ripple along her spine, across her skin, as she focused her concentration- weary, but willing. "Rill. Show me."
Fade abruptly stepped away from her, mumbling, "Hungry." Isana watched him go, frustrated but unable to divert much attention from directing Rill. Fade edged toward the fire, looking at the Kordholders apprehensively,
creeping toward the stewpot again, as though he expected to be driven away from it with another swift blow. Then he stepped out of her immediate view.
Isana sensed the fury's movement through the moisture-heavy air, brushing against her and then flowing outward. Isana felt the fury's motion almost as though it was her own arm reaching out toward the young Kord-holter against the wall.
Rill touched on Bittan, and a jolt of vibrant fear lanced back to Isana through the fury's contact. She let out a gasp, her eyes widening, finally understanding what was happening in the room.
Bittan was working a firecrafting on the room, sending out a subtle apprehension to almost every person in it, heightening their fears and drawing their anxieties to the forefront of their thoughts. It was a subtle working- more subtle than she would have thought possible from the young man. He must have called his fury into the fire near him, which explained why he had claimed the space in front of it as his own.
With the realization, a wave of dizzying weariness passed over Isana. She lost her balance and stumbled forward, to her knees, lowering one hand to the floor to balance and lifting the other to her face.
"Isana?" Aldo's voice came to her clearly, and talk in the room dropped away to a near silence as the folk of Bernardholt turned their attention to her. "Isana, are you all right?"
Isana looked up to find Kord's sons looking straight at her, their expressions startled, guilty. Bittan hissed something to Aric. Aric's face hardened.
She looked up to tell Aldo about Bittan's firecrafting-and suddenly found that she couldn't push the air out of her lungs.
Isana lifted her head, eyes sweeping around in a sudden panic. She struggled to speak, but couldn't, her throat unable to expel a breath-or, she realized a moment later, to draw it in.
People crowded around her, then, Aldo leading the other Steadholders over to her with quick, fearful steps. The diminutive man picked her up and said, "Help me. Someone help!"
"What's wrong with her?" asked Roth. "Good furies, she's terrified."
Voices mingled and blended around her in a worried buzz. She struggled, reaching out for Rill, but the water fury only clouded around her, pressing close, in nervous reaction to Isana's own wild fear. As her helplessness increased, her mental defenses eroded, and the fear of those in the
room flooded over more and more thickly as they pressed closer. She lost track of who was speaking and reeled in confusion.
"I don't know. She just fell. Did anyone else see?"
"Mistress?"
"Isana, oh great furies, she and her brother both-this is an evil day!"
Isana struggled to look around, pushing away Otto as he tried to open her mouth, to look down her throat and see if she was choking.
"Hold her!"
"Isana, calm down!"
"She's not breathing!"
Kord came over through the crowd, but Isana looked past the big Steadholder-to where his sons still sat by the fire, unnoticed. Bittan had looked up at her, and a cruel smile had twisted his handsome mouth. He clenched his fingers abruptly into a fist, and Isana felt an accompanying spike of blinding panic flash through her, driving away thought for a moment.
Beside Bittan sat Aric. Aric, Isana thought. A windcrafter. The quiet son of Kord wasn't looking at her, but he had his fingers bridged together and his expression was set in concentration.
Darkness swam in front of her eyes, and she struggled to mouth words to Aldo, who held her, his eyes wide with panic.
"Isana," he breathed. "Isana, I can't understand you."
Everything wavered, and Isana found herself laying on a table, the world spinning above her. Kord arrived, a sudden odor of stale sweat and roasted meat. He looked down at her and said, "I think she's panicked. Woman, calm down. Don't try to talk." He leaned over her, his eyes narrowing. "Don't," he muttered softly, eyes malicious and threatening. "Don't try to talk. Calm down and don't talk. Maybe it will go away."
Isana tried to push Kord away, but he was too big, too heavy, her arms too weak.
"All you have to do is nod," he whispered. "Just be a good girl and agree to let things go. It doesn't have to