Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera 3)

"Courage, little one," Kalarus's image said, tone softer. "We are near the end of the race. Just a little longer."

Then the image slid back down into the tiny pool, and Lady Antillus sagged. Tavi saw her hands clenched into fists so tight that her nails had cut into her palms. Tiny droplets of blood fell to the stone floor of the fissure, sparkling in the light of the small fire.

Then she rose abruptly, and flicked a hand at the stone of the fissure wall. It stirred, pulsed, then writhed into a bas-relief image of a young man. In fact...

It was a life-sized image of Tavi, carefully and chillingly detailed.

Lady Antillus spat upon it, then struck out at it with one fist, furycraft infusing the blow with such power that it literally tore the stone head from the fissure wall and sent out a cloud of stone fragments that rattled to the ground. Her next blow struck the figure in the heart, her fist driving halfway to her elbow in the stone. Cracks sprang out from the point of impact, and more pieces of the statue broke off and fell to the ground. She whirled, took two long paces back from the image, then howled and drove her open palm toward the remnants of Tavi's likeness. Fire split the darkness and the quiet night with a blaze of sudden light and thunder, and the stones shrieked protest.

A cloud of dust and smoke covered everything. Stone clattered on stone. When the haze cleared, there was an enormous, glass-smooth hollow fully five feet deep where the stone image had been.

Tavi gulped.

Beside him, Kitai did, too.

He forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly, to control the fearful trembling of his limbs. He could feel Kitai shivering against him. They crept away from the High Lady's little camp as silently as they came.

It took most of forever to crawl back out of the painful thicket without making noise, and Tavi wanted to break into an immediate sprint as soon as he was upright again. It would have been a mistake, so close to Lady Antillus-possibly a fatal one. So he and Kitai prowled slowly and carefully for nearly half a mile before Tavi finally stopped beside a brook and let out a shaking breath.

He and Kitai crouched down together by the brook, cupping water with their hands and drinking. Tavi noticed, as they did, that Kitai's hands were trembling. Though she struggled to remain calm, behind her exotic eyes he could see the fear she held tightly leashed.

After they drank, they crouched together in silence for a moment. Tavi found Kitai's hand in the darkness and squeezed it tight. She squeezed back and leaned into him, her shoulder against his, and both of them stared at the reflections of occasional crimson lightning in the water.

Far in the distance, Tavi heard the low, alien, blaring call of a Canim war horn.

Kitai's fingers squeezed tighter. "They're coming," she whispered.

"Yes," he said. He lifted his eyes to the west, from where the horn call had come.

There was a terrible sense of helplessness in the moment, a sudden and crushing realization that in the face of all that was happening, he was very, very small. Vast forces were in motion, and he could do nothing to stop them, and almost nothing to influence them. He felt like a legionare piece on a Indus board-small, slow, and of very little value or ability. Other hands were directing the pieces, while like a ludus legionare, he had little to say about those moves and precious little ability to change the outcome of the game, even if he made them himself.

It was terrifying, frustrating, unfair, and he leaned back against Kitai, taking solace in her presence, her scent, her touch.

"They're coming," he murmured. "It won't be long now."

Kitai looked up at him, her eyes searching his face. "If it is true, if they are a great host, can your Legion destroy them?'

"No," Tavi said quietly. He closed his eyes for a moment, helpless as a ludus piece, and every bit as likely to be destroyed with the killing came and hurtled them into a grim endgame.

Endgame.

The wolfish Canim war horns sounded again.

Ludus.

Tavi took a sudden deep breath and rose to his feet, mind racing. He stared out at the light of the burning ships in Founderport s harbor, reflecting against the low clouds overhead.

"We can't destroy them," he said. "But I think I know how we can stop them. "

She tilted her head. "How?"

He narrowed his eyes, and said, very quietly, "Discipline."

Chapter 34

Isana, exhausted, did not lift her head to ask, "What day is it, Giraldi?" "The twenty-ninth day of the siege. Dawn's in a few hours more." Isana forced herself to churn thoughts through her weary brain. "The battle. Is Lady Veradis likely to be free today?"

Giraldi was silent for a long minute. Then he dragged a stool across the floor to Isana and sat down on it in front of her. He leaned down and lifted her chin with callused, gentle fingers, so that she had to look up at him. "No," he said quietly. "She won't, Isana."

Isana struggled to process the thought. Not today, then. She must hold another day. Another eternal, merciless day. She licked her dried, cracked lips, and said, "Gaius will come soon."

"No," Giraldi said. "There's something about this storm that keeps Knights Aeris from flying more than a few yards off the ground. The First Lord could not send rapid response troops to lift the siege, and Kalarus has disrupted the causeways between Ceres and the capital. It will take them another week to march here."

A week. To Isana, a week almost seemed like a mythical amount of time. Perhaps that was a mercy. A single day was a torment. Just as well that she could not clearly remember how many days were in a week. "I'm staying. "

Giraldi leaned forward. "Kalarus's forces have breached the city walls. Cereus and Miles managed to collapse enough buildings to contain them for a time, but it's only a matter of hours, probably less than a day, before he's forced back to the citadel here. The fighting is worse every hour. Cereus and Miles have lost more Knights, and now the enemy's take a greater and greater toll of the rank-arid-file legionares. Veradis and her healers work to save lives until they drop. Then they get up and do it again. None of them can come to help you."

She stared at him dully.

Giraldi leaned forward and turned her head toward Fade. "Look at him, Isana. Look at him."

She did not wish to. She could not quite remember why, but she knew that she did not want to look at Araris. But she could not summon up the means to deny the centurion's command. She looked.

Araris, Fade, her husband's closest friend, lay pale and still. He'd coughed weakly for several days, though that had ceased sometime in the blurry, recent past. His chest barely rose and fell, and it made wet sounds as it did. His skin had taken on an unhealthy, yellowish tinge in patches around his torso and neck. He had cracks in his skin, angry sores swollen and red. His hair hung limp, and every feature of his body looked softened, more indistinct somehow, as if he'd been a still-damp clay statue slowly melting in the rain.