Flight From Blithmore by Jacob Gowans Page A

lights and
patterns off on the horizon.
    “Look!”
Ruther shouted with youthful enthusiasm, pointing to the north. “See them?”
    Henry
followed his friend’s finger to see the first float appear over a mile down the
street. Even from a distance, it looked magnificent. As it drew closer, Henry saw
a great bird of prey with golden feathers and a white beak, black eyes and
black tipped wings. Henry’s astonishment at the detail and likeness was
complete when the beak opened, and a long jet of bright orange flame shot
outward.
    The
crowd gasped and screamed in excitement. Henry’s eyes immediately went back to
Isabelle. She stood about thirty yards away, completely surrounded by the
throng. It took Henry another minute to find her father, but he eventually
spotted him a few feet away from her. Lord Oslan, in his tall bright green hat,
seemed uninterested in the festivities. In fact, he appeared to be searching
for something in the masses. Henry followed the direction of Lord Oslan’s gaze
but saw nothing of interest.
    The
floats that followed fell short of the standard set by the first, but not by
much. Some featured live animals, others displayed dancers and fire-jugglers,
one had a giant drum that needed four men to beat out its booming, hypnotic
rhythm. The procession was occasionally interrupted by lines of musicians and
twirlers wearing all black, making it difficult to see anything more than their
faces and instruments. Those in attendance, particularly the younger ones,
hunted and begged for gifts and food.
    With
the combined efforts of Ruther, Maggie, and Henry, Isabelle was never lost from
sight, but this didn’t satisfy Henry. It took very little to distract his
apprentices from their duties. Between the gifts, the girls, and the dancing,
they often left Isabelle completely alone for minutes at a time. Henry
constantly whistled or yelled over the crowd to be heard by them, and even when
they saw him, their responses were exasperated and reluctant.
    Then
the last float came. Henry had not seen anything so grand. The float was drawn
by over a dozen oxen and stood roughly seventy feet tall. The crowd quieted
momentarily as they stared up at it. Henry recognized it as a giant scorpion.
Its abnormally thick legs supported a bloated black body and a large head with
glittering red pincers swinging out from the sides. In the back, arching high
over the body, was the pointed tail, and at the top of the tail sat Emperor
Ivan Krallick.
    Henry
remembered as a young man seeing the royal leader of Neverak, but none of these
memories adequately reminded him of the Emperor’s unique appearance. The word
that came to mind was one Ruther had taught him during one of his word games:
angular. Beginning with the widow’s peak in the middle of his head, to his
sharp nose and jaw, to his muscularly lean body, everything about Krallick
seemed pointed, and his scorpion steed only enhanced that image.
    The
crowd announced its approval with an uproar of cheer. Without warning, another
burst of fire shot forth, this time from the scorpion’s tail. This burst of
fire was much bigger and brighter than anything the crowd had witnessed thus
far. It was a bright green and blue. After the float passed, Henry found he
couldn’t see anything because of the bright spots in his vision.
    The
shock of losing his sight caused his heart to race. “I can’t see Isabelle!
Ruther—Maggie, keep her in your sight!”
    “Friend,
I am as blind as you,” Ruther responded in a slight slur.
    “I—I
can barely see the crowd,” Maggie said. “Everything’s a shade of blue, but let
me try and find her.”
    Henry
rubbed at his eyes and opened them as wide as he could. Slowly images of the
crowd rushing to the float came to him. “I can’t find her.” He stood and cupped
his hands around his mouth. “Brandol!” The frenzy of the throngs drowned his
shouts. He spotted his three apprentices in the clamor of people begging for
gifts from the great