The Chamber in the Sky Read Free Page B

trying to stay on, but then it, uh …”
    â€œWell, bravo to you for your lack of skill and coordination.” Gwynyfer tapped her goad playfully against the hide of her recovering steed. “You know what’s just the biggest crying shame? That you’ll have to walk from now on. Walking’s bad for the knees.”
    Gregory looked at her in bewilderment. Then he realized that she was flirting, and started to smile. “Unless I could catch a ride from some lovely lady.”
    â€œLosers, weepers.”
    Regardless, Gregory started to clamber up the side of her steed.
    She urged it to skip forward. It took a quick step. Gregory fell, hitting the path hard.
    â€œUff!” he exclaimed. He looked up at her in surprise.
    She said, “I fancy more back-and-forth between us. More ‘Please, Gwynyfer, please, ha-ha-ha.’ And us smiling darlingly at each other and the musical ringing of my clear, bell-like laugh rippling through the aorta.”
    â€œSorry,” said Gregory. “I forgot about the musical ringing of your clear, bell-like laugh.”
    â€œRippling. So you did.”
    Brian waited.
    He still held the musket. He watched for the mite to return from below.

    That particular mite did not return. The next day, they saw another one far above them, and it began to scuttle down, but Brian was ready this time, and just a few warning shots frightened it off.
    They were deep, deep in the Wildwood. They were no longer on a path made of even a couple of strands tied together. They now tramped along a single strand. Itbobbed continually. Brian hated the motion. He gripped his reins and his goad tightly.
    Gregory rode behind Gwynyfer. They kept poking each other and laughing. Brian couldn’t hear much of what they said. It was mainly about her childhood in the Globular Colon.
    Shortly before noon, they came to the far side of the Wildwood. They saw the wall of the Dry Heart, bristling with the bases of fronds as thick as skyscrapers.
    There among the trunks hung a hut. It had many roofs, all of them shingled, and several bridges that led to out-buildings hanging on the pinky-gray flesh of the wall. A few of the smaller fronds — still large as tree trunks — grew right through the hut, curling out of holes in the walls. None of the windows matched.
    â€œThere it is,” said Gwynyfer as they approached. “At least according to the Empress. Her brother’s hermit hut.” A final time, she checked the envelope with the directions on it. Then she lightly tossed it away. Brian watched it waft over the side of the path and flutter downward, rocking back and forth on breezes.
    He hoped that throwing it out hadn’t been a mistake.
    As they got closer to the hut, they heard something creaking. The sound was lazy and rhythmic. Brian gently pulled the reins toward him. His thombulant slowed.
    A man rocked in a chair on the front porch. He sat quietly, watching them. Around him were things that might have been giant slugs or chickens — balls of feather with long, wet necks or tails sticking out of each end. Several of them hung from the woodwork on the porch, sleeping.
    The man did not move while he watched the kids approach, even when they held up their hands to greet him.
    In human terms, the archbishop Thomas Darlmore looked to be about sixty-five. He was handsome and tired and severe. His head was as gaunt as a thermos. His cheeks had deep channels in them. His hair was buzz cut and stuck straight up, gray and metallic. He wore a cable-knit fisherman’s sweater and khakis that were splattered with paint. He had a book in one hand.
    The chicken lumps played at his feet.
    Gwynyfer called up to him, “The Honorable Gwynyfer Gwarnmore, daughter of His Grace Cheveral Gwarnmore, Duke of the Globular Colon, greets the Most Reverend and Right Honorable Thomas Darlmore, Archbishop of Norumbega, and requests audience and asylum, bearing greetings from his fond