Everything else began to fade: the staircase, the countess, thesound of a child crying, and voices raised in alarm. She grabbed the stone withher power and yanked the broken pieces upright, pulling large slabs up to beone again with the whole. She let herself flow with the power instead offighting as before, and it didn’t hurt, didn’t howl through her like it had inthe garden. She had something to focus on here, something to fix.
Sylph lost herself in the feeling, the rightness of fitting seamto seam and mending cracks and holes. These walls had stood far longer thanthey’d been in disrepair. If she concentrated, she could feel the history inthe rock, the miles it had traveled, the quarry it had come from, the millenniait had lain dormant. And before that, a whisper of an echo spoke of countlessages spent under the sea.
The land had once been a sea. She’d never dreamed such thingscould change.
She’d nearly finished when the staircase and the countess cameback in a rush. Sylph had forgotten they’d ever existed. Countess Carisse’sface seemed panicked, desperate. She clutched the remains of a vase in herhands, ceramic bits cascading from her fingers.
Sylph’s own body came back slower, the haziness around the edgesof her vision, the pain in her head, the slight scent of blood. She couldn’tthink what had happened, could barely think at all, and she couldn’t controlher body as it fell backward, and the haziness overtook her eyes, dropping herinto blackness.
* * *
“Shut up and listen,” one of the voices in front of Thana saidwith a growl. She could almost feel them listening.
When another started to protest, she threw another bit of forestflotsam.
They shuffled, sounding as if they were headed in the directionof where it landed. Maybe if they wandered far enough, they’d just leave. Andwithout these three signaling, the bombardment of the manor house had stopped.
Now she only had to decide what to do next. Find whoever wasusing the explosives? What if they were pyradistés, but they weren’t in theirright minds? A concerted attack didn’t sound like any of the other incidents.Those had sounded spur-of-the-moment, acts that came from being overwhelmed.Journeying to a manor house in the middle of nowhere to hunt a so-calledtraitor seemed the height of deliberateness.
A screech sounded from the manor. Thana leaped from her hidingplace. In the moonlit-dappled forest, a pair of wide eyes stared back at her.Light blinded her for a moment before she realized it was someone holding apyramid.
The signaler.
Another shrieking noise came from the manor, followed by thegrinding sound of stone and the rumble of shifting rock. Thana jumped, herheart in her mouth. The pyramid-holder let out a gasp of alarm, and the lighttilted. Thana caught a glimpse of dark hair, a beard surrounding an open mouth.
He was going to call out.
Thana leaped without thinking, wanting to stop any warning cry.Her breath left her as they crashed together. The pyramid bounced into theundergrowth as Thana’s target fell, taking her with him and cutting off a briefcry in a whoosh of breath.
Thana tried to disentangle herself and get up, but her hands andfeet kept sinking into flesh as her captive squirmed. He gasped or coughed, thewind knocked out of him, but that wouldn’t last forever.
As if goaded by her thoughts, he flailed, and Thana clamped herteeth on a cry as an arm connected with her cheek, sending pain rattlingthrough her skull and making stars streak past her right eye.
Panicking, she lost her balance. Her captive bucked. She threwherself forward, one hand landing in the dirt and the other smacking him again.A small cry answered her, so she pressed down and felt for a weapon with herfree hand. She groaned as another blow caught her in the stomach. Achesradiated through her midsection, but she pushed the feeling aside as herfingers closed over the roughness of bark.
“Get—”
His words cut off as Thana brought a broken branch over her headand sent it down without looking, without thinking, only hoping she wouldn’thave to do it again.
He went still. Shuddering through a few deep breaths, Thana fellto the side. The rumbling from the manor had stopped, but the rattle ofcascading stones filled the silence. She had to move before someone camelooking. She felt for the light pyramid in the undergrowth. When she felt thesmoothness of crystal, she snatched it up, holding it close.
She cradled her aching stomach as she moved back to the captiveand riffled his clothing. Another pyramid. She grinned and stuffed it in herpocket. After she’d found another, she stood, having no room for more. Shewondered if she had enough time to discern what the pyramids did before—
Light blinded her again, this time coming from between her andthe manor house. She gasped and fell into her pyramid, fighting through fear tosense its fiery nature. She cocked her arm to throw, but Timmony’s voicestopped her.
“Lady Justine?” he whispered.
* * *
Sylph’s first thought was that she was walking. Funny, she’dnever walked with her eyes shut before. Was she sleepwalking? The air passedover her back, and her arms swung beneath her. Sleepwalking was muchmore…horizontal than she’d expected.
A funny thought, but she couldn’t laugh, couldn’t do much ofanything. She tried to stop, but her legs met resistance, as if someone washolding them. Another aspect of sleepwalking she didn’t expect.
“She’s waking up,” someone said, the words more than a little breathless.
“Quickly.” This voice was near her feet. The other at her head.She was being…carried. Why? “We have to get her outside.”
“We don’t know that she was attacking us, Your Grace.”
“Then why did it stop when I hit her? Stop talking and move.”
The words fell into place as memory, but Sylph still couldn’t doanything about them, could hardly move at all. She’d have to fight harder ifshe wanted to escape this dream…memory…whatever. She couldn’t open her eyes,and all she could hear was the huffing breath of the two people carrying herand the shuffle of their footsteps over carpet and stone. Her head began topound, made worse by the musty scent of the old manor house. If they weretaking her into
