The griffins and their riders rose past layer after layer of stables, their occupants blinking as they stared curiously out at them, and then they emerged into the sunlight, where they saw the top of the tower below them with its crown of smaller towers containing the tower's defences against aerial attacks. Now that they were in free air, their forward speed generated all the lift they needed and even Resalintas’s griffin was able to carry him effortlessly. They flew around the tower for a few minutes, while they got into formation and got their bearings, and then they headed off into the east.

     As he watched the city shrink behind them, Drake thought back to a conversation he'd had a year or so earlier with a priest of Caratheodory, the God of Mathematics. The short, bald human priest had claimed to have proved that it was impossible for any creature larger than a turkey to fly using muscle power alone. When Drake had pointed out that some flying creatures, such as dragons, could grow to be over two hundred feet long and weigh many tons, the priest merely retorted that they must have some other means of generating lift, apart from their wings. That was possible, Drake supposed. After all, there were some creatures that had no wings at all, and moved through the air using a form of magical levitation.

     The most famous, or infamous, such creatures were the evil wenns, terrifying creatures of the open sea that looked superficially like giant jellyfish except that they floated above the water, trailing their tentacles in the sea. They were a major threat to the shipping of the southern sea, being able to paralyse, devour and digest the entire crews, alive and fully conscious, of even the largest ships. Then there were things like flying carpets and the famous flying castles of the cloud giants that stayed aloft with the help of pure magic. Dragons commonly used magic, and so could easily use a form of levitation to neutralise most of their weight to the point where their wings could lift them, and he supposed that all large flying creatures did the same thing.

     Sitting on one such flying creature now, he wondered whether he could test the theory. He didn't feel any lighter, so any magical flying powers possessed by the griffin must act by providing direct lift, instead of causing a local reduction in the force of gravity. That lift would act on the griffin itself, and so be undetectable to him, but it might show up with a reveal spell. He made up his mind to ask a wizard to cast such a spell on a flying griffin one day, just to see what would happen.

     They left the areas of cultivated farmlands behind them and found themselves above the more or less continuous woodlands east of Ilandia that reached from Callinia to the sea. This close to civilization, the woodlands were quite safe and friendly, but further east they gradually blended into the dark and dangerous Overgreen Forest, sparsely inhabited and avoided wherever possible. Drake's one experience there had been enough, and he was glad that they would be flying over it this time, rather than slogging through it.

     They covered a good distance the first day, the griffins landing twice to rest, and they spent the night in a clearing so large that the trees were barely visible on the horizon around them. The size of the clearing, which was so small in relation to the forest surrounding it that it wasn't marked on any map, brought home to Drake just how vast the forest was, and he felt overwhelmed by it, even though he was so far from the nearest tree. And yet the Ilandian forest was quite small compared to some of the world's forests. There were areas of continuous woodland so vast that the Ilandian and Overgreen Forests together were nothing but a copse in comparison. Thinking about it left Drake feeling small and humble, and he found himself whispering words of praise to the Gods who had created it all.

     They made camp, taking turns, four at a time, to keep watch, and with the griffins taking turns, two at a time, to patrol the surrounding forest. Even this close to civilization, there was no sense in taking chances.

     "Well, you're the guide," said Resalintas to Pars as they, Drake, Gallit and Rivan sat around a campfire sipping cups of strong hot tea. The rest of the men and the griffin riders not on guard were sitting around other campfires nearby, swapping bawdy stories and laughing uproariously at each others' romantic adventures. "Which way do we go now?"

     "Just east for now," replied Pars. "Both times Boris and I were in the Shadow before, it was in a spot almost due east of here, near an old Agglemonian town called Sanpaya. There's plenty of cover there in case we meet any trouble, and it's within easy travelling distance of a large, ruined city packed with all the Shadowsoldiers and monsters you could ever hope not to meet. If you want information about their intentions, that's the place you'll get it."

     "How far inside the Shadow is this city?"

     "About fifty miles. That was as far inside as we could get before the effects of the Shadow became too much to bear."

     Resalintas nodded. "That sounds ideal. I don't anticipate any problems from the Shadow itself, since everyone here was selected for his strength of will, but we may well attract attention, so having cover nearby will be helpful. What kind of cover is it?"

     "An old orchard, covering about three hundred acres. The trees have grown into giants now, and most of the spaces between them have been filled with second and third generation saplings, making it a real forest, complete with undergrowth, forest creatures, the lot. Apple and pear trees can grow huge, if you let them and give them long enough, and these have had centuries."

     "Good," said Resalintas. "That should do nicely."

     Early the next morning, they reached the edge of the Overgreen Forest itself and spent the next two days flying over it. The trees here were larger, older and more sinister looking than those they'd been flying over earlier, concealing who knew what nameless evils beneath their dense foliage. From above, the unbroken canopy, stretching all the way to the horizon in every direction, gleamed bright green and silver in the sunlight. A lumpy carpet, looking almost like a surface upon which a man could walk, but Drake and all the others knew from personal experience what lay beneath it. That's bad enough, thought Drake, but we're going somewhere even worse. Before long, we might all be wishing we were back in the good old friendly Overgreen Forest.

     Just after noon, Rivan gave a shout and pointed ahead and to the right. Looking, they saw a cloud of green smoke rising from the trees about a mile away. "What is it?" asked one of Gallit's men.

     "I don't know," shouted back Resalintas, "but I've got a very nasty suspicion. We'll make a detour to the north to avoid it." He tapped the rider sitting in front of him on the shoulder and told him to turn left, which he did, and the rest of the flight banked to follow him. As they passed the green cloud, they saw that it was dissipating and blowing away, but a few seconds later a second cloud appeared, identical to the first, which also rose, spread and dissipated.

     Drake asked his rider to take him closer to Resalintas, which he did, allowing the two priests to speak privately, with no-one else, except their riders, being able to hear. "What do you think it is?" he asked, using the War Whisper, a means of communication that allowed two priests of Samnos to communicate across a small distance despite ambient noise. It was a granted power, given to them by the God Himself when they were ordained, and was normally used to allow them to communicate in the middle of a pitched battle, but it could be used in any situation in which loud noises made talking difficult.

     "I have very little doubt that it is poison gas," replied Resalintas. "Deadly poisonous. There are two possible ways in which it's being produced. Either it's a wizard casting poison cloud spells, which is illegal in most civilized places, or it's being breathed by a forest dragon which, as you know, breathes poison gas instead of fire."

     "A dragon!" exclaimed Drake in alarm.

     "Keep your voice down!" snapped Resalintas. "We don't want to scare the others! In a few minutes we'll be past it, and then we'll be safe so long as it doesn't look up. Whatever it is, wizard or dragon, it’s obviously fighting something, and so will probably be too busy to notice us anyway, for which we can be grateful."

     "Have you ever seen a dragon?" asked Drake.

     "Not a forest dragon. They're very rare, even in the northern pine forests which are their usual habitat. There used to be more, but they suffered badly in the days of the Agglemonian Empire and, dragons having such long lifespans and low reproductive rates, their numbers are only now beginning to recover. There were dragons on both sides back in the war, of course, and I was involved with a pair of royal dragons for some months. That was an experience I'll never forget. Since then, I've only seen one dragon, a red, but luckily he didn't see me."

     Privately, Drake suspected that, in any confrontation between Resalintas and a dragon, the dragon would be the one that came off worse, but he was still relieved as the last traces of the green cloud fell behind them and they left it behind.