And then Hulda recognized her. 'You! The Brat!'
'The Adept,' Elspeth screamed back defiantly. 'Your better, bitch!'
Hulda's reply was drowned out by another thunderclap; there was a trace of real fear in her eyes, and her face was like a stone mask. Elspeth laughed hysterically. Hulda was afraid! Afraid of her! They could take the bitch, they could!
But Hulda evidently decided that if she was doomed, she would take her enemies with her.
Hulda reached out with her powers in a thrust that knocked Elspeth back into the wall again, and with great shudders of power that shook her body as they shook the walls, she began to tear the building down around them.
The walls and ceiling screamed with the shrieks of tortured stone and wood. Elspeth dodged a falling chandelier that brought a quarter of the ceiling down with it -
- just in time to see Darkwind falling beneath the outer wall, going down under a cascade of stone and burning wall-maps that buried him completely in an instant.
'No!' she screamed, reaching for him with mind, heart, and powers, forgetting her own peril -
Only to receive, not an answer, but a flood of energy. Energy that felt - final, as if it was all he had.
Her heart convulsed, but her body acted.
She shook her arm and felt her other knife fall into her hand. She screamed again, a wordless howl of rage and anguish; invested every last bit of power in the second knife - and threw it.
The knife cut through the air and ripped through Hulda's shields.
Hulda collapsed in a boneless heap, her howling winds collapsing at the same instant, leaving behind an echoing silence filled only by thunder, and the crunch of an occasional brick falling. A glittering knife-hilt shone from her left eye socket.
She was dead, but she had taken Darkwind with her.
Elspeth turned and stared at the heap of broken stones, her throat choked with grief so all-consuming that she could not think, could not even weep. She stumbled a step or two toward the pile -
And Vree came winging in out of the darkness, through the gaping, broken wall. He landed beside the stones, and hopped over to them - to the only part of Darkwind that she could see, his hand. He nibbled the fingers, as if to try to coax life into them, and Elspeth's grief overflowed into scalding tears that blurred her vision. Her throat closed, and she sobbed, then moaned with pain.
He was gone. She was alone. Hulda had won, after all. His loss was an ache that would never be healed.
What?
Grief turned to hysterical joy, all in a heartbeat. He was alive!
She shook her head, frantically wiping at her eyes to clear them, then ran to the pile of stones and began to pull them off of him. Vree hopped excitedly beside her, making odd creaking sounds, as she managed to clear his head and shoulders of debris.
He looked terrible; bruised and bleeding from a dozen small cuts, and she trembled to think how many bones might be broken. But he was alive!
Her heart overflowing, she resumed pulling stones from his body, ignoring splitting nails and sharp edges that cut her hands, thankful that the winds had snuffed out the earlier fires. Finally she came to a thick slab of wood - a strategic map, showing invasion plans. A map of Valdemar.
It had protected Darkwind from the heaviest of the stones, prevented his lungs and ribs from being crushed. Paint flaked from the board as she twisted it free of him, and troop-counters fell like rain from the 'Losses' box she found propping up one end of it. She kept having to shake her head to clear her eyes of tears as she pulled debris
