Read The Ghost Roads (Ring of Five) for Free Online Page A

and banked left gracefully. With Danny and the other Messenger following, they drifted down through the darkness.
    After a few minutes of flight, Nala was aware of trees around him. A branch brushed his face and then they were down. He slid off. They had landed back at the summerhouse.
    “There isn’t much time,” Danny said. “I’m going on a mission in the Upper World. I need someone who can work undercover, and who can steal. I know you can do these things.”
    “Steal what?” Nala said.
    “Not what,” Danny said, “who. A person.”
    “Why not ask your friends?” Nala said.
    “Because my only friend with a talent for stealing has wings—he stands out too much.”
    Nala spoke quietly. “Tell me real reason.”
    “What do you mean?” Danny said.
    “He means there’s something more to it,” Gabriel cut in unexpectedly, “and you need to tell him what it is.”
    “All right,” Danny said, turning to face Nala again,his voice cold. “You’re expendable. I can’t afford to lose any more of my friends, but I can afford to lose you.”
    Gabriel studied Danny. He knew that the harsh words hid a world of pain and loss. But Nala merely shrugged—cruelty and mortal danger were part of a Cherb’s life. He had simply wanted to know what he was getting into.
    “We’ll have to go at night,” Danny said. “We need to have a look at the place from the air and figure out a way in.”
    “Then we had better start,” Gabriel said, “if we want to get there before dawn. The night trade winds will carry us quickly over, but it is a long way, perhaps too far for you, my dear?” Daisy looked at him and snorted.
    “Don’t ‘my dear’ me, Gabriel. I was flying missions to the Upper World before you ever sprouted a wing feather. I can take care of myself. But I have to ask you, Danny, are you doing the right thing? The school needs you in this grim time.”
    “The school did without me before, they can do without me again. I’ve lost enough. I’m not going to lose any more.”
    “We’ve no time to waste!” Gabriel spoke urgently. “On my back, Danny!”
    Danny clambered on while Nala leapt lightly onto the space between Daisy’s wings.
    “When we cross over, where do we go?” Gabriel’s wings started to beat.
    “East,” Danny said, “fly due east.”
    Barely visible in the darkness, the two Messengers and their burdens rose into the air and turned, picking upspeed as they cleared the treetops. They had just reached the edge of the forest when another stealthy shape rose into the air from a copse behind the summerhouse and set off in pursuit.
    Danny could not say how he knew they were above the shadowy border country between the Two Worlds, but he sensed that the almost trackless wilderness was below him.
    “What’s it like?” he asked Gabriel.
    “What?”
    “The land below us, the border country that divides the Two Worlds?”
    “Who knows?” Gabriel said. “It has the characteristics of a physical place. You can walk in it, you can drive across it, as you have done with Fairman, but there is more to it than that. Some people say it exists as much in the mind as it does on the ground.”
    “You mean like a dream?”
    “Or a nightmare,” Gabriel said. “There are those whose job it is to patrol it. A strange breed. They speak little of what they see and do there.”
    Gabriel fell silent and Danny looked down, trying to pierce the darkness below, a darkness composed of more than mere night. It felt timeless, as though hours and minutes did not mean the same thing there. When he traveled in Fairman’s taxi across the waste, he always fell asleep, but now he stayed awake for what felt like the whole night and into the following day, and yet the darkness around him did not change, and when they reachedthe other side, the moon was still high in the sky, meaning that the journey could only have taken an hour or two.
    Gabriel slowed and waited for Daisy, who had fallen behind. Danny could see