Furies of Calderon (17 page)

The lightning flashed again, a shuddering flame that swept from cloud to cloud, overhead, first green, then blue, then red, as though the furies of the skies had gone to battle against one another. Light bathed the rain-swept valley for nearly half a minute, while thunder shook the stones of the causeway and half-deafened him.

Shapes began to whirl down toward the ground through the tumult and rain, and raced and danced across the valley floor. The wind-manes had followed the storm. Their luminous forms swirled and gusted effortlessly among the winds, pale-green clouds, nebulous and vaguely human in shape, with long, reaching arms and skeletal faces. The wind-manes screamed their hatred and hunger, their cries rising even above the bellowing thunder.

Tavi felt terror slow his legs, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on, until he could see that most of the wind-manes in sight swirled around and around a central point, their pale, sharp-nailed hands reaching.

In the center of the ghostly cyclone, there stood a young woman Tavi had never seen before. She was tall and slender, not unlike his own Aunt Isana, but there the resemblance to his aunt ended. The woman had skin of dark, golden brown, like the traders from the southernmost cities of Alera. Her hair was straight and fine, whipped wildly about her by the wind, and was almost the same color as her skin, giving her something of the appearance of a golden statue. Her features were stark, striking, if not precisely lovely, with high cheekbones and a long, slender nose softened by a generous mouth.

Her face was set in a grimace of desperation and defiance. She wore a bloodstained cloth around her arm, and it looked as though she had torn her ragged, coarse skirts to make it. Her blouse was stained with grime and pressed against her by the rain, and a woven leather slave’s collar circled her slender throat. As Tavi watched, one of the wind-manes curled toward her in a graceful swoop.

The girl cried out, throwing one hand toward the wind-mane, and Tavi saw a pale blue stirring in the air—not as sharp or as well defined as the wind-manes themselves, but flashing there momentarily nonetheless, the spectral outline of a long-legged horse, lashing out with its forelegs at the woman’s attacker. The wind-mane screamed and fell back, and the woman’s fury drove forward, though it moved more sluggishly than the manes, more slowly. Three more manes rushed the air fury’s flanks, and the woman lifted her weight from a branch she had leaned upon, hobbling forward to swipe at the wind-manes with desperate futility.

Tavi reacted without thinking. He lurched into a tottering run, clawing at his pouch as he did. His balance wavered in the darkness between thunderbolts, but only a breath later the clouds lit up again. Blue, red, and green lightning warred for domination of the skies.

One of the wind-manes abruptly whipped around toward him and then surged at him through the frigid rain. Tavi clawed a smaller package from his pouch and tore it open. The wind-mane howled in a spine-tingling scream, spreading its claws wide.

Tavi grabbed at the crystals of salt within the packet and hurled a portion of them at the wind-mane as it charged him.

Half a dozen crystals tore through the fury like lead weights through cheesecloth. The wind-mane let out an agonized scream, a note that sent terrified chills racing down Tavi’s spine and into his belly. It curled in upon itself, green fire flaming up and over it as it began to tear, wherever the crystals had hit. In seconds, the mane tore apart into smaller fragments that dispersed and vanished into the gale—gone.

The others of its kind scattered out into a wide circle, letting out screeches of rage. The slave looked back at Tavi, her eyes wide with desperate hope. She clutched at her stick and hobbled toward him, the ragged shape of her fury once more becoming unseen, when the wind-manes drew away.

“Salt?” she shouted, through the storm. “You have salt?”

Tavi managed to draw a ragged breath and to shout back, “Not much!” His heart thudded and lurched in his chest, and he hurried to the slave’s side, casting a look out and around him at the pale phosphorescence of the wind-manes, circling the pair at a wary distance. “Bloody crows!” he swore. “We can’t stay out here. I’ve never seen so many in one storm.”

Tavi cudgeled his wits to work, to remember, but fear and exhaustion and cold made them as sluggish as a snow-covered slive. There was something he should remember, something that might help, if he could just think of what it was. “Yes!” he shouted, finally. “There’s a place. It isn’t far from here, if I can find it.”

“How far?” asked the slave, eyeing the circling wind-manes, her words trembling as her body shook with cold.

“A mile. Maybe more.”

“In the dark? In
this
?” She shot him an incredulous look. “We’ll never make it.”

She looked hard at him for a moment, during another strobe of lightning, hazel eyes intent, hard. “Yes,” she said, “give me some of the salt.”

Tavi passed over half of the scant handful of crystals left to him, and the slave accepted them, closing her fingers over them tightly.

“Furies,” she said. “We’ll never get that far.”

“Especially if we never get started,” Tavi shouted and tugged at her arm. “Come on!” He turned to move away, but the girl abruptly leapt at him and shouldered him hard to one side. Tavi fell with a yelp, startled and confused.

He climbed back to his feet, cold and shivering, his voice sharp and high. “What are you doing?!?”

The slave slowly straightened, meeting his eyes. She looked tired, barely holding on to her wooden club. On the ground at her feet lay a dead slive. Its head had been neatly crushed.

Tavi looked from it to the slave and saw the dark blood staining the end of her club. “You saved me,” he blurted.

Lightning flared again. In the cold and the gale, Tavi saw the slave smile, baring her teeth in defiance, even as she shivered. “Let’s not let it go to waste. Get us out of this storm, and we’ll be even.”

He nodded and peered around. Lightning showed him the strip of the causeway, a dark, straight line, and Tavi took his bearings from it. Then he turned his back on the looming shape of Garados and started off into the darkness, fervently hoping that he could find the shelter before the wind-manes recovered their courage and renewed their attack.

Chapter 9

Isana woke to the sound of feet pounding up the stairs to her room. The day had passed and night had fallen while she slept, and she could hear the anxious rattle of rain and sleet on the roof. She sat up, though it made her head pound to do it.

“Mistress Isana,” gasped a breathless Beritte. She tripped in the darkness at the top of the stairs and stumbled to the floor with a gasp and an unladylike curse.

“Lamp,” Isana mumbled, forcing out a familiar effort of will. The spark imp in the lamp flickered to life on its wick, giving the room a low golden glow. She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples, trying to sort out her rushing thoughts. Rain pounded, and she heard the wind gust into an angry howl. Lightning flickered outside, followed swiftly by an odd, bellowing thunder.

“The storm,” Isana breathed. “It doesn’t sound right.”

Beritte gathered herself to her feet and bobbed in a hasty curtsey. Holly-bells, the scarlet flowers just beginning to wilt, dropped petals to the floor. “It’s horrible, mistress, horrible. Everyone’s afraid. And the Stead-holder. The Stead-holder is here, and he’s badly hurt. Mistress Bitte sent me to fetch you.”

Isana jerked in a sharp breath. “Bernard.” She pushed herself out of bed, rising to her feet. Her head throbbed with pain as she rose, and she had to rest a hand against the wall to keep herself from falling. Isana took a deep breath, trying to still herself against the rising panic inside her, to steel herself against the pain. Dimly, now, she could feel the fear and anger and anxiety of the rest of the people in the stead-holt, rising up from the hall below. They would need strength and leadership now, more than ever.

“All right,” she said, opening her eyes and forcing her features to smooth out. “Take me to him.”

Beritte rushed out of Isana’s room, and the woman followed her with short, determined steps. As she stepped out into the hallway, the anxious fear flowing up from the room below began to press more firmly against her, almost like a cold, damp cloth that clung to her skin and began to seep inside her. She shivered, and at the top of the stairs paused for a moment, forcing the cold sensation away from her thoughts, until it no longer pressed so tightly against her. The fear would not simply go away, she knew, but for the moment it was enough that she distance herself from it, make herself functional again.

Isana then walked down the stairs, into Bernard-holt’s great hall. The room was fully a hundred feet long, half as wide, and made entirely of bedrock granite long ago raised from the earth. The living quarters above had been added on, wood beam and brick construction, but the hall itself was a single shaped piece of stone, wrought by long and exhausting hours of fury-crafting from the bones of the earth. Storms, no matter how fierce, could not damage the great hall or anyone sheltered within it or the only other such building in the stead-holt—the barn where precious livestock lived.

The hall was crowded with folk. All of the stead-holt’s residents were there, representing several large families. Most were gathered around one of the several trestle tables that had been set out earlier in the evening, and the food that had been in preparation since before dawn had been taken to the tables and laid out upon them. The mood of the room was anxious—even the children, who normally would have been screeching and playing games of chase as the storm gave them a virtual holiday, seemed subdued and quiet. The loudest voices in the hall were tense murmurs, and every time the thunder roared outside, folk would fall silent, looking toward the doors of the hall.

The hall was divided. Fires burned in the hearths at either end. At the far fire, the Stead-holders had gathered at a small table. Beritte was leading her toward the other, where Bernard was laid. Between them, the hold-folk had gathered in separate groups, close together, with blankets laid by for sleeping on, should the storm last through the night. The talk was subdued— perhaps due to the confrontation earlier that day, Isana thought, and no one seemed to want to be too near either of the fireplaces.