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As the fire-lance met the first of the windmanes, it bowled the feral furies aside—doing them no harm, but sending them wailing and spi
They shot into the open sky as the mountain smashed down onto the ground below, trees snapping and popping as they were crushed to splinters, stone grinding upon stone. A vast cloud of dust billowed out after them, and Kitai accelerated and climbed to avoid being engulfed by it and having her own windstream suffocated.
Tavi released the fire from his sword and looked down at himself. The high-speed passage upon Kitai’s windstream had scoured much of the dust from him, and a second’s experimentation brought up more than enough wind to sustain his own flight. He tapped Kitai’s fingers, and she released him to fly on his own. He steadied himself, then pulled up beside her, flying with his body almost touching hers, their windstreams merging smoothly.
“Did you kill her yet?” Kitai called, her voice high and tight with excitement and fear.
“Not quite,” Tavi said. He jerked a thumb back at the monstrous form behind them. “I was doing that.”
She gave him a look that managed to blend respect, disgust, and a touch of jealousy. “This is how you show me you want me to be your mate?”
“It’s a big decision,” he returned blandly. “You can’t expect me to make it in an hour.”
Kitai stuck her tongue out at him, and added, “Watch out.”
They both rolled away to the left as Garados’s vast hand swept down at them, as if to knock them from the air. They evaded it by yards, but the wind of its passage was almost more dangerous to them. They were spun violently about and in different directions. Tavi actually watched as a windmane was spawned from the swirling vortexes the blow created.
“Where is she?” Kitai called to him.
“Last time I saw her was up near the… chest, I think.”
She nodded, and without speaking the pair altered their flight paths to begin soaring up the enormous, slow-moving mountain fury. More windmanes came at them, these seeming to be random attacks rather than results of some deliberate malevolence—but there were so many of them around the vast earth fury that it hardly mattered. Each windmane had to be countered with windcrafting, driven away, and Tavi found himself thinking that it had really been a great deal less strenuous for him to deal with windmanes when he hadn’t had any furies and had relied upon a pouch of rock salt to discourage them.
Of course, using salt while maintaining his own windstream was problematic in any case—and he didn’t think he’d care to find a spot to land on Garados and craft some salt out of the ground. So he gritted his teeth and concentrated on swatting windmanes out of his path, discouraging the sinister furies from coming too close.
Vast sound shook the air around them twice—Garados, roaring in frustration or simple anger or some other emotion completely alien to such ephemeral beings as Tavi and Kitai. Perhaps he could ask Alera about it later. If there was time. The great fury’s arm swept by, this time much farther away. Pine trees stood up on the forearm like a mortal man’s hairs, and on the same approximate scale. Rain began to fall, heavy and cold.
They soared up past a distorted belly and over the great fury’s chest without seeing the vord Queen—but as they reached the level of Garados’s shoulders, they entered heavy storm clouds. Thick grey haze settled over them, and lightning flickered through the darkness. The wind surged and howled, then died away to a whisper at random—but as they kept going, Tavi was sure he could hear an actual voice in those whispers—a voice that promised torment, pain, and death.
There was another vast sound—and abruptly, the great fury stood completely still. The change was startling. Rock stopped grinding against rock. Tons and tons of earth and stone ceased their rumbling, and only the sound of a few falling stones, bouncing their way down to earth, remained behind. Almost simultaneously, the howling wind within the storm clouds died. The air went still, until they and the raindrops were the only things moving. The flickering lightning began to come less frequently, and the colors changed from every wild hue imaginable to one color: green.
Vord green.
“Aleran?” Kitai called, her eyes flicking around them.
“Bloody crows,” Tavi whispered. He turned to Kitai, and said, “She’s trying to claim them. The vord Queen is trying to claim Garados and Thana.”
“Is it possible?”
“For you or me?” Tavi shook his head. “But Alera told me that her power has a broader base than ours does. Maybe. And if she does…”
Kitai’s face turned grim. “If the Queen claims two great furies, it won’t matter who remains to stand against her.” She eyed Tavi. “And you led her to them.”
He scowled at her, and said, “Yes.”
They both increased their speed.
“And you woke her up in the first place.”
Tavi clenched his teeth. “Yes.”
“I simply wished to be sure I correctly understood the way things are.”
Tavi suppressed a sigh, ignored his growing fatigue, and pushed ahead harder, until the roar of their windstreams precluded conversation.
They found the vord Queen atop the frost-coated crown of Garados’s head. She simply stood there, half-burned and naked, her head bowed and her hands spread slightly apart. Above her was what looked like a motionless vortex, where terrible winds had borne up crystals of ice and snow into a glittering spiral.
The vord Queen opened her eyes as they came into view of her. Her lips curved up into a smile that no longer looked like a mimicked expression. It contained as much bitterness, hate, and malevolent amusement as Tavi had ever seen on anyone.
“Father,” the Queen said. “Mother.”
Kitai’s spine stiffened slightly, but she didn’t speak. Moving in time with Tavi, she touched down on the rocky ground facing the Queen. The three of them made the points of an equilateral triangle.
Eerie silence reigned for several seconds. Heavy, cold drops of rain fell upon stone. Their breaths all turned to steamy mist as they exhaled.
“You’re here to kill me,” the vord Queen said, still smiling. “But you can’t. You’ve tried. And in a moment, it won’t matter what kind of forces you might be able to—”
“She’s stalling for time,” Tavi said, and reached for his windcrafting to speed his movements. His own voice sounded oddly stretched and slowed as he continued to speak.
“Hit her,” he said, and slung out the hottest firecrafting he could call.
The Queen began to dart to the left—but the Marat woman hadn’t needed Tavi’s direction to begin the attack with him. The Queen slammed into the sheet of solid rock Kitai had called up in a half circle around her. The vord smashed through, but not before Tavi’s firecrafting had scored on her, driving a shriek of pain from her lungs.
The ground trembled and lurched as she screamed.
Tavi darted forward, sword in hand. The Queen flung a sheet of fire at him, but again he trapped the blaze within the steel of his blade, heating it to scarlet-and-sapphire flame. Somewhere behind him, Kitai wrought the stone beneath the Queen into something the consistency of thick mud. One foot sank ankle deep into it, pi
The kick hit him in the middle of his chest and threw him twenty feet, to fetch up against an outcropping of rock. His head slammed against it, and he bounced off to fall to the ground, his arms and legs suddenly made of pudding. He couldn’t breathe. There was a deep dent in the frontal plates of his lorica.