Page 69 of Silver & Gold

The palanquins were close enough that Raider could tell it was Nasrin driving the lead vehicle. She would be catch up in less than a minute.

It was just as well. Raider should have let her catch them earlier. Seth needed help. He was pale, his breathing shallow. His pant leg was soaked with blood.

Despite all that, Seth sat up, looking back at the palanquins.

“It’s okay,” Raider said. “We’ll just have to hope—”

Seth got to his feet faster than Raider would have thought possible. Raider tried to stop him but could only steady him as he staggered to the edge of the canyon. Raider grabbed hold of him, afraid he would fall.

“Seth, your plan was insane. There’s no way—”

Seth snatched his multi tool from his belt, aimed it at the ground, and fired the harpoon. It punched into the hard pack.

“Seth, no—what the—”

Seth grabbed Raider and launched them both over the edge.

Raider yelled as they plunged down. The harpoon’s wire, doling out its length, offered just enough resistance to keep them from plummeting straight down, but they were still moving fast.

Raider looked up to see Nasrin at the edge—Nasrin and a black-robed arcanist. The one who had found Seth’s notes. The one whose face had made Raider’s mind trip and stumble when he’d burst into the circle of palanquins. His thoughts had scattered and he’d found himself with blades at his throat.

If Seth hadn’t arrived and hurled his chakram at Nasrin, snapping Raider out of it, he didn’t know where his mind might have gone. Or what he might have done.

He’d shoved all that to the back of his mind as they’d fled, but it came back to him now. He knew that face. He’d seen it in the shadows a thousand times.

The arcanist knelt beside the lodged harpoon and touched it with something. When a current raced down the wire, the shock that exploded through Raider’s body seized his limbs and whited out his thoughts. It was an all too familiar sensation. Even freefalling through the bright sunlight, the shock took him back to the dark, closed-in space of the Box. A thousand times he’d been trapped in that darkness while the electrical pulses shattered every connection between his body and mind. Until he became an empty thing.

That’s what he was now.

Until a greater, more important reality screamed in through the white noise.

Seth.

Also falling.

Also about to die.

A sharp avian cry split the air, but Raider had no attention to spare for it. He tried to twist in the air, desperate to see Seth, but he couldn’t get turned, couldn’t find Seth in the blur of sky and canyon wall. Sorrow and rage seized him.

It wasn’t fair—

Raider was seized around the middle. The sudden clench stole the breath from his lungs. His fall became an arc, swinging him up into a huge shadow.

For a moment, stunned and uncomprehending, Raider simply stared down at the river rushing by below him. Then he jolted at the sight of huge golden talons curled around his middle—and Seth caught in the other clawed grip.

At first, there was only relief. There was life. Seth’s life. His own. Then there was understanding.

There was only one creature to which these talons could belong. Raider twisted to look up at the enormous tawny bird that had caught them. A roc. A creature known to snatch horses, camels, and men from the desert. They had been saved from death only briefly.

It must have been the roc that Raider had spotted moving in the gorge when he’d had no time to really look. Their fall must have caught its predatory gaze.

The roc beat its wings, lifting out of the gorge, veering east. The wind rushed past Raider. He shouted over it.

“Seth!”

There was no response. Seth hung limp in the roc’s talons. Gods, if he was dead—

Raider cut that off. He wouldn’t think about that. He couldn’t even consider it. He could only think about what he needed to do.