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relief. ‘White Quell! We actually made it.’

Chapter 3
            ASSASSINS

    J elindel fumbled her way up out of a dark and confusing nightmare. A hissing sound filled her ears and she was numbingly cold. As her eyes opened she became aware that she was suspended by her arms. Her shoulders ached with a throbbing agony, threatening to push her back into that pit of unconsciousness from which she had emerged.
    She moaned and tried to focus her eyes. It was dawn and the sun was just rising.
    ‘So you’re awake,’ said a harsh and strained voice above her.
    Another voice, also from above, joined in. ‘Hope you’re enjoying the journey. We thought you might like to travel first class.’
    The second voice was lighter than the first, as though sharing in a joke. Though any joke right now, Jelindel instinctively knew, must be at her expense.
    As her eyesight cleared, she realised why she was so cold, and what the hissing noise was.
    She was flying several leagues above the ground, andhanging by her arms, which were lashed to the ankles of two levitating deadmoon warriors.
    The wind whistled past as they flew at awesome speed. Gazing at the land far below, she thought she would throw up. She clenched her eyes shut and took several deep breaths, feeling the bile rise in the back of her throat. After a time, she opened her eyes a slit and peered down, trying to accustom herself by degrees to such great height. It wasn’t easy but she eventually calmed her tumultuous stomach.
    ‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded, hoarsely.
    Her captors exchanged a quick glance.
    ‘You will know soon enough. And do not try your blinding spell on us or we will all be doomed.’
    Below she could see a large fast-moving river that looked familiar. It was the Marisa River and, judging by the sun, they were heading north-west.
    ‘You’re taking me to D’loom in Skelt.’
    ‘There is a price on your head, is there not?’ one of the warriors asked.
    Jelindel snorted. ‘A deadmoon warrior bringing a hostage back for a mere thousand argents? I think not. Another hand directs you, and I believe it belongs to the merchant-mage Fa’red.’
    ‘We care not for your empty speculations,’ said the gruffer of the two. ‘The reward on your head is three hundred gold oriels, although not even that sum would turn us from our cause.’
    After that brief exchange they would not answer any further questions.
    For a while, despite the pain and the insidious cold, Jelindel dozed. Once, because of some other aerial denizen that even the deadmoon warriors seemed to fear, or at least respect, theydropped to a mere dozen feet above the ground, hopping hedge-rows and haystacks and zooming above streams at unbelievable speed. She found this more frightening than the dizzying heights; the sense of speed more terrifying, as the ground rushed past in a blur that made her gasp for breath and clench her jaws till they ached almost as badly as her shoulders.
    The storm burst minutes after they entered the air space above D’loom. Jelindel barely glimpsed the lights of the languishing port city before they were engulfed in wet grey clouds. The air filled with the blinding slash of lightning followed by massive detonations as thunder shook the earth and sky.
    Within seconds, Jelindel was drenched, the cold intensifying until her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Great fists of air slammed into the deadmoon warriors, buffeting them back and forth, so that Jelindel swung like a pendulum. Her captors struggled to maintain their spell.
    ‘You’ll fly straight into a tower if you don’t land!’ she shouted through the wind and rain.
    ‘We are deadmoon warriors. We fear nothing,’ the gruff one answered in his rasping alto.
    Jelindel craned her neck to stare at him. ‘That’s all very well, but I was looking forward to being tortured beside a nice warm fire, not smashed to pieces against some uncivil turret.’
    Lightning jagged across their path, blinding