Aenir by Garth Nix, Steve Rawlings Page A

to do?"
    "Tal. Aim one hand left of the blue star and fly. Milla at Four Rivers Meet by dawn. Follow Zicka to Cold Stone Mountain. Have a Storm Shepherd blow the Pipe. You and Milla fetch me from under the Mountain. No Aeniran can touch me. Go now!"
    "What?" asked Tal. "But Milla will kill me!"
    "No!" the Gorblag whistled. "Go! Four Rivers Meet. Zicka. Cold Stone Mountain. Blow Pipe. Fetch Codex from under Mountain."
    "Milla will kill me," protested Tal. "And how am I going to get under the mountain?"
    It was too late. The Codex had lost contact.
    The Gorblag's eyes cleared. It stopped pursing its lips and opened its mouth wide. An instant later a huge gob of sticky, foul-smelling slime whizzed past Tal's face.
    The Klorbag dived down into the leaf-litter and squirmed away before Tal or Adras could retaliate. Tal watched its dorsal fin snaking through the rotting vegetation, to make sure it wasn't going to turn for a parting shot.
    Then he held up his hands.
    "We've got to get going again," he said to Adras. "The Codex wants us to go to somewhere called Four Rivers Meet. And it has somehow got Milla to help."
    "Milla?" asked Adras eagerly. "The other one? With Odris?"
    "Yes," said Tal. "We have to aim a hand's width left of the blue star, so once we're up out of this jungle I guess I'll have to hang by one arm and try"
    He stopped talking, as it was obvious Adras wasn't listening. He had reared up and had his head cocked to one side, as if he were listening to something that Tal couldn't hear.
    "Find Odris, find Milla," the Storm Shepherd announced. "That's right?"
    "Yes." Tal sighed. "If you know where Odris is." "I know." Adras bent down and gripped Tal's forearms, not noticing the boy wince with pain. "The wind tells me."
    "Good," said Tal faintly. His shoulder sockets felt like they'd had molten metal poured inside them, and the pain was spreading through to his neck and head. But the Codex had said to go on, and so he must.
    As Adras rose up out of the jungle, Tal's thoughts turned to Milla. He hoped the Codex had told her she wasn't going to kill him.
    He also felt the slight twinge of guilt he'd had previously grow stronger inside him.
    Tal still thought he'd done the right thing. The only thing. But now he was wondering if Milla could ever see it his way. Maybe making her swap her shadow for a Spiritshadow was like a Chosen not having a Spiritshadow.
    Maybe… maybe he'd turned her into a sort of Icecarl Underfolk.
    He'd really destroyed her future, he realized, when all he'd given up was his choice of Spiritshadow.
    She would want to kill him, Tal decided. But he couldn't let her, because right now saving Gref and his family was more important than anything else.
    No matter what it cost.
     

 

     
     

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
     

    It took Tal and Adras all night to fly to Four Rivers Meet. They had to make frequent stops for Tal to massage his arms and rotate his shoulders. Eventually Adras had to actually carry Tal, the Storm Shepherd's arms wrapped completely around the Chosen boy. It was somewhat humiliating, but Tal had long since given up caring about that. He was merely glad that it didn't hurt.
    They sighted Four Rivers Meet shortly after dawn. At least Tal presumed that's what it was. Certainly he could see four rivers flowing in from north, south, east, and west, to meet in a crazy four-way delta of black mud and thousands of channels that made no sense to Tal.
    How could four rivers all flow into the same patchwork of channels? The four deltas should end in a lake, but they didn't. At least one of the rivers should be flowing the other way. But none did.
    The rivers just kept on spreading and dividing, their many fingers stretching across a wide plain. A completely flat plain, Tal thought at first. But then as the sun rose higher he saw that there was something in the very middle of the delta.
    A mountain, surrounded on all sides by narrow streams and reedy islets.
    None of it made sense. The water from the