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had chosen him for this expedition. If Eyas’s summoner senses
found nothing to cause alarm, his word was to be trusted.
    But that being the
case, why had Rufin left the party, and taken his gun?
    A shot rang out off to
the left. Aysun immediately altered his direction, heading towards
the sound; but he’d no sooner drawn his own hand gun out of its
holster than Rufin himself appeared, his weapon slung over his
shoulder and a large, dark object dangling from his free hand.
    Eyas halted. ‘Rufin.
Tell me that isn’t a desente bird.’
    ‘A what? Here.’ Rufin
thrust the dead thing at Eyas, who fumbled it. It fell to the
ground, wings splayed.
    ‘It is a desente
bird.’
    ‘Nice.’ Rufin nudged it
with his toe.
    ‘Nicer when it was
alive,’ Eyas replied. ‘And not dangerous, I might add. They’re
herbivores.’
    ‘And dinner.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘They’re also dinner.’
Rufin allowed his big body to drop into a cross-legged position on
the ground. Deft with his large hands, he began to pluck the
bird.
    ‘What? No! These birds
are rare, and marvellous. Did you know that a desente can stay
aloft for eighteen hours without-’
    ‘Who cares?’
interrupted Rufin. ‘All I want to know is whether it tastes
good.’
    ‘It’s dead already,
Eyas,’ interceded Aysun. ‘Let’s get it over with and move on.’
    Rufin’s head came up at
that. ‘Aysun, old friend. You know about sleeping, I presume.’
    ‘Heard of it.’
    ‘Weren’t we planning to
do some at some point?’
    Aysun shook his head.
‘Got to keep moving. Llan needs us.’
    He heard Eyas sigh
faintly. The summoner was younger than both he and Rufin, but he
wasn’t as physically robust as the two older men. To his credit,
though, he didn’t complain.
    Nyra, typically, said
nothing at all.
    As the bird cooked over
a hastily assembled campfire, Aysun sat by himself to think. He
needed to try to guess where Llandry might be, but that required
some understanding of her motives and in that he was entirely
stumped. He had always taught his daughter to be wary of the
Uppers. He had always feared the possibility that she or his wife
might someday suffer the same fate as his father; his father the
summoner, who had crossed into the Uppers one day many years ago
and never come back. Since then he had lived with the constant fear
that his wife or daughter might be killed up there as well.
    Llandry must have been
in peril when she had gone into the Uppers, that he knew: she would
never have done it otherwise. If it had saved her life, he couldn’t
blame her for it. But why hadn’t she returned in the weeks since?
What could she possibly be doing? He couldn’t shake the thought
that she would have returned if she could. Something must have
befallen her, but he couldn’t imagine what.
    For it could be
anything in this strange place. Intent as he was on his location
device, he had often been oblivious to the scenery through which
they passed. But he couldn’t entirely ignore the way the landscape
changed subtly, minute by minute, until the apparently vast forest
of tall-stemmed, wide-capped glissenwol trees that stretched before
him faded away and he was striding instead through open hills.
There was nothing abrupt about these changes; it appeared as a
gradual process, so much so that one hardly noticed it
happening.
    As he and his
companions ate their meal - with less haste than Aysun would have
preferred - he could feel the grass steadily lengthening underneath
him. That alone was interesting, for an hour previously they had
been sitting on deep blue moss. When Eyas noticed the change he
grew troubled.
    ‘This may not be a good
time or place to sleep after all,’ he finally announced.
    ‘Oh?’
    Eyas made no immediate
reply. He appeared to be listening; whether with his ears or with
his summoner senses was unclear. Then he rose and walked slowly
around the campfire until he was close to Aysun, and stood staring
into the grass. Aysun had seen him in such a