by Jim Butcher
Isana then walked down the stairs, into Bernardholt'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 furycrafting 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 steadholt-the barn where precious livestock lived.
The hall was crowded with folk. All of the steadholt'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 Steadholders had gathered at a small table. Beritte was leading her toward the other, where Bernard was laid. Between them, the holdfolk 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.
Isana strode past Beritte and toward the nearer fire. Old Bitte, the steadholt's furycraft teacher, was crouched down beside where they had laid Bernard out on a pallet near the fire. She was an ancient, frail woman, whose long white braid hung to the small of her back. Her hands shook as a matter of course, and she couldn't walk far, but she was still confident, her eyes and her spirit undimmed by the years.
Bernard's face had the stark pallor of a corpse, and for a moment Isana felt her throat tighten with terror. But then his chest rose and fell in a slow, ragged breath, and she closed her eyes, steadying herself again. He was thickly covered with blankets of soft wool, except for his right leg, which was smeared with blood, pale, and uncovered. Bandages, also soaked in blood, had been wound around his thigh, but Isana could see that they would need changing shortly.
"Isana," Old Bitte croaked, her voice gently ragged with the roughness of her years. "I've done all I can for him, child. Needle and thread can only do so much."
"What happened?" Isana asked.
"We don't know," Bitte said, sitting back. "He has a terrible wound on his thigh. Perhaps a beast, though it could be a wound from an axe or a blade. It looks like he managed to put a tourniquet on it and to let it out once or twice. We may be able to save the leg-but he lost so much blood. He's unconscious, and I don't know if he'll wake up again."
"A bath," Isana said. "We need to draw him a bath."
Bitte nodded. "I've sent for one, and it should be here in a few moments."
Isana nodded, once. "And get Tavi over here. I want to hear what happened to my brother.'
Bitte looked up at Isana, dark and keen eyes sad. "Tavi didn't come home with him, child."
"What?" Fear flooded her, swift and chill and horrible. She had to fight to push it aside, covering the effort by pulling tendrils that had escaped her braid back from her face. Calm. She was a leader in this steadholt. She had to appear calm, controlled. "Didn't come home with him?"
"No. He's not here."
"We've got to find him," Isana said. "This is a furystorm. He'll be defenseless."
"Only that poor idiot Fade would go out into the storm at all, child," Bitte said in an even tone. "He went out to make sure the barn doors were sealed and was the one who found Bernard. The furies watch over fools and children, they say. Perhaps they will help Tavi as well." She leaned forward and said, lower, "Because no one here can do anything about it."
"No," Isana insisted. "We have to find him."
Several of the men of the steadholt struggled down the stairs, carrying the big copper bathtub. They set it down on the floor nearby and then began, with the help of some of the children, to relay buckets of water to the tub from the spigot on the wall.
"Isana," Bitte said, her voice frank, almost cold, "you're exhausted. You're the only one I know who has a chance of bringing Bernard back, but I doubt you'll be able to do even that, much less find Tavi in this weather."
"It doesn't matter," Isana said. "The boy is my responsibility."
Old Bitte's hand, warm and surprisingly strong, gripped her wrist. "The boy is out there in that storm. He's found shelter by now, Isana. Or he's dead. You must focus on what you do now-or Bernard will be dead as well."
The fear, the anxiety pressed closer, in tune with the terror rising inside of her. Tavi. She shouldn't have let herself become so distracted with the preparations, shouldn't have let Tavi deceive her. He was her responsibility. The image of Tavi, caught in the storm, torn to shreds by the windmanes, flashed to the front of her thoughts, and she let out a quiet sound of frustration, helplessness.
She opened her eyes to find her hands shaking. Isana looked at Bitte and said, "I'll need help."
Old Bitte nodded, but her expression was nervous… "I've spoken to the hold women and they'll give you what they can. But it may not be enough. Without skilled watercrafting, there would be no chance at all of saving him, and even with it-"
"The hold women?" Isana snapped. "Why not Otto and Roth? They're Steadholders. They owe it to Bernard. For that matter, why aren't they caring for him already?"
Old Bitte grimaced. "They won't, Isana. I already asked."
Isana stared at the old matron, startled. After a moment, she asked, "They what?"
Bitte looked down. "They won't help. None of them."
"In the name of all the furies, why not?"
The matron shook her head. "I'm not sure. The storm has everyone nervous-especially the Steadholders, worrying about their folk at home. And Kord has been working that for everything he can. I think he's hoping to stop the Meet."
"Kord? He's in from the barn?"
"Aye, child."
"Where's Warner?"
Bitte grimaced. "The old fool. Warner nearly flew at Kord. Warner's boys took him upstairs. That girl of his talked him into a hot bath, since they've not had a chance to bathe since arriving. Otherwise, they'd have been at one another's throats an hour ago."
"Bloody crows," Isana snarled, and rose to her feet. The men and children filling the tub blinked and took a cautious step back from her. She flicked a glance around the hall and then said, to Old Bitte, "Get him in the tub. They'll help my brother, or I'll shove those Steadholder chains down their cowardly throats." She turned on one heel and stalked across the hall toward the trestle table at the head of it, where several men had gathered-the other Steadholders.
Behind them at the fire were Kord's sons, the mostly silent Aric and his younger brother, the handsome-and accused-Bittan. Even as Isana crossed the hall, she saw Fade, his hair and tunic soaked with cold rain, his head ducked down, try to slip close to the far fire. He reached for the ladle standing in a pot of stew hung by the fire to stay warm.
Bittan scowled up at the slave from his seat immediately beside the fire. Fade moved a bit closer, his branded face twisted into a grotesque parody of a smile. He bobbed his head at Bittan nervously, picked up a bowl, and then reached for the ladle.
Bittan spat something to Aric and then said something harsh and sibilant to Fade. The slave's eyes widened, and he mumbled something in reply.
"Cowardly dog," Bittan spat, letting his voice rise. "Obey your betters. You stink, and I'm sitting here. Now get away from me."
Fade nodded and picked up the ladle, his motions hurried.
Aric spun the slave around by his shoulder and threw a
short, sharp blow at his mouth. Fade let out a yelp and stumbled back from the fire, ducking his head repeatedly and shuffling off away from the young men.
Aric rolled his eyes and looked at Bittan, scowling. Then he folded his arms and leaned against the wall on the other side of the stone fireplace.
Bittan smirked and called after Fade, "Idiot coward. Don't come back." He bowed his head again, mouth tilted up at the corners in a cruel smile, contemplating his folded hands.
Thunder shook the air outside, and Isana braced herself against the accompanying flood of startled fear that flowed through the room. It washed over her a second later than she would have expected it, and she remained standing still, her eyes closed, until it had passed.
"That's crow fodder," snarled one of the men in the group around the table, the curse ringing out into the silence after the thunder had passed. Isana drew herself up short, assessing the Steadholders before she confronted them.
The speaker, Steadholder Aldo, continued, his hazel eyes fastened on Kord, his shaven jaw thrust out pugnaciously. "The holders of this valley have never stood idly by while one of the others needed help, and we're not going to do it now."
Kord tilted his grizzled head to one side, chewing on a bite of meat he had spit on his knife. "Aldo," he rumbled. "You're new to your chain, aren't you?"
Aldo stood over Kord, but the diminutive young man hardly topped the seated Steadholder by a head. "What's that got to do with it?"
"And you're not married," Kord said. "You don't have any children. Any family that you know what it's like to worry about."
"I don't have to have a family to know that you two," he spun and jabbed a finger at the other two men in the group, Steadholder's chains around both their necks, "should be on your feet and helping Bernard. Roth, what about when that thanadent was after your pigs, eh? Who hunted the thing down? And you, Otto-who tracked down your youngest when he went missing and brought him home safe? Bernard, that's who. How can you just sit there?"
Otto, a rounded man with a gentle face and thinning hair looked down.
He took a breath and said, "It isn't that I don't want to help him, Aldo. Furies know. But Kord has a point."
Roth, a spare elderly man with a shock of white hair to go with his darker beard, took a pull from his mug and nodded. "Otto's right. There's more rain coming down than the valley usually sees in an entire autumn. If the valley floods, we will need every bit of strength we can save-to protect all of our lives." He frowned at Aldo, his expression drawing wrinkles to his brow that time had not. "And Steadholder Kord is also correct. You are the youngest here, Aldo. You should show more respect to your elders."
"When they whine like whimpering dogs? Should we do nothing because you might need your strength?" He turned and spat toward Kord. "Convenient for you. His death would end the Meet and you'd be off the hook with Count Gram."
"I'm only thinking of everyone's good, Aldo," Kord rumbled. The shaggy Steadholder split his lips into a yellow-toothed smile. "Say what you want of me, but the life of one man, no matter how fine, isn't worth endangering everyone in the valley."
"We've ridden out furystorms before!"
"But not like this," blurted Otto. Still, the man didn't look up. "This is… different. We haven't seen one this violent before. It makes me nervous."
Roth frowned and said, "I concur."
Aldo stared at them both, his hands clenching in frustration. "Fine," he said then, his tone low, hard. "Which one of you wants to be the one to tell Isana that we're going to sit on our hands and do nothing while her brother bleeds to death on the floor of his own hall?"
No one said anything.
Isana stared at the men, frowning, thinking hard. As she did, Kord passed his mug back to Aric, who refilled it and passed it back to him. Bittan, evidently recovered from his near-drowning, sat with his back against the wall, his head down, one hand half-shielding his eyes as though his head hurt. Isana thought of his cruel treatment of Fade, and hoped that it did.
But something struck her odd about the Kordholders, about the way they had arranged themselves, or carried themselves, in the midst of the storm. It took her a moment to pick it out. They seemed more relaxed than the rest, less concerned about the battling furies outside the hall.
Carefully, she lowered her defenses, just by a bit, in the direction of Kord and his sons.
None of them were afraid.
She could feel nothing, with a casual reaching out of her senses, but a mild tension from Aric.
Thunder flashed again, and she knew she would never be able to raise her defenses again in time. She struggled to anyway-and again, the tide of terrified emotion came a beat later than she expected, enabling her to hold steady against it once more.
She found herself swaying on her feet, and then a hand gripped her arm, another her elbow. She looked up to find Fade standing beside her, holding her steady.
"Mistress," Fade said, ducking his scarred head in a clumsy little bow. The blood on his cut lip had begun to dry, blackening. "Mistress, Stead-holder hurt."
"I know," Isana said. "I heard that you found him. Thank you, Fade."
"Mistress hurt?" The slave tilted his head to one side.
"Fine," Isana breathed. She looked around at the families, huddling together and listening to the fury of the storm outside. "Fade. Does this storm frighten you?"
Fade nodded his head, his expression absent, eyes focusing elsewhere.
"But you're not very afraid?"
"Tavi," Fade said. "Tavi."
Isana sighed. "If anyone can find him in this, it's Bernard. Brutus can protect him from the windmanes, and Cyprus will help him find Tavi. Tavi needs Bernard."
"Hurt," Fade said. "Hurt bad."
"Yes," Isana said, absently. "Stay near for a moment. I may need your help."
The slave grunted, without moving, though his distant expression left Isana uncertain that he had heard the command. She sighed and closed her eyes, reaching out to touch her fury.
"Rill," Isana whispered. She focused intently on an image of Bittan in her mind, picturing the young man as he sat against the wall. The water fury was a ripple along her spine, across her skin, as she focused her concentration- weary, but willing. "Rill. Show me."
Fade abruptly stepped away from her, mumbling, "Hungry." Isana watched him go, frustrated but unable to divert much attention from directing Rill. Fade edged toward the fire, looking at the Kordholders apprehensively,
creeping toward the stewpot again, as though he expected to be driven away from it with another swift blow. Then he stepped out of her immediate view.
Isana sensed the fury's movement through the moisture-heavy air, brushing against her and then flowing outward. Isana felt the fury's motion almost as though it was her own arm reaching out toward the young Kord-holter against the wall.
Rill touched on Bittan, and a jolt of vibrant fear lanced back to Isana through the fury's contact. She let out a gasp, her eyes widening, finally understanding what was happening in the room.
Bittan was working a firecrafting on the room, sending out a subtle apprehension to almost every person in it, heightening their fears and drawing their anxieties to the forefront of their thoughts. It was a subtle working- more subtle than she would have thought possible from the young man. He must have called his fury into the fire near him, which explained why he had claimed the space in front of it as his own.
With the realization, a wave of dizzying weariness passed over Isana. She lost her balance and stumbled forward, to her knees, lowering one hand to the floor to balance and lifting the other to her face.
"Isana?" Aldo's voice came to her clearly, and talk in the room dropped away to a near silence as the folk of Bernardholt turned their attention to her. "Isana, are you all right?"
Isana looked up to find Kord's sons looking straight at her, their expressions startled, guilty. Bittan hissed something to Aric. Aric's face hardened.
She looked up to tell Aldo about
Bittan's firecrafting-and suddenly found that she couldn't push the air out of her lungs.
Isana lifted her head, eyes sweeping around in a sudden panic. She struggled to speak, but couldn't, her throat unable to expel a breath-or, she realized a moment later, to draw it in.
People crowded around her, then, Aldo leading the other Steadholders over to her with quick, fearful steps. The diminutive man picked her up and said, "Help me. Someone help!"
"What's wrong with her?" asked Roth. "Good furies, she's terrified."
Voices mingled and blended around her in a worried buzz. She struggled, reaching out for Rill, but the water fury only clouded around her, pressing close, in nervous reaction to Isana's own wild fear. As her helplessness increased, her mental defenses eroded, and the fear of those in the
room flooded over more and more thickly as they pressed closer. She lost track of who was speaking and reeled in confusion.
"I don't know. She just fell. Did anyone else see?"
"Mistress?"
"Isana, oh great furies, she and her brother both-this is an evil day!"
Isana struggled to look around, pushing away Otto as he tried to open her mouth, to look down her throat and see if she was choking.
"Hold her!"
"Isana, calm down!"
"She's not breathing!"
Kord came over through the crowd, but Isana looked past the big Steadholder-to where his sons still sat by the fire, unnoticed. Bittan had looked up at her, and a cruel smile had twisted his handsome mouth. He clenched his fingers abruptly into a fist, and Isana felt an accompanying spike of blinding panic flash through her, driving away thought for a moment.
Beside Bittan sat Aric. Aric, Isana thought. A windcrafter. The quiet son of Kord wasn't looking at her, but he had his fingers bridged together and his expression was set in concentration.
Darkness swam in front of her eyes, and she struggled to mouth words to Aldo, who held her, his eyes wide with panic.
"Isana," he breathed. "Isana, I can't understand you."
Everything wavered, and Isana found herself laying on a table, the world spinning above her. Kord arrived, a sudden odor of stale sweat and roasted meat. He looked down at her and said, "I think she's panicked. Woman, calm down. Don't try to talk." He leaned over her, his eyes narrowing. "Don't," he muttered softly, eyes malicious and threatening. "Don't try to talk. Calm down and don't talk. Maybe it will go away."