by Jim Butcher
Chapter 8
When twilight fell, Tavi knew that he was still in danger. He had not seen or heard either of his pursuers since he had slithered down an almost sheer rock cliff, using several frail saplings to slow what would have been a deadly plummet to a careening slide. It had been a perilous gamble, and Tavi had counted on the saplings' frailty to betray the heavy Marat warrior, killing or at least slowing him.
The plan had been only a partial success. The Marat looked once at the cliff and set off at a run to find a safe place to descend. It bought Tavi enough of a lead to attempt to lose his pursuer, and he thought that he had begun to widen his lead. The Marat were not like the Alerans-they had no ability at furycrafting, though they were reported to possess an uncanny understanding of all the beasts of the field. It meant that the Marat had no vast advantage-like Tavi, he had only his wits and skill to guide him.
The storm settled over the valley in a glowering veil as the light began to fade. Thunder growled forth, but there was no rise of wind, no fall of rain or sleet. The storm waited for night to fall in full, while Tavi kept a nervous eye on both the sky and the barrens around him. His legs ached and his chest burned, but he had avoided the Marat, and just before sundown he emerged from the barrens onto the causeway several miles west of the lane to Bernardholt. He found a deep patch of shade beside a windfall and crouched there, panting, allowing his tired muscles a brief rest.
Lightning flashed. He hadn't meant to move so far to the west. Instead of being nearly home again, Tavi would have an hour-long run just to reach the lane down to the steadholt. Thunder rumbled, this time so loud that it shook needles from the fallen pine beside him. There was a low, dull roar from the direction of Garados, and in a moment Tavi heard it growing nearer. The rain had finally begun. It came in a wave of half-frozen sleet, and Tavi barely had time to pull up his hood before a furious, frozen wind howled down from the north, driving rain and ice alike before it.
The storm devoured whatever meager scraps of daylight remained and drowned the valley in cold, miserable darkness, barring frequent flares of lightning skittering among the storm clouds. Though his cloak had been made to shed water, no fabric in Alera would have kept the rain and sleet of the fury-storm out for long. His cloak grew cold and wet, clinging to him, and the bitter wind drove the chill straight through his garments and into his bones.
Tavi shivered hard. If he remained where he was, he would die from exposure to the storm in only hours-unless a bloodthirsty windmane beat the cold to the punch. And though Brutus had surely reached the steadholt with Bernard by now, he could not rely upon any of the holdfolk to rescue him. They knew better than to expose themselves to a furystorm.
Tavi peered at the windfall in the next lightning flash. There was a hollowed out space underneath, thick with pine needles-and it looked dry.
Tavi started crawling inside, and the next lightning flash showed him an image from a nightmare. The windfall already had occupants-half a dozen slives. The supple, dark-scaled lizards were nearly as long as Tavi was tall, and the nearest lay within arm's reach. The lizard thrashed restlessly, stirring from its torpor. It opened its jaws and let out a syrupy hiss, showing rows of needle-pointed teeth.
A thick yellow liquid coated the slive's front fangs. Tavi had seen slive venom at work before. If the slive struck him, he would grow warm and sluggish, until he sank slowly down to the ground. And then the slives would drag him still alive into their lair. And eat him.
Tavi's first reaction was a terrified desire to spring away-but fast motion could trigger the surprised slive. Even if the slive missed, the filthy little scavengers would regard his flight as a sign that he was prey to be pursued
and eaten. He could outrun them on open ground, but slives had a nasty tendency to remain on the trail of their prey, sometimes following for days, waiting for their target to sleep before moving in for the kill.
Fear and excitement made Tavi tremble, but he forced himself to remain calm. He withdrew as slowly and smoothly as he could. He had just gotten out of the slive's striking range when the beast hissed again and bolted out of its shelter and toward the boy.
Tavi let out a panicked scream, his light baritone cracking into a child's higher pitch as he did. He threw himself back from the slive's deadly bite, got his feet underneath him and started to run.
Then, to his complete surprise, he heard someone call out in an answering shout, one nearly drowned out by the rising winds.
Tavi snarled in frustration. The memory of the Marat warrior and his terrible partner came back to him in a flood of terror. Had they caught up to him?
The wind brought him another shout, the pitch too high to be the Marat. There was no mistaking the panic and fear in it. "Please! Someone help!"
Tavi bit his lip, looking down the causeway toward his home and safety- then facing the opposite way, toward the cry for help. He took a shaking breath and turned west, away from his home, and forced his tired legs into motion again, running along the pale stone of the causeway.
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 windmanes 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 windmanes 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 windmanes 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 windmanes curled toward her in a graceful swoop.
The girl cried out, throwing one hand toward the windmane, and Tavi saw a pale blue stirring in the air-not as sharp or as well defined as the windmanes 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 windmane 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 windmanes 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 windmanes 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 windmane 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 windmane as it charged him.
Half a dozen crystals tore through the fury like lead weights through cheesecloth. The windmane 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 windmanes 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 windmanes, 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. "
The slave squinted out at the darkness, shivering, but her voice came to him clearly. "Can your furies shelter us at all?"
Tavi felt a sickly little rush in his belly. Of course they couldn't, as he didn't have any. "No. "
"Then we've got to get to shelter. That mountain. There could be a cave-"
"No!" Tavi blurted. "Not that mountain. It doesn't like trespassers. "
The girl pressed her hand against her head, panting. She looked exhausted. "Is there a choice?"
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 windmanes, 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. "
"We're not spoiled for choice," Tavi called back, over the wind. "It's that or nothing. "
"Can you find it?" the girl asked.
"I don't know. Can you walk that far?"
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.
