Windblowne

"Go!" screamed Two. He pushed Oliver"s hands away and struggled to sit up, hands slipping in the gra.s.s.

Oliver hesitated.

Two shouted furiously. "Go, or I"lla"" He punched weakly at Oliver.

Oliver stood. "I"ll come back for you! I"ll find Great-uncle Gilbert anda""

But Two was crawling now, crawling back toward the treehouse, whose windows were flaring up one after another. Lord Gilbert"s treehouse was waking.

Oliver took a last look at the riven oak. I"ll come back for you, too, he promised. Then he was running as the treehouse came alive with blazing lights, sending beams stabbing through the nearly leafless oaks, illuminating their bare branches, making an eerie labyrinth of unnatural shadows. Somehow he felt that Lord Gilbert was watching him, and maybe he was, with mysterious machines like eyes glaring down. As Oliver ran, he felt more and more like a tiny mouse, escaping from aa"

A hawk. Oliver realized he had completely forgotten about the hunters.

Something heavy and hard slammed into his back. A flash of pain tore across his shoulder, and he crashed to the ground. Fear flashed through him tooa"the crimson kite!a"but the impact had knocked it away. He rolled over in agony, his breath gone, groping for his kite, but it was nowhere to be felt.

Through the haze of pain he heard a vicious whish as another hunter shot past. He struggled to his feet, shoulder screaming, looking around wildly for anything crimson. A chorus of screeching warnings cracked the air.

"RETURN AT ONCE!"

A booming voicea"Lord Gilbert"sa"seemed to come from everywhere. It boomed up the mountain, drowning out even the winds, making Oliver clap his hands to his ears. Somehow Lord Gilbert could project his voice like thunder, rumbling over the oaks and into the moonslit sky.

Oliver spied a burst of crimson smashing helplessly out of control between oaks, at the mercy of the winds. He chased after it as a hunter whizzed by the edge of his vision, black and low, and pain tore through his arm. He ground his teeth to keep from screaming. He ran onward, then dove for the kite just as another hunter swooped in, talons raking. He could hear it shriek as it struck him.

He had the kite in his hands.

The oak in front of him had distinctive branches, dipping just so, as if to point the way. It was one of the sentinels. The oak next to it, the second sentinel, was also pointing. His map of the mountain clicked into place. He started toward the crest.

Out of habit, he glanced at the handvane on his wrist. It looked undamaged, but though the winds were swirling all around, the pointer did not waver. It pointed resolutely in one directiona"west.

It"s broken, thought Oliver. In these winds, the pointer ought to be spinning like mad.

The pain in his shoulder and back and head began to be a lesser concern than the pain in his chest. Oliver had never run like this, and he could not seem to get enough air. Blurs came down from the sky, some missing, some hitting, as though he were in a h.e.l.lish hailstorm.

Still he ran, at last reaching the oakline.

Ahead lay the tempesta"the night winds.

For an instant he was afraid to release the wounded kite, afraid the winds would destroy it, but then shadows flicked across the moons, and he knew he had no choice. He gripped the torn tail.

"Take me home," he gasped.

He tossed the kite aloft.

BANGa"the winds caught the sails, whirring through the rips. Somehow the sails didn"t tear further, and captured enough wind to jerk the kite upa"

And Oliver with it. He leapt forward, throwing himself fearlessly into the winds, he and the crimson kite at one with the maelstrom. Last night, he had resisted the night winds, but tonight he allowed them to hurl him toward the peak, reveling in their power and fury. His boots pounded the gra.s.s, his strides lengthening as his speed increased.

Three more hunters dove, silhouetted by the moons.

They buzzed past, talons slashing, but all three strikes missed as Oliver raced up, up, up, staggering to the peak as his lungs wept for air and his legs begged for mercy.

They reached the peak. The ascent continued without pause.

Now Oliver was flailing above the ground toward the oakline. He caught a glimpse of circling hunters, but their strikes were hopeless now, hurtling by above and below but not managing another hit. Oliver would have screamed in triumph if he were able.

But as he banged along at the end of the kite"s torn tail, he realized that they weren"t rising fast enough. The oaks and their hard, mostly bare branches were approaching alarmingly fast. And he realized, from the way the kite flew and the way its tail had not wrapped around his arm, that the kite did not have the strength to carry him much higher.

Oliver"s shin struck the first branch with a thundering crack.

Then the winds blew in and seized them and threw them higher, above the oaktops. They flew over Lord Gilbert"s treehouse, ablaze with light. Oliver could see hunter silhouettes firing past below. They had abandoned the hunt. In the open winds, he was safe. He managed a grin through the horrible pain in his shoulder, back, legs, arms, and head.

I did it! he thought triumphantly.

FLASH.

Uh-oh, he thought less triumphantly.

FLASH.

The hunt was not over.

FLASHFLASHFLASH.

Each flash shot a bolt of agony through his skull.

FLASH.

In the blazing lights of Lord Gilbert"s treehouse, Oliver could see the hunters firing in straight lines, directly at the disc beneath the riven oak.

He hadn"t escaped at all, not yet anyway. Lord Gilbert was sending the hunters after him.

He clung to the kite"s tail with both hands, wishing he could feel it wrapped around his arm again. The kite flew raggedly as the night winds carried them ever higher. He worried that the crimson kite, in its damaged condition, might not find its way into the void between worlds. But soon they entered the mist, and then its cold damp added a chill to the list of Oliver"s discomforts.

He looked automatically at the handvane. It insisted on pointing in the wrong direction, directly opposite the flow of wind. Useless, thought Oliver. He gave it an awkward shake, but the pointer was adamant in its wrongness. He"d have to get Great-uncle Gilbert to fix it too, once he found him.a If he found him.

He noticed something dismaying.

He seemed to be a little farther away from the kite than he"d been before. His hands, slick with sweat, were slipping down the tail. He tried to pull himself up, hand over hand, but that made him slip even more. Flutters of panic begana"he tried to tighten his grip, but there wasn"t much to hold on to. He did not look downa"there was nothing to see but mista"but he realized he was alarmingly close to falling.

Within moments there was only an inch or two of tail left. Oliver grasped desperately, trying to wrap the tail around his wrist as the kite had done, trying to make some kind of knot.

He slipped through the loose loop he had made. Any second now he would fall, and the kite would fly ona"

The loop tightened.

Startled, and relieved beyond measure, Oliver looked hopefully at the kite. "Was that you?" he shouted over the winds.

There was no hint of a reply.

They suddenly pitched downward, roughly, almost as though they were going to land. Oliver was surprised. Last night it had taken them much longer to fly between the two Windblownes.

Abruptly, the mist vanished, and the ground filled his vision, a vast shadow expanding with sickening speed.

He slammed into the ground, rolling, crying out as the rolling took him over his many slashes and bruises. When he stopped, he could feel his shirt clinging wetly to his back.

He sat up, hugging the kite. Home. He ached all over, but he didn"t care. He wasn"t dead. He wasn"t held captive in another world. He was home. The two moons gleamed, the familiar crest spread around him, and somewhere below, his family and treehouse waited for him.

"Home," Oliver whispered to the kite. He stood, wincing, and scanned the night sky. No huntersa"not yet, anyway.

He shivered a little. No huntersa"and no night winds, either, he noticed. Though he stood in the middle of the crest, he could hardly feel any wind at all. The air was dead calm. The night was perfectly quiet.

"Maybe I"m just getting used to the winds," he whispered, then shook his head irritably. That was ridiculous, and why was he whispering, anyway? He wasn"t in any danger, at least for the momenta"was he? Something felt wrong.

He peered around in the darkness, which was beginning to lift. Dawn was breaking.

Dawn on the day before the Festival of Kites, he realized. He"d almost forgotten.

The feeling of wrongness grew. The light of dawn was revealing something below, something on the oakline.

Oliver gasped. He turned in a slow circle, taking everything in.

Though he stood on the peak of the mountain, he could not see a single oak. He couldn"t see anything of Windblowne at all. Surrounding him, surrounding the entire crest in a great circle where the oakline ought to have been, rose an immense and towering wall.

13.

"Is this the h.e.l.l-world?" whispered Oliver.

His kite trembled faintly.

No, this couldn"t be the h.e.l.l-world. The sun was warm, the morning sky clear and blue, the air cool; dew lay on the gra.s.s. A pleasant midsummer day. Birds were here, chirping optimistically. Nothing seemed wrong or out of place besides the lack of wind, and the wall.

Actually, besides the wall, there wasn"t much to see. It dominated everything, completely enclosing the crest in stone. Along its west face, the early-morning sun glinted off the smooth granite. The east face threw a shadow that covered most of the crest. A few bare oak branches became visible on the other side, their highest points waving gently over the top. So there was wind outside the wall.

Oliver tried to guess the sheer quant.i.ty of granite required to build something like this. The wall had to be extraordinarily thick and strong to withstand the night winds. Its foundations must be deeply rooted in the mountain. Whatever the amount, it was a lot, and there didn"t appear to be a single door or any stairs or any other way off the crest. He and the kite were trapped.

Pain flared in his back. If the hunters a Quickly, he scanned the sky.

He saw no hint of the ominous dark forms. But he was certain they would come. Two had said they could track the kite now.

Oliver held up his kite. "I"m going to stop Lord Gilbert," he promised, hoping for a response. Was that a little nod? It was hard to tell. At any rate, he had to get off the crest. He hurried toward the base of the wall, one eye on the sky.

The closer he got, the more the wall towered over him, dispelling the faint hope that he had returned to his own Windblowne and the townspeople had simply decided to build a giant wall in his absence. Something on this scale would take many years to build. Obviously, the kite did not have the strength to guide him home. This meant they were simply blundering from world to world. And there were many, many worlds, Lord Gilbert had said.a Oliver shivered.

He wished he could get some use out of his great-uncle"s handvane, but it was still pointing in the wrong direction. The wrong direction was hard west, which was a little ridiculous considering there was no wind at all. He tried to give it a twirl, but it insisted on west. "Fine," Oliver muttered. He removed it and dropped it into his pack.

At least his bleeding had stopped, and the blood seemed to be caking up on the back of his shirt quite nicely, so he didn"t have that uncomfortable wetness anymore. There, he thought, darkly cheered. It"s not all bad. Sure, his body ached with every step, but the headache that had plagued him in Lord Gilbert"s Windblowne was gone. He could listen to the winds again without fear.

Oliver hurried on. He arrived at the wall and was met with a blast of wind.

He staggered, then found his footing and straightened. Why was there wind here? His eyes roamed over the curve of the wall. Something about its shape must direct whatever wind leaked in, accelerating it so that it ran around the edges in a powerful stream.

He looked up again, bracing himself, feeling dizzy. The wall seemed to lean over him, impossibly tall. The wind swept around, making an empty, hollow moan.

On top of the wall, something moved.

Oliver whipped his head toward the motion. For an instant, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he had seen someone with long hair, leaning over. If it had been there, it was gone.

"I"m imagining things again," he whispered to the kite.

The kite offered no opinion.

He smacked his lips, noticing that his throat was parched. He recalled hearing once that blood loss makes you thirsty. The information hadn"t seemed relevant to his life at the time.

He felt something soft snaking around his wrist and yelped.

He slapped at his arm, thinking Snake!, then, feeling rather foolish, realized it was only the kite"s tail, which meanta"

YANK!.

His arm was nearly pulled from its socketa"againa" and he found himself being swept upward, out of control, banging against the hard granite as he went. In ten painful seconds he found himself tumbling over the upper edge of the wall; then the pressure on his arm was released, and he was falling. Somehow he was able to turn his body and land semi-gracefully on top of the wall, rolling onto his back. He stared up at the blue sky. Not bad, he thought. I"m getting the hang of that.

He sat up and looked for his kite.

It lay a few feet away, flat on the stone, rippling faintly in the gentle breeze.

He crawled over to it. "Hey," he said uncertainly. He gave it a poke but got no response besides the weary ripple. Whatever energy it had used to get him up the wall was completely exhausted. "Thank you," Oliver whispered. He gathered the kite into his arms and looked around.

The wall curved majestically around the crest, dwindling away to tiny points in both directions. It was about ten feet thick. Everything was quiet, except for a soft hush of wind and a few distant chirps. At least there are birds here, Oliver thought. He could guess now why there were no birds on Lord Gilbert"s Windblowne. They had all fled from the hunters.

"Why would they build this wall?" he whispered. The kite lay limply in his hands, unresponsive. And why was he still whispering, he asked himself. Something about this Windblowne made him whisper.

Summoning his courage, he stood and crossed to the other side of the wall, half interested in and half frightened by what he might see.

Below him, spilling down to the distant foothills, was a perfectly normal Windblowne. There were all of the familiar treehouses of neighbors and shops and schoolmates. Tiny dots of townspeople were hurrying along Windswept Way. The light wind brought with it the sounds of a living towna"the murmur of voices, the pealing of a water clock as it sounded the half hour, the knocking of hammers as they repaired damage from the winds. He could even see the Volitant Dragon. He smiled. Windblowne had never looked so good.

All seemed well in the town, other than the partly leafless oaks. The effects of Lord Gilbert"s machine were becoming more evident. Oliver could see through bare patches in many of the trees.

"Here"s the plan," Oliver whispered to the kite. He stopped, then spoke in a normal voice. "Here"s the plan. I"ll climb down, hurry into town, and find the mayor." He thought of the mayor complaining about his mother"s sculptures. "No, the mayor is a fool. And the Watch is useless. I"ll find the great-uncle Gilbert from this world and warn him. Maybe he can help." It was a hasty plan, but it would have to do.