by Jim Butcher
Chapter 10
Tavi stumbled beneath the force of a sudden gust of wind. The girl caught his arm in one hand, keeping him upright, and with the other, she hurled a few scanty remnants of the salt crystals he'd given her a few hours before. There was a shriek from the faintly luminous form of the windmane behind the gust, and it withdrew.
"That's it," she called over the wind. "I'm out of salt!"
"Me, too!" Tavi answered her.
"Are we close1?"
He squinted through the darkness and the rain, shivering and almost too cold to think. "I don't know," he said. "I can't see anything. We should be almost there,"
She shielded her eyes from the stinging half-sleet with her hand. "Almost won't be good enough. They're coming back. "
Tavi nodded and said, "Keep your eyes out for firelight. " He gripped her hand tightly in his, before stumbling forward, through the darkness. Her fingers tightened on his own. The slave was stronger than she looked, and even though his hand had long since gone mostly numb from the cold and the sleet, her grip was painful, frightened. The wind and the deadly manes within it yowled, driving and cold and furious.
"They're coming," she hissed. "If we're going to get out of this, it has to be right now. "
"It's close. It's got to be. " Tavi squinted against the blinding rain, peering ahead of them as best he could. Then he saw it, a faint golden radiance flickering at the edge of his vision. In the storm, he had gotten turned around somehow, and he swerved abruptly to one side, hauling on the girl's wrist. "There! The fire! It's right there! We have to run for it. "
Tavi drove his exhausted body forward, toward the distant light, and the ground began to slope upward, rising steadily toward it. The curtains of sleet and rain blinded him and veiled the light, so that it flickered like a guttering candle, but Tavi kept his eyes doggedly locked on his destination Lightning snarled among the clouds m treacherous, blinding flashes, while the wind-manes howled out their wrath overhead
Tavi could hear the slave's labored, gasping breath even through the wind-she was evidently at the end of her endurance Her footsteps staggered, as they grew closer to the glowing firelight In the darkness, the wind-manes screeched, and Tavi looked back to see one of them swooping down through the sleet, its face twisted into a grimace of hatred and hunger
The girl's eyes widened as she saw Tavi's expression, and she began to spin about-but she was too late, her reaction too slow She couldn't possibly turn to defend herself in time
Tavi reached back and seized her wrist in both hands With the weight of his whole body, he hauled her forward, past him, and sent her stumbling toward the light ahead "Go'" he shouted "Get inside'"
The windmane hit Tavi, and there was suddenly no air in his lungs, no warmth in his limbs He felt his feet leave the ground, and he went tumbling, jouncing, and bounding down the slope and away from the shelter at its summit, blown like a leaf before the power of the storm He rolled, arms and legs loose, struggling to keep from stopping too abruptly, to guide his fall down the hill and to its base A grey stone appeared before his eyes in a flash of emerald lightning, and he felt himself scream as he flinched away from it
He caught a flash of light reflected on water, on the ground, and aimed himself toward it through the half dark, desperate and terrified He came to a halt in the mud pooling at the bottom of the hill beneath a finger-width of freezing water, his arms sinking into it halfway to his elbows He struggled and heaved them free of the muck, turning in time to see the windmane descend on him once more
Tavi rolled to one side, the sludge slowing his movements, and felt the wrndmane's deadly chill settle around his mouth and nose, cutting off his air He thrashed and flinched, but accomplished nothing He could no more keep the fury from blocking his air than he could spread his arms and fly above the storm
Tavi knew that he had only one chance, and that a slim one He struggled to his feet, then leapt into the air and hurled himself sprawling in the muck Cold, oozing mud and chilled water slithered over him, churned to the consistency of thick pudding by the storm He wriggled down deeper, forcing his face into the mud, then rolled to his back, covering himself in it
And suddenly, he could breathe again.
Tavi peered up at the windmane-but it wasn't facing him. The fury swirled and swooped around the point where it had first attacked him, its glowing, hungry eyes flicking back and forth. They never did settle on Tavi. The windmane screamed, and half a dozen of its fellows came looping down and around the area near where Tavi had fallen, spinning and spiraling, searching for him.
Tavi lifted a hand to brush mud from his eyes, a fierce grin stretching his lips. He'd been right. The earth. The earth that was the nemesis of furies of the air had covered him, hidden him from them. But it was bitterly, painfully cold. Tavi stared at the swirling windmanes and felt the chill settle into his bones. He was safe from the manes. But for how long?
The rain continued to pelt down, and muddy water dribbled into Tavi's eyes. The rain would wash his coating of mud away in short order, assuming he didn't simply collapse to the ground and freeze. Moving as quietly as he could, he reached down and scooped more mud into his hand, dumping it onto his belly and chest, where the rain had begun to make headway.
Tavi peered through the storm and up the gentle slope of the mound, to where the light burned at its top, outlining an opening in a dark structure, otherwise invisible in the night. He saw no sign of the slave-which meant that she was either safe or dead. Either way, he had done everything he could for the young woman. He let out a hiss of frustration.
Instantly, three of the windmanes spun their glowing eyes toward him and flowed through the air, directly at his mouth.
A yelp started in his chest, but he stifled it from reaching his throat- instead, rolling away, through the mud for several paces, and got to his feet. Looking back, he saw the furies of the storm swirling around the spot where he had lain. They could not see him, perhaps, but they could surely hear him. Even in the din of the storm, they had heard his breath. He scarcely dared to breathe now and wondered if they would hear him moving.
Either way, he thought, the rain would expose him to them in a few moments. He had to get off of the open ground, to shelter. He had to try to slip past the furious windmanes.
Tavi would remember that walk for the remainder of his life, as the torment a starving mouse must feel when darting between the feet of giants to snatch at crumbs of food and then rush back to safety.
All around him, the windmanes swirled and howled. A young bounder
buck came leaping out of the darkness across Tavi's tail, squealing and throwing his hindquarters wildly about. To the buck clung three of the windmanes, their claws raking, eyes blazing. As Tavi watched, the furies rode the bounder down to the ground, its horns passing harmlessly through them. The buck let out an awful scream, before one of the manes tore open its throat and two more flowed over its muzzle, cutting off its air. The bounder struggled in silence, thrashing and bucking as its blood flowed. The other windmanes nearby swirled closer, shrieking, clawed hands reaching.
The animal vanished into a luminescent mass of churning mist and vicious claws. Only moments later, the cloud dispersed into a dozen howling forms.
And all that remained of the bounder was a head, its eyes wide open and white with terror, beside a scattered pile of claw-rent meat and cracked, bloody bones.
Tavi's knees went weak, and for the space of several breaths, he couldn't remove his eyes from the gruesome spectacle. The lightning left him in the dark a moment later, leaving the sight of the poor buck's fate blazed across his vision. He opened his mouth to scream and found himself breathless, silent, as in the helpless terror of a nightmare.
Lightning split the sky again, and the fear took him and ate him in one bite. His trembling paralysis became a sudden surge of fragile, terrified strength, and he all but flew up the hill toward the promised safety of the light. He heard himself su
ck in a breath and scream, and the windmanes rose up around him in an angry chorus-but one without a director, without a tempo. They swooped and dove furiously around him, but none could see him. The protection of the earth held true, until Tavi had raced up the slope to its summit.
There, a simple dome of polished marble rose from the slope of the hill to the height of three men. Its open entryway glowed with a soft golden light, and above it, writ into the marble in gold was the seven-pointed star of the First Lord of Alera.
Tavi felt a section of earth as heavy as a feastday cake slough off of his back and heard the furies scream behind him. His own scream answered them, as the terrible wind raced toward him. He held his arms over his head and threw himself at the doorway.
And landed on hard, smooth stone, within a sudden and shocking silence.
Tavi jerked his eyes up and looked around, limbs quivering and shaking, his body frantically signaling his mind that he should get up, should keep
running. Instead, he sat up, a twinge passing through his chilled muscles, and stared around him, panting and mute.
The beauty of the Princeps' Memorium would have taken his breath away, if all the running and screaming hadn't done it already.
Though outside the storm still raged, the lightning still flashed, the sleet and the thunder still hammered the earth, within the Memorium, those sounds came only as something very distant and wholly irrelevant. The earth might shake and the air fairly ignite with fury, but within the Memorium, there was only the slight ripple of water, the crackle of flame, and an almost meditative stillness broken by the sleepy chirp of a bird.
The interior of the dome was made not of marble, but of crystal, the walls of it rising high and smooth to the ceiling twenty feet above. Light, from seven fires that burned without apparent fuel around the outside of the room, rose up through the crystal, bending, refracting, splitting into rainbows that swirled and danced with a slow grace and beauty within the crystal walls. The floor in the center of the dome was covered by a pool of water, perfectly still and as smooth as Amaranth glass. All around the pool grew rich foliage: bushes, grass, flowers, even small trees, arranged as neatly as though kept by a gardener.
Between each of the fires around the walls stood seven silent suits of armor, complete with scarlet capes, the bronze shields and the ivory-handled swords of the Royal Guard. The armor stood mute and empty upon nearly formless figures of dark stone, eternally vigilant, the slits in their helmets focused on their charge.
At the center of the pool rose a block of black basalt. Upon the block lay a pale shape, a statue of the purest white marble in the form of a young man. His eyes were closed, as though sleeping, and he lay with his hands folded upon his breast, the hilt of his sword beneath them. He wore a rich cloak that draped down over one shoulder, and beneath that, the breastplate of a soldier. At his feet lay a pale marble helm, complete with the high crest of the House of Gaius. His hair lay close-cropped to his head. His face was thin-featured, stark, handsome, and his expression peaceful, sleeping. Had the statue been a man of flesh, Tavi would have expected him to rise, don his helmet, and set about his business, but the Princeps Gaius had died long ago, before Tavi was born.
There was a motion at the edge of his vision, but he felt too tired to turn his head. The slave knelt down beside him, dripping and shivering. She touched his shoulder and drew her hand back to consider the soupy mud
clinging to it. "Crows and furies. For a moment, I thought that a gargoyle had gotten in here. "
He looked up at her suspiciously, but her eyes were dancing with weary mirth. "I didn't have time to wash up. "
"I turned back to find you, but I couldn't see anything-and the wind-manes closed on me. I had to run here. "
"That was the idea," Tavi said, his tone apologetic. "I'm sorry, but it looked like you were about to collapse. "
The slave's mouth quirked to one side. "Perhaps," she acknowledged. She scooped more of the mud off of him. "Very clever-and very brave. Are you hurt?"
Tavi shook his head, shivering uncontrollably. "Sore. Tired. And cold. "
She nodded, her expression worried, and smoothed more muck from his forehead. "All the same, thank you. "
He struggled to give her a small smile. "There's no reason to thank me. I'm Tavi of Bernardholt. "
The girl's fingers went to the collar at her throat, and she frowned, lowering her eyes. "Amara. "
"Where are you from, Amara?"
"Nowhere," the girl said. She looked up, sweeping her eyes around the inside of the magnificent chamber. "What is this place?"
"P-princeps' Memorium," Tavi stuttered, shivering. "This is the mound on the Field of Tears. The Princeps died here, fighting the Marat, before I was born. "
Amara nodded, still frowning. She rubbed her hands together roughly and then laid her wrist over Tavi's forehead. "You're burning up. "
Tavi closed his eyes and found them too heavy to open again. An odd prickling ran over his skin, slowly replacing the bitter, aching chill of the mud. "The First Lord himself made this place, they say. Made it in one day. When they buried everyone. The Crown Legion. The Marat didn't leave enough of the Princeps' body for a state funeral. They did it here, instead of taking him back to the capital. "
The slave took his hand and urged him to his feet, though she, too, shook with cold. He let her, struggling to stand through the heavy, sweet lethargy in his limbs. He latched onto the words he was speaking, using them to hold on to consciousness. "Strong furies here. The Crown's furies. It was said they would have to be strong to keep the shades of all the soldiers
at ease. Couldn't take them home. Too many dead bodies. Strong furies would protect us. Stone mound. Earth against air. Shelter. "
"You were right," Amara said. She eased him back to the floor again, and he sank gratefully back against a wall. He could feel a distant heat, through the tingling in his body, something wonderful and soothing. She must have taken him over to one of the fires.
"All my fault," Tavi mumbled. "I didn't bring Dodger in. My uncle. The Marat are here. "
There was a startled silence. Then she said, "What'? Tavi, what are you talking about? What about the Marat?"
He struggled to say more, to answer the slave's question, to warn her. But the words became a jumble on his tongue and within his mind. He tried to force them out and found himself shaking too hard to get them out clearly. Amara said something to him, but it didn't make any sense, random sounds jumbled together. He felt her hands on him, then, scooping the half-frozen muck off of him and rubbing roughly at his limbs, but it felt very distant, somehow, very unimportant.
His head fell forward. It became a labor even to draw breath.
Blackness fell over him, dark and silent and complete.