Something hit Amara from below, a sudden blow that drove the breath from her body and made her vision shrink to a tunnel of black with a vermilion sky at the far end. She’d been sinking in a shallow dive to rejoin the coach, and her own descent made the blow far more powerful than it might have been on its own.
For a second, she lost her reference to sky and earth completely, but her instincts warned her not to stop moving, and she called desperately to Cirrus for more speed, regardless of the direction in which she flew. She fought her way through the disorientation, past the pain in one thigh and the hollow-gut sensation of having her breath knocked from her, and realized that she was soaring almost straight up, bobbing and weaving drunkenly. Feathery, faint oceans of bloodred cloud surrounded them, a mere translucent haze.
Amara shot a glance over one shoulder and realized her mistake. Though she had been watching the descending pair of Knights, she had forgotten the first attacker, who had to have possessed speed to challenge Amara’s own, to have ascended again so quickly.
Now he pressed hard behind her, a young man with muddy eyes and a determined jaw, now holding one of the short, heavy bows of horn and wood and steel favored by huntsmen in the rolling forests and swamps of the southern cities. He had a short, heavy arrow fitted to the string, the bow half-drawn.
She felt the air around her ripple, and knew that the knight had loosed the first shaft, and that she did not have time to evade it. Amara directed Cirrus to deflect the missile, the air between her shoulder blades suddenly as thick and hard as ice, but it struck with such force that Cirrus was unable to maintain the pace of her flight, and her speed dropped.
Which, she realized with a sudden surge of fear, had been the point of shooting at her in the first place.
The enemy Knight was upon her in an instant, the column of air that propelled him interfering with hers, and Cirrus faltered even more.
And to make things worse, that inexplicable sense of a hostile presence returned, stronger, nearer, more filled with anger and hate.
The enemy Knight shot ahead of her, above her, and his windstream abruptly vanished as he turned, an open leather sack in his hands, and hurled half a pound of rock salt directly into Amara’s face.
Another whistling shriek split the air, this time agonized, and as the salt tore into the fury in a cloud of flickering blue lights, briefly outlining the form her fury took most often, that of a large and graceful destrier whose legs, tail, and mane terminated in continuous billows of mist. The fury reared and bucked in torment, and its pain slammed against Amara’s consciousness, and she suddenly felt as if a thousand glowing embers had crashed into her, the sensation at once insubstantial and hideously real.
With another scream, Cirrus dispersed like a cloud before high winds, fleeing the pain of contact with the salt.
And Amara was alone.
Her windstream vanished.
She fell.
She thrashed her arms and legs in panic, out of control, desperately calling upon her furycraft. She could not reach Cirrus, could not move the air, could not fly.
Above her, the enemy Knight recalled his fury and recovered his air stream, then dived down after her, fitting another arrow to his bow, and she suddenly knew that he did not mean to let her fall to her death.
He was a professional and would take no chances.
He would make sure that she was dead before she ever hit the ground.
Amara fumbled for her knife, a useless gesture, but twisting her hips to reach it sent her into an uncontrolled, tumbling spin, more severe and more terrifying than anything she had felt before.
She saw in flashes, in blurred images.
The ground waxed larger beneath her, all fields and rolling pastures in the ruddy sunlight.
The scarlet sun scowled down at her.
The enemy Knight raised his bow for the killing shot.
Then the misty scarlet haze they fell through moved.
Ground.
Sky.
Sun.
The scarlet haze condensed into dozens of smaller, opaque, scarlet clouds. Ruddy vinelike appendages emerged from the undersides of each smaller cloud, and writhed and whipped through the air with terrifying and purposeful motion.
An eerie shriek like nothing Amara had ever heard assaulted her ears.
A dozen bloody vines shot toward her pursuer.
The enemy Knight loosed his shot. The impact of the bizarre tendrils sent the shaft wide.
The Knight screamed, one long, continuous sound of agony and terror, a young man’s voice that cracked in the middle.
Dark crimson cloudbeasts surrounded him, vines ripping, tearing.
His screams stopped.
Amara’s vision blurred over, the disorientation too great, and she called desperately, uselessly to Cirrus, struggling to move as she would if the fury had been there to guide her. She managed to slow the spinning, but she could do nothing else. The land below rose up, enormous, prosperous-and ready to receive her body and blood.
Cirrus was beyond her call.
She was going to die.
There was nothing she could do about it.
Amara closed her eyes, and pressed her hands against her stomach.
She didn’t have the breath to whisper his name. Bernard.
And then gale winds rose up to surround her, pressing hard against her, slowing her fall. She screamed in frustration and fear at her helplessness and felt herself angling to one side, pulling out of the fall as if it had been an intentional dive.
The land rushed up and Amara came to earth in the furrowed field of a stead-holt. She managed to strike with her feet and tried to fold herself into a controlled roll to spread out her momentum. The rich, fresh earth was soft enough to slow her momentum, and after fifty feet of tumbling she fetched up to a halt at the feet of a steadholt scarecrow.
She lay on her side, dazed, confused, aching from dozens of impacts suffered during the landing, and covered with earth and mud and what might have been a bit of manure.
Lady Aquitaine alighted near her, landing neatly.
She was in time to be sprinkled with the blood of the Knight taken by the cloudbeasts. Amara had beat it to the ground.
Lady Aquitaine stared up in shock, bright beads of blood on one cheekbone and one eyelash. “Countess?” she breathed. “Are you all right?”
The coach descended as well, and Bernard all but kicked the door off its hinges in his hurry to exit and run to Amara. He knelt with her, his expression almost panicked, staring at her for a breath, then examining her for injuries.
“I managed to slow her fall,” Lady Aquitaine said. “But she’s been badly bruised and may have cracked some bones.”
The words sounded pleasant to Amara, though she could not remember what they meant. She felt Bernard’s hand on her forehead and smiled. “ M all right, my lord,” she murmured.
“Here, Count,” Lady Aquitaine said. “Let me help you.”
They fussed over her, and it felt nice.
Fear. Pain. Terror. Too much of it for one day.
Amara just wanted to rest, to sleep. Surely things would be better after she rested.
“No broken bones,” Lady Aquitaine said.
“What happened up there?” Bernard asked, his voice a low growl.
Lady Aquitaine lifted her eyes to the red skies above.
Droplets of blood still fell, tiny beads of red that had once been a human being.
She frowned and murmured, perplexed, “I have no idea.”
Chapter 23
The next morning, Isana woke when Lady Veradis opened the door. The pale young healer’s dark-circled eyes were even more worn than the day before, but she wore the colors of her fathers house in a simple gown. The young woman smiled at Isana and said, “Good morrow, Steadholder.”
“Lady,” Isana said, with a nod. She looked around the room. “Where is Fade?”