The Will of the Empress - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,168

be permitted to leave the empire."

Briar glared up at Ishabal. "You think I'm scared of empires?" he yelled. "Here's what I think of empires!"

He drew on his shakkan, flinging that power at the wooden platform on which Isha and her companions stood. The mages who stood with Isha were there to guard against attacks on her. They were prepared for a mage to turn fire or wind against the platform. They were not prepared for the wooden boards to shift, and groan, and sprout branches. Whole new trees suddenly exploded from dead wood. The mages dropped to the ground, bruising themselves on knobby roots that dug into the earth around them. Sandry and Daja as well as Briar felt the shakkan's glee at creating so many new lives.

"Maul us all you like," cried Isha, staggering to her feet. "You will get not one whit closer to home! This is your home, and you will bend the knee to your new mistress!"

Why not name her? Daja wanted to know, exasperated. Everyone knows who has commanded her to do this — why be so festering delicate with Berenene's name? The rude jokes told in the forges of the empire aren't so polite about keeping her name out of the conversation!

Sandry wiped sweat from her cheeks with a handkerchief. Normally I'd say it's because she wants to keep Berenene's name out of it if this fails, but it's not like we're succeeding. She nibbled a lip in thought. Unless it might still fail? What else can we do?

Daja grabbed Sandry. "The thread! Our circle!"

Sandry reached into her neck pouch and produced the thread circle once more. "I don't know if it will work without Tris," she protested. "It's got some of our strength, but this is a nasty barrier."

I suppose it is, Tris said through their magic. But while I may be a day's ride from you, I still can hold my part.

Silver fire bloomed in the vague shape of a hand in the air. It wrapped itself around Tris's lump in the thread circle. Sandry grabbed hers. Daja did the same and smacked Briar on the back of the head. He whirled, then saw what they held.

"Keep growing," he muttered under his breath to the trees. Then he grabbed the knot that stood for him.

Sandry anchored herself in the thread with a feeling of stepping into her own skin. This was also her first leader thread, in part, the one on which she first spun wool. Over the years, she'd placed a great deal of strength in this symbol of the union between them. Now it was also a symbol of what had happened on this trip. At last they were one again. She still had them, and they still had her.

That never changed, Briar told her before he took the shakkan's remaining magic and dove into a forest of roots underground, spreading out through the land to draw on some of the power of its plants and trees. He drew it from the algae on Lake Glaise, the forests on the mountains around it, and the vast plain of grass on which they stood. Brambles and pear trees fed him, as did wildflowers and ancient pines. With their green fire running through his veins he felt better than he had since the battles in Gyongxe. He blazed with it.

Daja sank into veins of metal ore below. She followed some to the mountains and others down through the dense part of the earth, until she found the immense hot soup in which they were born. The lava's heat bubbled through her, driving up to her body, seeking a way to break free into the world. She laughed at the strength of molten stone and metal, feeling it inhabit her skin, making her indifferent to the petty fire marshalled by Ishabal.

Tris swept up into the rapid winds high above the mountains, where birds couldn't even fly. She dove down to draw up the power in the movement of lava and the pressure of water channeled through cracks in the ground. Despite her physical distance from her sisters and brother, she saw them in her magical vision, their images carried to her by the warm air that raced from Daja's smoking body. They turned, the three of them, with Tris's insubstantial form just behind, and walked into the barrier.

Magic inside it, built up over centuries, flew at them. Daja and Tris burned it away. Briar and Sandry wove nets of green and thread magic