The birds and the cold. He had never seen so many birds, and he had never been so cold. He felt sick with cold. His clothes were frozen stiff with his own sweat, and his thoughts bumped through his mind like icebergs. The weather was not particularly frigid, but, as Munairoe had warned, the high scout’s system had been weakened by too much magic. After last night’s long run, his body lacked the stamina to keep itself warm, and now he would have to deal with the birds. There were thousands and thousands, from warm lands and cold, representing every species Tavis knew and a hundred he didn’t. On the icy winds above wheeled a dozen glacier vultures, their black heads and blue-tinged wings all that showed through the dusky snowstorm. A clan of dervish owls sat perched on the battered rim of the queen’s tower, their huge golden eyes tracing every movement of the strange blue pheasants below. On the shoulders of the storm giants, kestrels roosted with sparrows, harriers with siskins, hawks with crows; only the egg-stealing skunkbirds sat apart, their white-striped bodies tangled like bats amidst the giants’ windblown hair.
