"It was Terndai's turn to stare into the distance and think. What would it be like to go outside the way everyone else did and fly—all alone without bodyguards or the police or Father—to a magical place none of them had seen before? As he thought, the warm excited feeling he had had this morning returned. His ancestors waited in the shadows of the walled garden. One of them raised the hollowed horn of a kudu bull to his lips and blew, to give courage to the hunters." (Chapter 1, p. 24)

"It was blue. Its fur stood out in a handsome ruff around its face and its tail hung down almost to the ground. It wore a leather collar attached to a chain. Its owner, who had a surprising number of bandages on various parts of its body, sat glumly in a chair and smoked...