179

You wake early and take time to clean your Weapons and equipment before going downstairs to the taproom at dawn to meet with Yranai. Together you leave the tavern and pass through the town’s east gate as a bell in a nearby tower clangs five times. For a mile you walk along the caravan route to Hikas until you come to a place where a fallen toa tree lies across a ditch beside the road. Yranai stops here and points to a gentle hill little more than half a mile distant. ‘I’m sure she’s behind that hummock,’ he muses, and he sets off with you following patiently behind.

As you reach the top of the hill you see his flying craft resting in a gully below. It is a huge balloon which is attached by steel cables to a basket that lies on its side. A tangle of metal pipes and brass cylinders hangs suspended in a cradle under the balloon, and several parts of this strange engine are dented and scraped, indicating that Yranai must have had a bumpy landing. On reaching the balloon, you struggle to set the basket upright while Yranai fits the repaired convexor. Minutes later, he turns a valve and the engine splutters into life. After a few bangs and wheezes it settles into a chugging rhythm, and you both scramble to climb aboard as the balloon rises and hoists the basket off the ground.

Simoom ascends rapidly into the cloudless sky. Soon you can see the town of Bavari spread out below you like a detailed map, the southern Vassagonian coastline with its inlets and villages, and to the south the snowy peaks of the Great Masourn Mountains. Yranai tinkers with the engine and you feel the balloon beginning to drift southwards, towards a gap in the peaks of the great mountain range.

If you possess Grand Huntmastery and Telegnosis, turn to 316.

If you do not possess both of these skills, turn to 211.