this forest, when the trees themselves would report her position.
"Cirrus," Amara gasped. "Up!"
The wind gathered beneath her and pushed her up off the ground-but branches wove together above her, moving as swiftly as human hands joining together and presented her with a solid screen. Amara let out a cry and crashed against that living ceiling, then tumbled back to the ground. Cirrus softened her fall with an apologetic whisper against her ear.
Amara looked left and right, but the trees were joining branches everywhere-and the forest was growing darker as the roof of leaf and bough closed overhead. The beating of hooves came through the trees.
Amara struggled back to her feet, the cut on her arm pounding painfully. Then she started running again, as the horsemen closed in, behind her.
She couldn't have guessed how far she ran. Later, she only remembered the threatening shadows of the trees and a burning fire in her lungs and her limbs that even Cirrus's aid couldn't ease. Terror changed to simple excitement, and that transformed, by degrees, to a sort of exhausted lack of concern.
She ran until she suddenly found herself looking back-and into the eyes of a mounted legionare, not twenty feet away. The man shouted and cast his spear at her. She stumbled out of the path of the weapon and away from the horseman, into a sudden flood of sunshine. She looked ahead of her and found the ground sloping down for no more than three or four strides, and then ending in a sheer cliff that dropped off so abruptly that she could not see how far down it went or what was at the bottom.
The legionare drew his sword in a rasp of steel and called to his horse. The animal responded as an extension of the man's body and pounded toward her.
Amara turned without hesitation and threw herself off of the cliff.
She spread her arms and screamed, "Cirrus! Up!" The wind gathered beneath her in a rush, as her fury flew to obey, and she felt a sudden, fierce exultation as, with a screaming whistle of gale winds, she shot up, up into the autumn skies, her wake kicking up dust devils along the ridge that cast dirt up in the face of the unfortunate legionare and set his horse to rearing and kicking in confusion.
She flew on, up and away from the camp and paused after a time to look behind her. The cliff she'd leapt from looked like a toy from there, several miles behind her and one below. "Cirrus," she murmured, and held her hands before her. The fury gusted and swirled a part of itself into that space, quivering like the waves rising from a hot stone.
Amara shaped that air with her hands, bending the light, until she was peering back at the cliff through her spread hands as though she stood no more than a hundred yards away. She saw the hunting party emerge and Aldrick dismount. The legionare who had seen her described her escape, and Aldrick squinted up at the sky, sweeping his eyes left to right. Amara felt a chill as the man's gaze paused, directly upon her. He tilted his head to
the man beside him, the woodcrafter Knight from before, and the man simply touched one of the trees.
Amara swallowed and swept her hands back toward the rebel Legion's camp.
Half a dozen forms rose up over the treetops, which swayed and danced beneath the winds, as though they had been the bushes in a holtwife's herb garden. They turned, and as one, they sped toward her. Sun glinted off of steel-armor and weapons, she knew.
"Knights Aeris," muttered Amara. She swallowed and let her hands fall. Normally, she would have been confident of her ability to outrun them. But now, wounded, and already exhausted in body and spirit, she was not so sure.
Amara turned and bade Cirrus to bear her north and east-and prayed that the sun would set before her foes caught up to her.
Chapter 3
Tavi slipped out of his room, down the stairs, and through the silence of the last shreds of night before dawn. He entered the cavernous shadows of the great hall, noting a faint glow of light in the kitchens beside the great hall. Old Bitte rarely slept more than a few hours a night, and Tavi heard her moving through the kitchen, preparing it for the coming breakfast meal.
He unbolted the door and left the great hall for Bernardholt's courtyard. One of the steadholt's dogs