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The Queen spun inhat could only have been the aid of windcrafting, and a clawed foot lashed out at Kitai's face as the two of theht unawares by the attack, and intercepted it with her left ar, she was no match for the vord Queen's sheer power The kick broke bones and laid open flesh in a short spray of blood Kitai cried out and lost her balance as she ca the tent down The vord Queen took a single, contemptuous step on the tent's cross-pole before it could fall and continued without slackening her pace

She met Tavi's eyes for an instant, and her expression unsettled him He had rarely seen any emotion at all displayed by a vord queen, and he had encountered several - but this Queen was not wearing a blank rin of excitement and joy, an expression seen only in the ames and birthday celebrations

Bloody crows The creature was having fun

Tavi let out a cry of rage and flew faster, blade held ready for a cavalry-style passing stroke, but Crassus was surging steadily past hi Tavi's raer at windcrafting He had shifted his blade to his left hand, and was arrowing toward the fleeing Queen's right side The young Tribune clearly intended to occupy the vord's attention and defenses while Tavi took the killing stroke on her left Tavi altered his flight path slightly, the edges of Crassus's violent windstrea his cloak to shreds He braced hi attack

Before they reached her, the Queen spun between one step and the next, a neat pirouette, and one pale ar cloud of crystals into the air

Crassus never had a chance The salt crystals struck hi his wind furies to useless shreds He fell with a short, frustrated cry into the sea of white tents beneath the under the bone-shattering force of his speed

Tavi rolled over and over to his own left, barely avoiding the spray of salt crystals, nearly losing control of his flight A desperate thrust of wind sent hi tents, and the harsh, h of the vord Queen ave birth to a sphere of fire that wiped away half a dozen legionares as they ca out of their tent, and with each step she castmen as easily as a child crushed ants Screaony followed in her wake

Tavi stabilized his flight and shook his head furiously He could not afford to let his emotions control him The Queen was deadly, and deadly rational She wasn't sioal in mind, a destination

Tavi didn't need to look ahead to knoas co - and neither, he realized, did the vord Queen The layout of a Legion camp was standard from one end of the Realm to another, established by centuries of practice, and he realized with a sudden chill that he had given the eneion rote

She was heading for the healer's tents

With a snarl, Tavi dropped his concentration on everything but his windstreaained a fifty-, sixty-, seventy-yard lead, then had to cole he could, on his side in the air, his feet leading The instant his boots hit the earth, he called upon it to shape itself to the line of hishis feet out fro to it that he broke his fool neck

His boots tore up a furrow of turf as wide as his foot and six inches deep, sending a spray of soil, pebbles, and spring grass flying up in front of hi him to a stop in the entrance to the main healer's tent He whirled, called fire back into his sword, and then the vord Queen slah the large support post just inside the entrance

Tavi slapped one speed-blurred, dark-nailed hand aside as the vord Queen swept it at his throat, dropped his sword, and seized her by the hair with his other hand, rolling as they both hit the ground and putting her in front as theirtub, sla his own heavily armored body into her slender form

Water exploded up out of the tub as their iainst the other The Queen let out a huff of expelled air The pain he'd been holding off with o suddenly so of the crafting that was slowing the toxin coursing fro to her feet, never stopping hermore feline than human Fire-spheres charred half a dozen healers and tounded survivors of Riva to so arb and a silver discipline collar was the next target But Foss threw hi her a powerful shove that sent her tu head over heels away from him - and then he was enveloped in another blast that left little more than blackened bones and estured again - but Tavi suddenly recognized the young woman Foss had died to protect as Dorotea, who, in another life, had been the High Lady of Antillus

Collared by her own allies, co as a healer in the Free Aleran since its inception Her personal ambition had been a cancer that the collar had neatly aood in her months as a slave than she ever had as a Citizen A watercrafter skilled beyond anything that a Legion could hope for, she had doubtless been called in to treat some difficult or delicate harm suffered by one of the survivors

Her lips spread in a snarl as another sphere of fire bloomed practically upon her, and the earth itself heaved and bucked into a dome that shielded her fro tubs abruptly hurtling toward the vord Queen like two enormous, transparent stones The blasts of water sround

Dorotea cried out in sudden agony and clutched at the silver collar at her throat, her body contorting

Tavi ground his teeth and forced steel into his li unih Lady had pushed the vord into an open, unoccupied space to one side of the tent Tavi lifted his sword and sent a thunderbolt of seething fire, whiter than the light of the sun, writhing into the for toward her