cloud and gathered into a wide circle, dancing between the Knights like the spokes of an enormous wagon wheel. Isana could feel the power gathering as the lightning prepared to fall on the retreating chieftains.
Aria cursed under her breath and threw herself aloft, wind rising in a roar to lift her into the skies-but even as she did, lightning burned a searing streak across Isana’s vision and struck the ground several yards behind the Iceman chieftains. The wheel of Knights above shifted, and the lightning burned its way toward the Icemen, digging an enormous furrow in the earth as it went.
Isana watched in horror, helpless and furious, searching desperately in her thoughts for some solution. But there was nothing there for the Icemen. Words and good intentions meant less than nothing in this harsh land of stone walls and steel men, covered in ice and…
Snow.
Isana tore off her glove and thrust her hand into the snow, calling upon Rill as she did. The snow was, after all, water. And she had learned, during the desperate battle at sea the previous year, that she was capable of far more than she had ever believed. There had never been, upon her steadholt, a cause to push her abilities to their limits, except in healing-and she had never failed. When she had needed a flood to save Tavi’s life, she had managed one, though at the time she had believed it merely the result of her familiarity with the local furies.
But in the ocean, she had learned differently. The limits she had known before had never been imposed upon her by Alera. They had been assumptions within her own mind. Everyone knew that holders were never truly powerful, even in the wilds of a place like Calderon, and she had let that unconscious assumption shape her self- perception. There, immersed in the limitless immensity of the sea, she had found that she was capable of far more than she’d ever believed.
Snow was water. Why
She was the First Lady of Alera, by the Great Furies, and she would
Isana cried out, and the vast snowfield around the Icemen surged like a living sea, responding to her determination and will. She lifted her arm, feeling a phantom strain around her shoulders as the snow surged around the Icemen and piled up into a vast mound behind them. The lightning surged into that sea of snow, throwing out enormous billows of steam, its heat drowning before it could do harm.
Isana felt it when the sky above them suddenly changed, lightning flowing in from everywhere, surging from over the horizon in every direction to center itself in the whirling eye of the vortex above, its color shifting, changing from blue-white to bright gold-green. The burning shaft thickened and intensified, and Isana felt the surge in power behind it as some other enormous will added its power to the strike.
“Antillus,” she heard herself gasp.
The weight settling on her pressed on her chest and drove her to one knee-but she did not yield. She cried out again, lifting her hand, and the snow and steam and ice that continued to shield the retreating Icemen washed and flowed into shape to mirror her fingers, her hand lifted in a gesture of defiant denial. The endless cold of the north clashed with the fire of the southern skies, and steam began to spread from the clash, blanketing the countryside.
“Isana!” she heard Araris call. “Isana!”
He shook her shoulders, and she looked around dazedly at him. She wasn’t sure how long she had upheld the defense against Antillus Raucus’s strike, but she couldn’t see the Knights Aeris. Araris’s voice sounded oddly distant.
“Isana!” Araris called. “It’s all right. The Icemen are gone! They’re safe!”
She lowered her hand, and heard an enormous whuffing rumble behind her. She turned to see fine powdery snow rising in a huge cloud, through the steam, as though settling after a sudden avalanche.
Doroga regarded the steam and settling snow for a long and silent moment. Then he looked at Isana appraisingly.
“I ever invade Calderon again,” he said, “it will be in the summer.”
Isana stared wearily at him, and said, “I’d see to it that you never got those sweetbread cakes you like. Ever again.”
Doroga gave her a wounded look, sniffed, and said to Walker, “Alerans don’t ever fight fair.”
“Help me up,” Isana said to Araris. “He’ll be coming.”
Araris did so at once. “Who?”
“Just stay by me,” she said. She caught his eyes. “And trust me.”
Araris lifted his eyebrows as he helped her up. Then instead of answering, he leaned forward and kissed her. After a moment, he drew back from her, and said, “With my life. Always.”
She found his hand with hers and squeezed it very hard.
Seconds later, wind roared, and two forms plummeted through the mist and powder. Antillus Raucus landed hard, sending up a cloud of powdery snow. Lady Placida came down beside him, and immediately put one hand on his arm in a gesture of restraint.
“Raucus,” Aria said. “Crows take it, Raucus, wait!”
The heavily armored High Lord shook off her arm and stalked straight toward Isana. “You little idiot!” he snarled. “That was our chance to throw them back, force them to reorganize enough to send some relief to the south! What do you think you were doing, you high-handed-”
When he reached her, Isana drew back and smacked him coldly across the face. Hard.
Raucus’s head rocked to one side, and when he looked back at her, his lower lip had been cut against one of his teeth and was bleeding slightly. The surprise in his eyes began to be replaced by more anger.
“Antillus Raucus,” Isana said, in the instant of unbalance. “I accuse you of cowardice and treachery against the authority of the First Lord and the honor of the Realm. And here, in front of these witnesses, I formally challenge you to the
CHAPTER 29
Ehren didn’t have the full military experience of a true Legion officer, but he knew enough to know that the retreat from Ceres had not gone well. The battered Legions had barely been able to stay ahead of the pursuing Vord, despite the advantage of the furycrafted causeways. The Vord simply outnumbered them too badly. A man could march for hours or for days when he had to, but sooner or later, he had to sleep-while the Vord simply kept coming.
Though the Legions did everything they could to keep the civilians moving out ahead of them, they couldn’t help everyone. The Vord had spread through the countryside, and Ehren did not like to think of what would happen to the poor folk who were left behind each time the road was cut, ending any possibility of escape for the poor holders who had been fleeing toward the hope of safety the road had offered.
Ehren paced in the hall outside the First Lord’s room, a suite in an inn in the town of… Ehren wasn’t sure. Uvarton had fallen after the Legions had taken barely a night’s rest. The vordknights had caught up to them and begun dropping takers behind the town’s walls. Ehren was still having nightmares about the fourteen-year-old girl, taken by the Vord, whom he’d seen rip the heavy wooden tongue from a wagon and beat half a dozen
After Uvarton had come… Marsford, he thought, where the Vord had poisoned the wells, then Beros, where the Vord had brought up enough wind that, combined with the cold, the Legions had lost one in thirty men to frostbite, then Vadronus, where…
Where the Vord had driven them back again. And again. He’d slept in spare moments, half an hour, here and there, for the past… some number of days. He wasn’t sure. The First Lord had taken even less than that- which was why he had collapsed.
The door to Gaius’s room opened, and Sireos the healer emerged. As the personal physician to the First Lord, the thin, silver-templed Sireos was a familiar sight near the capital-which was less than a day’s hard ride on
