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painful inch, toward the spindly leg of the night table. At last the fingers touched, then circled, the smooth, cold metal.
Good. The legs had always been unbalanced she remembered nagging her mother to get it fixed . . . Raven braced
herself and clenched her teeth. Don't pass out! she harangued herself. Princess of the Skyfolk, don't you dare pass
out! Then, as sharply as she could, she pulled
The shriek exploded against her clenched teeth, emerged as a whimper that was drowned by a crash of splintering
crystal that receded as everything went black. Blast you, Raven, don't pass out!. Somehow, the Princess clawed
herself back from the brink of the abyss by muttering every oath she had learned from Aurian, until the pain had
reached the point of merely unbearable. She opened her eyes again. And there it was. The cup of her crystal goblet
had splintered into shards, but the thicker stem had snapped off intact, as she had hoped, leaving a jagged, pointed
edge.
She had wanted to drive it into her breast. But as she lay there, shaking, every muscle and bone unstrung, Raven knew
she would not have the strength. Besides, the hearts of the Winged Folk were hard to find, protected as they were by
the great, keeled breastbone that served to anchor the muscles of the mighty wings.
Oh Father of Skies why did they take my wings! At last, Raven permitted tears to escape her, for the glories that she
would never know again. The exhilaration of the hunt, soaring over endless changing cloudscapes, swooping through
drifts of coldest gray to see the majestic mountains wheel below . . . And the light! The pure, lambent hues, which
changed each hour of the day . . .
Drunk on the glory of a long-forgotten sunset, Raven groped for the broken stem of the goblet and gouged the jagged
crystal across the veins of her outstretched arm . . .
Cygnus sat reading, perched on the solitary stool in his tiny cell in the vaults below the Temple of Yinze. At least he
was trying to read. The wind was still high, and the screeching wail from the spires above could easily penetrate the
ells of solid rock that stood between the young physician-priest and the source of the appalling sound. Cygnus
groaned, though the sound went unheard against the general background din. Incondor's accursed Lament! Not only
was it interfering with his concentration, but the eerie howls had been setting his teeth on edge for some time. Much
more of this, he thought, and I'll bid fair to lose my mind! Blackest heresy though it might seem, Cygnus wished that
the creator of the Temple might have considered the poor priests who had to live below!
Apart from the torture of the Lament, the young physician-priest had too much on his mind to concentrate. The master
physician Elster had also attended the Queen in her last illness, and Cygnus knew that she must have recognized the
effects of the poison he had used on Flamewing on Blacktalon's orders. Only Master Elster's savage glare and her iron
grip digging into the bones of his wrist had let slip the fact that she knew what he had done-yet the depth of his
respect for his old teacher had prevented him from blurting out the truth and betraying her. It would have meant the
death of his aged mentor Blacktalon's spies were all over the Citadel, and he had ears in every room.
It was Elster who had been responsible for Cygnus eschewing his career as a Temple guard for the Path of Light, as
the Winged Folk called the pursuit of the healing arts. With a single act, the physician had changed his life forever.
Cygnus, in those days, had been the carefree scion of a prominent family, blessed by a lighthearted spirit and
quickness of both mind and body. As was to be expected in the caste-ridden society of the Skyfolk, he joined the
Syntagma, the elite warrior guard of the Priesthood, and had prospered until the day he had almost caused the
death of Sunfeather, his closest friend.
The accident took place during a training exercise, in a violent midair collision that was entirely the fault of his own
inattention. Cygnus, with the airspace in which to correct his flailing spin, escaped the penalty of his carelessness.
Sunfeather, already unconscious from the collision, had plunged straight into the mountainside. Stricken beyond
words, Cygnus had joined the somber knot of his cohorts gathered round the victim, in time to see his friend stop
breathing. It was then that Master Elster had appeared.
Fragile, aged, and disheveled from her hasty summoning, Elster had briskly cleared a path through the crowd with a
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