I offer you my full support in your crafting, as does Otto, here."
"I do?" Otto said. "Oh, I mean. Yes, of course. Isana, how could we have been so stupid. Of course we'll help."
"Child," Bitte called from beside Bernard's still form, her voice high, sharp. "Isana, there's no more time."
Isana turned to look at Bitte. The old woman's face had gone pale.
"Your brother. He's gone."
Chapter 10
Tavi stumbled beneath the force of a sudden gust of wind. The girl caught his arm in one hand, keeping him upright, and with the other, she hurled a few scanty remnants of the salt crystals he'd given her a few hours before. There was a shriek from the faintly luminous form of the windmane behind the gust, and it withdrew.
"That's it," she called over the wind. "I'm out of salt!"
"Me, too!" Tavi answered her.
"Are we close1?"
He squinted through the darkness and the rain, shivering and almost too cold to think. "I don't know," he said. "I can't see anything. We should be almost there,"
She shielded her eyes from the stinging half-sleet with her hand. "Almost won't be good enough. They're coming back."
Tavi nodded and said, "Keep your eyes out for firelight." He gripped her hand tightly in his, before stumbling forward, through the darkness. Her fingers tightened on his own. The slave was stronger than she looked, and even though his hand had long since gone mostly numb from the cold and the sleet, her grip was painful, frightened. The wind and the deadly manes within it yowled, driving and cold and furious.
"They're coming," she hissed. "If we're going to get out of this, it has to be right now."
"It's close. It's got to be." Tavi squinted against the blinding rain, peering ahead of them as best he could. Then he saw it, a faint golden radiance flickering at the edge of his vision. In the storm, he had gotten turned around somehow, and he swerved abruptly to one side, hauling on the girl's wrist. "There! The fire! It's right there! We have to run for it."
Tavi drove his exhausted body forward, toward the distant light, and the ground began to slope upward, rising steadily toward it. The curtains of sleet and rain blinded him and veiled the light, so that it flickered like a guttering candle, but Tavi kept his eyes doggedly locked on his destination Lightning snarled among the clouds m treacherous, blinding flashes, while the wind-manes howled out their wrath overhead
Tavi could hear the slave's labored, gasping breath even through the wind-she was evidently at the end of her endurance Her footsteps staggered, as they grew closer to the glowing firelight In the darkness, the wind-manes screeched, and Tavi looked back to see one of them swooping down through the sleet, its face twisted into a grimace of hatred and hunger
The girl's eyes widened as she saw Tavi's expression, and she began to spin about-but she was too late, her reaction too slow She couldn't possibly turn to defend herself in time
Tavi reached back and seized her wrist in both hands With the weight of his whole body, he hauled her forward, past him, and sent her stumbling toward the light ahead "Go'" he shouted "Get inside'"
The windmane hit Tavi, and there was suddenly no air in his lungs, no warmth in his limbs He felt his feet leave the ground, and he went tumbling, jouncing, and bounding down the slope and away from the shelter at its summit, blown like a leaf before the power of the storm He rolled, arms and legs loose, struggling to keep from stopping too abruptly, to guide his fall down the hill and to its base A grey stone appeared before his eyes in a flash of emerald lightning, and he felt himself scream as he flinched away from it
He caught a flash of light reflected on water, on the ground, and aimed himself toward it through the half dark, desperate and terrified He came to a halt in the mud pooling at the bottom of the hill beneath a finger-width of freezing water, his arms sinking into it halfway to his elbows He struggled and heaved them free of the muck, turning in time to see the windmane descend on him once more
Tavi rolled to one side, the sludge slowing his movements, and felt the wrndmane's deadly chill settle around his mouth and nose, cutting off his air He thrashed and flinched, but accomplished nothing He could no more keep the fury from