Page 121 (1/1)

"Where?" Kitai snapped, taking several rapid steps froround beneath her

Tavi focused his thoughts upon the earth beneath hiht to the command tent had been far swifter, and he felt the fore toward hi, he stopped, took a quick pair of steps, and with the power of the earth itself behind his arht down into the soil beneath hih he could tell only froh the steel to his hand, like the wriggling h the line and pole to the hand of an angler He withdrew, the ain only inches from the first blow

The earth beneath him suddenly collapsed doard in a circle perhaps ten feet across One round, and the next it was falling fro claw, thrust up from the loose soil Tavi tried not to take note of the fact that the hand was a wo the fact of what he had just done to the back of his mind

"Aleran!" cried Kitai's voice Her anxious face appeared at the top of the sudden pit Tavi found hian

The ene in the wake of the first suddenly stu hi in the open air at the bottom of the pit Tavi stared at hinition He hadn't seen thenamed Renzo, since co hed two of him An extreh to be a friend of Kalarus Brencis Minoris, which doubtless explained the steel slaver's collar about hissurrender before he'd had use of any furycrafting at all, and the act still shaave Renzo a chance to react He flicked a hand, and the earth surged up around Tavi, as if to bury him alive

Tavi recovered his balance and ith fro to s to Renzo's co power of those furies, and, with an instant of razor-sharp focus, cut cleanly through Renzo's hastily raised blade, the steel collar about the huge man's neck - and the neck beneath it Renzo's body dropped like a slaughtered hog's, still quivering

Time slowed

There was little blood The blazing sword in Tavi's hand had cauterized the cuts even as he made them The courtyard bully's broad hands twitched and spasmed His head had fallen facedown, and Tavi could see hisfor a few seconds, as if to spit out the dirt upon his tongue That didn't last long A heartbeat, two, then there was stillness

Renzo had been an appallingly petty evil from the last days of Tavi's childhood

Tavi felt sick at how easy it had been to hts and focus were, for a few seconds, entirely shattered, and so, when the vord Queen exploded from the earth behind Renzo's corpse, she nearly killed hi

Tavi seized upon a windcrafting, weak though it was down in the sinkhole, to speed his perceptions Even with the crafting, there was time for no littering black eyes, a tattered old dress - and then there was a flicker of motion as a shadowy blade darted toward his heart

Tavi had enough ti, it's not made ofto rely upon when he first trained with a weapon, and they hadn't needed the advance warning His own burning blade caught the dark weapon in the vord Queen's hand, defeated the Queen's disengage, then suddenly slipped and wobbled as the resistance of the other weapon vanished The dark blade curled in her hand like a striking serpent and drove into his belly It pierced his arh it were made of soft cloth instead of battle steel, and he felt hiainst the layers of a stone shelf lining the pit wall behind hi with a terrible intensity, but he responded with the instant, deadly reflexes of a h to eth of his arh his body was trapped against the rough wall, ih to avoid having her head taken fro sword left a wound in her scalp and seared away aout a metallic shriek, and siht and furious sound bright enough to hurt his eyes - odd, thatdidn't seem to offer any protection fro Queen a silhouette and left her profile burned onto his eyes in bright color as the rest of the world went dark

Every instinct in hiet into action, move, move, move But he didn't When the Queen had leapt fro a sword Whether he could feel the pain or not, given the rock at his back it was almost certain that there was a preternaturally sharp weapon still thrust into his belly, sunk into the stone behind him like a nail into wood If he simply tore his way free, he could all but cut hi sword uncoht-dazzled eyes, and confirreen-black h the plates of his lorica He touched a hand to it, lightly, and found that it was double-edged and as sharp as a scalpel The lightest touch had opened flesh with a horrible, delicate ease It looked like vord chitin and, for all that he knew, it was When the blood fro silver shocks of sensation through his body, though hisit as pain

Bloody crows The thing was alive

Outside the pit, the vord Queen shrieked again, the sound a brassy challenge Explosions of fire thundered outside People screaetting enough breath It couldn't be the lungs thelanced at his fingers and saw thereen It s down his breathing