ate him in one bite. His trembling paralysis became a sudden surge of fragile, terrified strength, and he all but flew up the hill toward the promised safety of the light. He heard himself suck in a breath and scream, and the windmanes rose up around him in an angry chorus-but one without a director, without a tempo. They swooped and dove furiously around him, but none could see him. The protection of the earth held true, until Tavi had raced up the slope to its summit.
There, a simple dome of polished marble rose from the slope of the hill to the height of three men. Its open entryway glowed with a soft golden light, and above it, writ into the marble in gold was the seven-pointed star of the First Lord of Alera.
Tavi felt a section of earth as heavy as a feastday cake slough off of his back and heard the furies scream behind him. His own scream answered them, as the terrible wind raced toward him. He held his arms over his head and threw himself at the doorway.
And landed on hard, smooth stone, within a sudden and shocking silence.
Tavi jerked his eyes up and looked around, limbs quivering and shaking, his body frantically signaling his mind that he should get up, should keep
running. Instead, he sat up, a twinge passing through his chilled muscles, and stared around him, panting and mute.
The beauty of the Princeps' Memorium would have taken his breath away, if all the running and screaming hadn't done it already.
Though outside the storm still raged, the lightning still flashed, the sleet and the thunder still hammered the earth, within the Memorium, those sounds came only as something very distant and wholly irrelevant. The earth might shake and the air fairly ignite with fury, but within the Memorium, there was only the slight ripple of water, the crackle of flame, and an almost meditative stillness broken by the sleepy chirp of a bird.
The interior of the dome was made not of marble, but of crystal, the walls of it rising high and smooth to the ceiling twenty feet above. Light, from seven fires that burned without apparent fuel around the outside of the room, rose up through the crystal, bending, refracting, splitting into rainbows that swirled and danced with a slow grace and beauty within the crystal walls. The floor in the center of the dome was covered by a pool of water, perfectly still and as smooth as Amaranth glass. All around the pool grew rich foliage: bushes, grass, flowers, even small trees, arranged as neatly as though kept by a gardener.
Between each of the fires around the walls stood seven silent suits of armor, complete with scarlet capes, the bronze shields and the ivory-handled swords of the Royal Guard. The armor stood mute and empty upon nearly formless figures of dark stone, eternally vigilant, the slits in their helmets focused on their charge.
At the center of the pool rose a block of black basalt. Upon the block lay a pale shape, a statue of the purest white marble in the form of a young man. His eyes were closed, as though sleeping, and he lay with his hands folded upon his breast, the hilt of his sword beneath them. He wore a rich cloak that draped down over one shoulder, and beneath that, the breastplate of a soldier. At his feet lay a pale marble helm, complete with the high crest of the House of Gaius. His hair lay close-cropped to his head. His face was thin-featured, stark, handsome, and his expression peaceful, sleeping. Had the statue been a man of flesh, Tavi would have expected him to rise, don his helmet, and set about his business, but the Princeps Gaius had died long ago, before Tavi was born.
There was a motion at the edge of his vision, but he felt too tired to turn his head. The slave knelt down beside him, dripping and shivering. She touched his shoulder and drew her hand back to consider the soupy mud
clinging to it. "Crows and furies. For a moment, I thought that a gargoyle had gotten in here."
He looked up at her suspiciously, but her eyes were dancing with weary mirth. "I didn't have time to wash up."
"I turned back to find you, but I couldn't see anything-and the wind-manes closed on me. I had to run here."
"That was the idea," Tavi said, his tone apologetic. "I'm sorry, but it looked like you were