Free Return To Sky Raven (Book 2) by T. Michael Ford Page B

calmer pools of the river. Before they knew it, it was time to move out again. The early afternoon passed quickly and soon darkness would be falling. But we had one last obstacle in our way, and that was to cross the river. Maya was enjoying herself ranging out far and wide ahead of us in her ghost form, the suit allowing her to run effortlessly for long stretches. This left her mare back with us with nothing to do but follow along so at one of the rest breaks, I picked up several of the youngest mages and put them up on the warhorse. They loved it and she was big enough to hold five of them at once. Doggedly, we followed the path along the river into the afternoon.
    Eventually, the party came to a halt with me looking down at our selected crossing point, the river thirty feet below us. Here the river plowed recklessly through wagon-sized rocks, spraying huge gouts of tea-colored water high into the air, some of which landed as high up as our vantage point, but most of it turned to mist and spray long beforehand. Unfortunately, the rocks were sharp and the water too wild to even think about fording the passage here. We would have to come up with something else.
    “And this was the safest place to cross?” I mumbled to no one in particular, but I looked back up the line to glare at Rosa. “Any ideas how to cross?” I questioned, turning to the forward elements who were travelling with me.
    Dawn sauntered forward in her white Enchanters Hall robes, which I would swear were getting increasingly shorter and revealed more leg as time went by. Her twin sister Dusk didn’t seem to be having any problems with her robes. “It’s easy, just walk,” she said, stepping right off the edge of the embankment and strolling out over the water as if she were on solid ground…but she was at least thirty feet in the air! A few of the guard contingent clapped and wolf whistled loudly at the display as she did a flirty little shimmy and skipped back to the bank where we stood with a effortless smile.
    “Quit showing off, sister,” Dusk scolded primly. “You know humans can’t walk on mists and clouds.”
    I chuckled; it’s funny how the human mind works sometimes. The guards all know the twins are actually 35-foot long scary behemoths with razor sharp teeth and claws like scythes. But travelling and working alongside two cute young women, one vivacious, one reserved, had broken down the fear barriers that separated them. There was even talk about the unit taking a stylized silver dragon as their banner mascot when we got somewhere with sewing facilities. The guards now saw them as individuals, not monsters, another reoccurring theme that I needed to think about. In the meantime, the girls seemed to relish the attention and it gave the guards a sense of belonging to the journey.
    Julia perked up with an idea. “Lin and I could turn into large trees and lay across the water like a bridge.”
    But Lin was already shaking her head in dismissal. “I’m not having 300 people, two warhorses, and especially six donkeys walk across my face. I’m far too beautiful for that,” she quipped loftily with a huge grin.
    As it turned out, Hons and his people just found it easier to build a bridge, easier being a misnomer. There would be nothing easy about this structure and we had scant hours to get it done. The water wizards in the column diverted the heavy water flow to one side, as Reginaldo stacked stone pilings into the river bottom. The earth wizards then floated and assembled a curved rock archway over to the first stone piling, and Rosa rushed forward to strengthen the structure with her enchantments. We all pitched in, except for a small contingent of about twenty guards for security. Earth wizard after earth wizard collapsed in exhaustion only to be replaced by another, even the youngest were pressed into service moving blocks from farther upstream. Apparently, Captain Jarsin had actually worked on several bridge-building projects