a nightmare. The windfall already had occupants-half a dozen slives. The supple, dark-scaled lizards were nearly as long as Tavi was tall, and the nearest lay within arm's reach. The lizard thrashed restlessly, stirring from its torpor. It opened its jaws and let out a syrupy hiss, showing rows of needle-pointed teeth.
A thick yellow liquid coated the slive's front fangs. Tavi had seen slive venom at work before. If the slive struck him, he would grow warm and sluggish, until he sank slowly down to the ground. And then the slives would drag him still alive into their lair. And eat him.
Tavi's first reaction was a terrified desire to spring away-but fast motion could trigger the surprised slive. Even if the slive missed, the filthy little scavengers would regard his flight as a sign that he was prey to be pursued
and eaten. He could outrun them on open ground, but slives had a nasty tendency to remain on the trail of their prey, sometimes following for days, waiting for their target to sleep before moving in for the kill.
Fear and excitement made Tavi tremble, but he forced himself to remain calm. He withdrew as slowly and smoothly as he could. He had just gotten out of the slive's striking range when the beast hissed again and bolted out of its shelter and toward the boy.
Tavi let out a panicked scream, his light baritone cracking into a child's higher pitch as he did. He threw himself back from the slive's deadly bite, got his feet underneath him and started to run.
Then, to his complete surprise, he heard someone call out in an answering shout, one nearly drowned out by the rising winds.
Tavi snarled in frustration. The memory of the Marat warrior and his terrible partner came back to him in a flood of terror. Had they caught up to him?
The wind brought him another shout, the pitch too high to be the Marat. There was no mistaking the panic and fear in it. "Please! Someone help!"
Tavi bit his lip, looking down the causeway toward his home and safety- then facing the opposite way, toward the cry for help. He took a shaking breath and turned west, away from his home, and forced his tired legs into motion again, running along the pale stone of the causeway.
The lightning flashed again, a shuddering flame that swept from cloud to cloud, overhead, first green, then blue, then red, as though the furies of the skies had gone to battle against one another. Light bathed the rain-swept valley for nearly half a minute, while thunder shook the stones of the causeway and half-deafened him.
Shapes began to whirl down toward the ground through the tumult and rain, and raced and danced across the valley floor. The windmanes had followed the storm. Their luminous forms swirled and gusted effortlessly among the winds, pale-green clouds, nebulous and vaguely human in shape, with long, reaching arms and skeletal faces. The windmanes screamed their hatred and hunger, their cries rising even above the bellowing thunder.
Tavi felt terror slow his legs, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on, until he could see that most of the windmanes in sight swirled around and around a central point, their pale, sharp-nailed hands reaching.
In the center of the ghostly cyclone, there stood a young woman Tavi had never seen before. She was tall and slender, not unlike his own Aunt Isana, but there the resemblance to his aunt ended. The woman had skin of dark,
golden brown, like the traders from the southernmost cities of Alera. Her hair was straight and fine, whipped wildly about her by the wind, and was almost the same color as her skin, giving her something of the appearance of a golden statue. Her features were stark, striking, if not precisely lovely, with high cheekbones and a long, slender nose softened by a generous mouth.
Her face was set in a grimace of desperation and defiance. She wore a bloodstained cloth around her arm, and it looked as though she had torn her ragged, coarse skirts to make it. Her blouse was stained with grime and pressed against her by the rain, and a woven leather slave's collar circled her slender throat. As Tavi watched, one of the windmanes curled toward her in a graceful swoop.
The girl cried out, throwing one hand toward the windmane, and Tavi saw a pale blue stirring in the air-not as sharp or as well defined as the windmanes themselves, but flashing there momentarily nonetheless,