Jim Butcher - Academ's Fury

Tavi began to speak, but something told him not to. So he waited instead, and held her.

"I wanted a horse, Aleran," she whispered, in a broken little voice. "I had everything planned. I would ride with my mother's sister Hashat. Wander over the horizon for no reason but to see what is there. I would race the winds and challenge the thunder of the summer storms with the sound of my Clanmates running over the plains."

Tavi waited. At some point, he had found her left hand with his, and their fingers clasped with another tiny shock of sensation that was simply and perfectly right .

"And then you came," she said quietly. "Challenged Skagara before my people at the horto . Braved the Valley of Silence. Defeated me in the Trial. Came back for me at risk to your own life when you could have left me to die. And you had such beautiful eyes." She lifted her tear-stained face, her eyes seeking out Tavi's once more. "I did not mean this to happen. I did not choose it."

Tavi met her gaze. The pulse in her throat beat in time with his own heart. They breathed in and out together. "And now," Tavi said quietly, "here you are. Trying to learn more about me. Everything is strange to you."

She nodded slowly. "This has never happened to one of my people," she whispered. "Never."

And then Tavi understood her pain, her heartache, her fear. "You have no Clanmates," he said softly. "No Clan among your people."

More tears fell from her eyes, and her voice was low, quiet, steady. "I am alone."

Tavi met her eyes steadily and could all but taste the anguish far beneath the calm surface of her words. The girl still trembled, and his thoughts and emotions were flying so fast and thick that he could not possibly have arrested any one of them long enough for consideration. But he knew that Kitai was brave, and beautiful, and intelligent, and that her presence was something fundamentally good . He realized that he hated to see her hurting.

Tavi leaned forward, cupping her face with one hand. Both of them trembled, and he hardly dared move for fear of shattering that shivering moment. For a little time, he did not know how long, there was nothing but the two of them, the drowning depths of her green eyes, the warmth of her skin pressed against his side, smooth under his fingertips, her own fever-hot fingers trailing over his face and throat, and through his hair.

Time passed. He didn't care how much. Her eyes made time into something unimportant, something that fit itself to their needs and not the other way around. The moment lasted until it was finished, and only then was time allowed to resume its course.

He looked into Kitai's eyes, their faces almost touching, and said, his voice low, steady, and certain, "You are not alone."

Amara stared down at the outlaw's cave through the magnifying field of denser air Cirrus created between her outstretched hands. "You were right," she murmured to Bernard. She beckoned him with her head, and held her hands out so that he could lean down and peer over her shoulder. "There, you see, spreading out from the cave mouth. Is that the croach ?"

The ground for two hundred yards in every direction from the cave mouth was coated with some kind of thick, viscous-looking substance that glistened wetly in the light from the setting sun. It had engulfed the heavy brush in front of the cave entrance, turning it into a semitranslucent blob the size of a small house. The trees near the cave, evergreens mostly, had been similarly engulfed, with only their topmost branches free of the gummy coating. All in all, it gave the hillside around the cave a pustuled, diseased look, especially with the ancient mass of the mountain called Garados looming over it in the background.

"That's the stuff from the Wax Forest, all right," Bernard said quietly. "This cave has always been trouble. Outlaws would lay up there, because it was close enough to Garados that none of the locals would be willing to go near it."

"The mountain is dangerous?" Amara asked.

"Doesn't like people," Bernard said. "I've got Brutus softening our steps so that the old rock won't notice us. As long as we don't get any closer, the mountain shouldn't give us any trouble."

Amara nodded, and exclaimed, "There, do you see that? Movement."

Bernard peered through her upheld hands. "Wax spiders," he reported.

He swallowed. "A lot of them. They're crawling all over the edges of the croach ."

Doroga's heavy steps approached and paused close beside them. "Hngh," he grunted. "They are spreading the croach . Like butter. Grows out by itself but I figure they are trying to make it grow faster."

"Why would they do that?" Amara murmured.

Doroga shrugged. "It is what they do. If they get their way, it will be everywhere."

Amara felt a cold little chill run down her spine.

"They won't," Bernard said. "There's no sign of any of our people, taken or otherwise. I don't see any of their warriors, either."

"They are there," Doroga said, his rumbling voice confident. "They get in there in the croach , you can't see them. Blend right in."

Bernard put his hand on Amara's shoulder and stood, inhaling slowly. "I'm of a mind to go ahead with our plan," he told her. "We'll wait for dark and hit them hard. Get close enough to make sure the vord are in there, and finish them. Countess?"

Amara released Cirrus and lowered her hands. "We can hardly stand about and wait for them to come after us," she said. She glanced back at Bernard. "But these are your lands, Count. I'll support your decision."

"What is there to decide?" Doroga asked. "This is simple. Kill them. Or die."

Bernard's teeth showed. "I prefer hunting to being hunted," he said. "Doroga, I'm going to go circle that cave a good ways out. See if I can find out if they've got any other surprises hidden in there waiting for us. Want to come along?"

"Why not," Doroga said. "Walker is foraging. Better than standing around watching him root things up."

"Countess," Bernard said, "if you're willing, I'd like to see what you can spot from the air before we lose the light."

"Of course," she said.

"Three hours," Bernard said after a moment. "I'm telling Giraldi to be ready to hit them in three hours, just after full dark. If we don't find any surprises waiting, that's when we'll take the fight to them."

Amara inhaled and exhaled deeply, then rose with a forced calm and poise she did not feel, and called Cirrus to carry her up and into the air. She was still weary from an excess of windcrafting, but she had enough endurance for a short flight over the proposed battlefield. It would take her only a few moments.

And once it was done, the remaining hours before they moved would feel like an eternity.

Once Amara returned from her uneventful (and unenlightening) flight over the vord nest, she had settled down with her back to a tree to rest. When she woke, she was lying on her side, half-curled, her head pillowed on Bernard's cloak. She recognized the scent without needing to open her eyes, and she lay there for a moment, breathing slowly in and out. But around her, Giraldi's veterans were stirring, and weapons and armor made quiet sounds of metal clicking on metal and rasping against leather as they secured their arms and gear and prepared to fight. No one spoke, except for short, hushed phrases of affirmation as they checked one another's gear and tightened buckles.

Amara sat up slowly, then rose to her feet. She stretched, wincing. The mail hadn't been made to fit her, though it was tolerably close to functional, but her muscles weren't used to the weight of the armor, and they twitched and clenched painfully at odd moments and places as she put the strain on them again. She looked for the man closest to the vord nest and walked toward him.