Tears leaked from the comers of Grantin's eyes and his head bucked uncontrollably in the wind. Though the forces which propelled him protected Grantin from the full force of his passage, eddies and drafts and blasts of air penetrated the unstable shield. And the cold. Now that he was several thousand feet above the surface of Fane, Pyra's warmth had leaked away until the sun exuded only a thin, buttery light.
Grantin wrapped his arms around his torso and tried to orient himself so that he could view the approaching landscape from a more stable position. Loosening his left hand, he used it to shield his eyes. Through the cracks between his fingers he peered at the approaching Guardian Mountains. The band of the bloodstone ring pressed against his forehead. Images sporadically flashed into his brain. With each flicker a sensation like a high-voltage shock shuddered through his frame. Again and again these images displayed the scene of the imprisoned Fanist and the mad wizard who tormented him. Grantin recognized none of the pictures, although it seemed to him that in addition to that of the Fanist other visions repeated themselves. Two or three times he spied an Ajaj Gray clasping a green, square-cut gemstone.
At last, unable to bear the continuous shocks, Grantin wrenched his hand from his forehead and removed the ring from contact with his skull. Half a league ahead of him and to his right lay the first pass between the Guardian Mountains.
Somehow Grantin had to turn his course. At first he flailed his arms and contorted his body, as if he could jerk and skitter his way at an angle across the sky, but to no avail. If his course did not change, in less than a minute he would shred himself against the granite outcropping which protruded from the side of the first peak.
Grantin's body twisted in a slow clockwise movement. He unclasped his hands and extended both arms straight out from the shoulder, but instead of slowing the maneuver increased the rate of his spin. Willing now to try anything, Grantin swung his arms back, and the spin decreased. He put both arms directly in front of him, and the spin halted. His course slowly veered to the right. The ring itself seemed to be the medium of control.
Grantin began a hasty experiment. He pointed the powerstone directly at the approaching jagged wall, and his movement away from the peak accelerated. Somehow the stone sensed movement around it and compensated by adjusting the field in which Grantin was carried. Grantin found that if he shook his fist up and down his whole body likewise oscillated. As if to prove his theory, the shattered palisade slid by a hundred yards to the left. Grantin freely rode the air through the pass.
Now he struggled to orient himself. Standing upright, he set his legs wide apart, right hand on his hip, left hand extended as if holding a searchlight which could guide his way through the tangled peaks.
Each time he detected a bulge of rock or escarpment impinging on his line of flight, Grantin solemnly pointed the powerstone at the obstruction. Like the north pole of one very weak magnet approaching the north pole of another, Grantin's line of travel shifted and he was repelled from those obstacles toward which he oriented the bloodstone.
After a few minutes Grantin gained a certain sense of control, power, and even majesty. Like a minor god he bestrode the stone fortresses of Fane itself. One by one the battlements of the Guardian Mountains slid past. His twisting course at last opened to him a vista of the rich lands beyond.
Here were the outer borders of the Gogol realm, the boundary lands inhabited no doubt by bandits, outcasts, and fugitives from Gogol justice. And beyond? Ahead lay the fabled settlements of Hartford mythology-the Gogol encampments of Mephisto, Styx, and their capital city of Cicero, all places which Grantin had no desire to investigate. But that brought up another problem: how to end his wild ride and still keep his bones in one piece and his organs in their normal resting places? Perhaps if he forced himself lower his speed would decrease.
Grantin extended his left arm toward Pyra. Could he obtain a repulsion from such a distant body? He sighted along his extended member to keep it fixed at the sun. After a minute or two he glanced below him to see what effect, if any, his experiment had produced.
His breath caught in his throat and his heart squeezed into a small icy lump. His scheme had worked better than he dared to hope. Now he sped at terrific speed only thirty or forty yards above the ground. Trees roared forward, their branches grabbing at him, at the last second to pass only a scant ten or fifteen feet below his dangling legs.
Now pale with fear, his heart racing in an adrenaline overdose, Grantin whipped out his arm and pointed it forward at an angle slightly below that of the horizon. After a few seconds he seemed to detect a decrease in his speed but suffered a corresponding increase in his altitude. Unless he was careful, in a few more minutes he'd be back in the freezing upper reaches of the atmosphere.
The ground was now composed of flatlands interspersed with a few rounded hills and humpbacked swales. Ahead these hummocks ended and a great forested plain stretched off toward the horizon. Summoning the last fragments of whatever courage he had left, Grantin adjusted his course so that his body now plunged directly toward one of the approaching hills. Grantin then pointed his arms skyward and lowered his level of flight until the top of the slope stood higher than Grantin himself. Finally he pointed his finger at the center of the hillside and waited. His velocity did seem to slacken, but not enough. Now the hill was only a few hundred yards distant. Grantin saw that the knoll was covered by a copse of feather trees, their distended fronds resembling the terrestrial weeping willow.
Fifty feet, forty, thirty… Grantin's speed was too high and his altitude too low. In utter panic he pointed his arm straight ahead.
With a noise like a stone singing through a field of tall grass, Grantin smashed through the leafy tops of the feather trees. His arms and legs flailing, he whipped through tendrils and boughs. Leaves, stems, branches, bark, and bits of vegetation, together with a family of blue-crested squawk birds, exploded around him. He found himself tumbling downward. Instinctively his arms grasped at the limbs through which he fell. Grantin's grasp slipped from its last handhold. With a dull thud he bounced off the twisted trunk and collapsed in a bed of moss.
Dazed, head spinning, Grantin lay panting and gasping for air. So addled was his brain that it was several minutes before he realized that he had come to a halt. The nightmare flight was over. There ahead of him stretched a green-blue vista as far as the eye could – the streams and forests of the borderlands. Beyond them lay the Gogol empire itself.