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Tavi found hi to close cuts and soothe burns, even as he continued to fly on The air around him seemed more water than not, in any case, and it was easier than he had thought it would be He wondered idly, as he fleard, pursuing the distant form of the Queen, if he could somehoatercraft the portion of his brain that had advised this idiotic course of action Clearly, it was defective

And then a great blackness cah to land with a great shock of i the blinding wind and sleet Though he kneas full ht

There was a hole gouged in the ground nearby, where the Queen had been flung to earth She had clith scoured the land nearby Lightning raked at the ground, each bolt lasting several seconds, carving great, long trenches into the soil When the strike would fade, the land would be alht

And in that darkness, Tavi saw a flash of light

He struggled toward it, noting signs of passage on the ground being swiftly obliterated by the rain The s, then, were fresh Only the Queen could haveaside dozens of wind to the use of a vortex that he set spinning about the blade of his sword, substituting windcrafting for the usual firecrafting that would ignite his blade Once that was done, a single stroke was enough to send the deadly furies wailing away fro ankle deep into the cold, ht of furylaround in front of hireat doloith a soft golden light, and above it, writ into the old, was the seven-pointed star of the First Lord of Alera

His father's grave, the Princeps' Meh outside the stored behind hi very distant and wholly irrelevant The vast scream of the storm was broken here to near silence Here in the doht ripple of water, the crackle of flame, and the sleepy chirp of a bird

The interior of the dome was h and srandeur of the place had instilled in Tavi a sense of awe Now, he saw it differently He knew the scale and difficulty of furycraft it had taken to raise this place froround, and his aas based not upon the beauty or richness of the structure but upon the elegance of the crafting that had created it

Light came from the seven fires that burned without apparent fuel around the outside of the room, simulated flalow of any furylah the crystal, bending, refracting, splitting into rainbows that swirled and danced with a slow grace and beauty within the crystal walls - crystal that would have long since cracked and fractured had it been wrought with anything less than perfection of furycraft

The floor in the center of the dome was covered by a pool of water, perfectly still and as se, bushes, grass, flowers, even sardener - though Tavi hadn't seen the place since he was fifteen The woodcrafting needed to establish such a self-tending garden was astonishing Gaius Sextus, it sees than Tavi did, despite the differences in their backgrounds

Between each of the fires around the walls stood seven silent suits of armor, complete with scarlet capes, the traditional-style bronze shields, and the ivory-handled swords of Septiulares The arures of dark stone, eternally vigilant, the slits in their hel weapons - Tavi and Ao

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, and Tavi stared at the representation of his father Septi, 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 was the worked breastplate of a soion officer rather than the standard-issue lorica Tavi had on

Slouched at the base of his father'sfrom more wounds than Tavi could count, and the water around her, instead of being crystalline, was stained the dark green of a living pond She slu, that side of her once-beautiful face slashed to ribbons by the wind black, focused upon Tavi The vord Queen rose, her sword in her hand