above us. If humpback whales could purr, they would have sounded just like this, haunting, beautiful, and uncanny.
Everard steered me to a path clinging to the side of the hill, leading up toward the apex. We began to climb. Halfway up I began puffing and huffing, while Everard didn’t even break a sweat. He must’ve been part mountain goat.
Finally, we reached the top. I followed him through the narrow gap between two bushes and walked into a clearing facing the ocean.
A huge white beast stood by the cliff, fully eighteen feet tall at the shoulder. It had a body like a greyhound, with a long ermine-like tail and four long legs, powerful but slender, with paws armed with crescent talons. Its deep chest narrowed to a ridiculously small waist. Its neck was long and flexible, almost swan-like, except much thicker, topped with a sleek head that ended in an eagle’s beak. The feathers on its body were so fine, they looked almost like fur, but on the back of its head, they grew into a long secretary bird crest, darkening toward the ends to a shimmering golden brown.
The creature saw us. Its turquoise eyes shone. It spread its enormous wings, blocking the sky. They were golden near the leading edge and white at the contour feathers. Two giant curved claws tipped the wing bends.
Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. There was no equivalent in our world. This was magical. This creature shouldn’t have existed but here it was, in front of me, and it took my breath away.
The beast leaned forward, stretching its neck. Its head lowered and came toward me, lower and closer, and closer . . .
“Easy.” Everard stepped forward.
The beast nudged him out of the way with its head, its eyes fixed on me. It bumped me with its beak and blew air out with a soft huff.
“Oh, she likes you.” Solentine walked out of the shadows.
I reached out. Some part of me realized that the drezmur could cut me in half with one crunch of that beak, but I couldn’t help myself. My fingers slipped through the pale feathers on the bridge of her nose. Oh wow. Soft and silky, like a kitten.
“The drezmurs live in the northern mountains.” Everard stroked the feathers next to my hand. “They require both flesh and magic to survive, so they hunt creatures rich in magic, like peibasas, kugats, or dorseem. They are always hungry. And they will allow you to ride and steer them, as long as you feed your magic to them.”
Ride them?
He laughed softly. “You should see your eyes, Maggie. They are so big.”
Who was the first person to even think of riding one of these? How?
“It takes a great deal of magic to make them carry you,” Solentine said. “Very few people can do it. Especially outside of the Selvan Mountains. You must be brimming with it because she is dying for a taste.”
“What happens if you run out of magic before you get where you’re going?” I asked.
“If you lose consciousness before you land, the drezmur will fling you off their back and devour you,” Solentine said.
I turned to Everard.
He nodded. “Luckily for us, I have a lot of magic.”
Now the exhausted Solentine from a few days ago made sense. He’d said he had to go around a thunderstorm, which added three hours to the flight. It must’ve drained his magic reserves to nothing.
Everard’s face had a speculative look, as if he had just thought of something. “Would you like to ride her?”
Oh wow.
“We can go for a short test flight above the sea.”
Under no circumstances must you allow him to get you onto a drezmur.
Saying yes was out of the question, and if I took a step back, he would grab me and pull me onto this creature. I had no idea how I knew it; I just sensed it. I held perfectly still.
“You’re not taking my cousin onto a drezmur,” Solentine said. “It’s one thing for you and me to risk our lives, but there is no need for her to flirt with death. Come on. You’re wasting the moonlight.”
Everard’s eyes saidCome with me.
I opened my mouth. “Safe journey, Your Grace.”
