The Maelstrom

and it can’t hurt you unless you stare at it. You look at your mother instead, okay?”

When the girl nodded, Max turned to Petra. “Do you have any idea where we are relative to Bholevna?”

She scanned the land ahead, the fields and farms that had been trampled by Aamon’s armies. There were no landmarks, nothing but a few burned-out and abandoned farmhouses.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Bholevna may be farther north or perhaps east. I can’t say for certain.”

“Toby,” called Max. “How’s that ‘latissimus nub’ feeling? Could you become another bird?”

“A small one, perhaps,” replied the smee, wriggling like a grub. “Let’s see, let’s see.”

Seconds later, a sparrow hopped out of Max’s hood and tentatively fluttered its wings.

“Perfect,” said Max. “Can you fly up and have a look around for a landmark, a river, a road—anything that might give us a better sense of where we are?”

The smee zoomed from Max’s shoulder, spiraling up into the winter sky until he was almost lost from view. Once Toby was gone, Max checked on David.

His roommate was asleep, his cheeks flushed with fever, but his condition did not appear to be deteriorating. Peering beneath the bandage, Max saw that Katarina had done a good job cleaning the wounds, which were already mending.

“Can you hear me?” said Max, reapplying the bandage. “David?”

The sorcerer’s brow furrowed with irritation. He grunted.

“You can sleep again in a minute,” Max assured him. “Is the tunnel in Bholevna itself?”

The reply was so faint, it was little more than an exhale.

“East,” whispered David wearily. “A mile. Farmhouse … stream.”

“The tunnel is a mile east of Bholevna in a farmhouse by a stream?”

David nodded.

“Good,” said Max, patting his friend. “That’s good. We can’t be too far away.”

Toby returned a few minutes later, swooping down into the forest to settle onto Max’s shoulder.

“There’s a brayma’s palace perhaps ten miles to the north beyond that strip of forest,” he reported, gesturing with his wing. “Magnificent, really—reminds me of St. Basil’s Cathedral—but it looks like it’s been sacked. All the surrounding farms have been burned. It appears that Aamon’s armies have already been through this land.”

“I know that palace,” said Madam Petra. “It belongs to Baron Hart—Katarina and I attended a hunt there last spring. Bholevna’s just another ten miles or so northeast of there.”

“Let’s make for the palace,” Max decided. “If the horses aren’t spent and we feel up to it, we can push on to Bholevna tonight. If not, we can take shelter and see if there’s any food about. Agreed?”

The Kosas nodded, and even David managed a weary grunt. Reminding them not to look east, Max swung back up into the saddle, checked to see that the pinlegs was secure, and led the ride north.

The moon had risen high by the time they neared the palace. The journey had been slow going, for the horses were exhausted and the land grew rough and rocky in places, requiring them to pick their way carefully amid the trees and outcroppings. To the west, Max heard the faint blare of war horns. Periodically, there was a flash in the western sky as though lightning rippled through the clouds.

But it was Yuga that occupied Max’s attention.

He had said nothing to the others and hoped they had not noticed, but the hollow moaning was growing louder. The demon was so enormous that it was difficult to gauge her direction or speed—her motions seemed as slow and deliberate as the Earth’s rotation. But she was moving, and it sounded as though she was moving west, drawn perhaps to the warring armies and the vast feast they represented. Despite the darkness, she was still visible—a gargantuan void among the stars as though a huge, ragged patch had been torn from the night sky. Max wondered if Bram, or even Astaroth, could destroy such an abomination.

The dismal truth was that they were caught between terrible forces. He prayed that David’s tunnel still existed. If not, they would have to flee north to the Baltic and rely on Ormenheid to carry them home.

“These horses will keel over if we don’t rest them,” panted Madam Petra, shivering in the cold. “And I’m falling asleep in my saddle. Do you think it’s safe in the palace? We can water the horses and see if there’s food. Just an hour or two of sleep,” she pleaded.

Toby flew off to scout. When he returned and pronounced the palace abandoned, they led their weary mounts across its trampled fields and orchards.

The smee had been correct; the place really did resemble St. Basil’s Cathedral with its painted towers and voluptuous domes glinting beneath the moon. Before its fall, it must have been a wonder. But much of the palace was damaged, its gatehouse a charred ruin while several of the towers had collapsed into the inner bailey, obliterating a handful of smaller buildings in the process.

Much had been destroyed, but there was an uncontaminated well. While the horses drank and the others rested, Max went searching for food. He wandered about the empty palace, stepping over fallen stones and peering into ashy chambers that had been stripped of tapestries and furniture and anything else of value. Crunching through broken pottery, Max climbed a spiral staircase to a rampart connecting two of the towers. Perhaps there would be food in a guardroom.

But the upper levels were little better. They had suffered less damage, but the wind was stronger at these heights and went whipping through the open corridors and broken windows like a troop of lost and lonely spirits. There was an oppressive emptiness to the place, reinforced by the surprising lack of bodies. Someone had either buried the dead or taken them for some other purpose. Max declined to speculate.

He climbed to the top of the tallest tower, an immense rounded structure capped by an onion dome. The doors to the uppermost chamber had been wrenched off their hinges, revealing what had been a luxuriant bedchamber or seraglio. The arched walls were adorned with charred frescoes and mosaics and windows set into the curving walls so that the tower commanded a view in every direction. Most of the windows had been broken, however, and the wind swept through, glittering with snowflakes that settled on the inlaid floor.

Stepping to one, Max gazed down at the central courtyard hundreds of feet below. Madam Petra had started a fire, a tiny flicker no bigger than a candle flame amid the shadowed wreckage. Max could not help but admire the woman’s spirit and resilience. She had just lost everything and already she was coping, adapting, surviving. He half hoped she would decide to settle at Rowan—they could use such a capable person.

Something flashed in the west, an enormous light that filled the sky with a sickly green light. The sound came after, a rumbling chorus of horns and drums that was soon eclipsed by something else … a keening, wailing sound akin to an air-raid siren. Max rushed to another window and gazed out.

The west was ablaze, its skies exploding in wild flashes of light and pluming fire as though the clouds themselves had ignited. Horns sounded from afar, and a tremor ran through the earth, shaking the tower. Down in the courtyard, Petra was calling his name.

“What’s happening?” she cried.

Max cupped his hands. “A battle!” he shouted. “The armies have met!”

More flashes and the earth shook again, the tremors as slow and rhythmic as a battering ram. Far off, there was an explosion, and then a brilliant fireball rose in a mushroom cloud against the night sky. The tremors continued.

Max watched, spellbound, as the battle raged on. The armies were too far away to make out many details. But for the incandescent flashes, it might have been a forest fire, a haze of flames and smoke that stretched all along the horizon. Occasionally he caught glimpses of the army columns gleaming like molten gold. The tremors continued, a percussive thump, thump, thump that shook the remaining shards free from the windows. They fell about the room’s perimeter, shattering like little icicles.

Something to the southwest caught Max’s eye.

He trained his glass on a number of small lights glimmering in the surrounding woods. At this distance, he could not be certain if the lights were torches or lanterns, but they were now converging swiftly on the palace.

Max ran from the room, leaping down the stairs and yelling for the others to pack up. He hoped the appearance of these horsemen was coincidence, that they were merely deserters or refugees seeking shelter. But in his heart, Max knew otherwise. These riders were hunting for them.

Arriving at the courtyard, Max saw the Kosas hastily gathering up their things. Over the din of the distant battle and Patient Yuga, Max could now hear the sound of galloping hooves. He ran to the gatehouse and peered outside.