Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera 3)

The oncoming Knights Aeris hesitated for a moment as she rushed them, and she exploited their mistake by pouring on all the speed at her command. Amara was arguably the fastest flier in Alera, and the advancing Knights were unprepared for the sheer velocity of her charge. She was on the foremost Knight before the man had fairly drawn his sword and stabilized his windstream to support a blow. Amara swept past the man and struck, both hands on the hilt of her blade.

She had aimed for his neck, but he ducked at the last moment and her sword struck the side of his helmet. The sturdy blade shattered under the sheer force of the blow, metal shards tumbling in the scarlet light. Amara felt an instant of painful, tingling sensation in her hands, which then immediately went numb. Her windstream fluttered dangerously, sending her into a lateral tumble, but she gritted her teeth and recovered her balance in time to see the doomed enemy Knight plummeting toward the earth, knocked lethally senseless by the blow.

The other two Knights saw their comrade's plight and rolled into a dive, their furies driving them down faster than the unconscious Knight could fall-but it would be a near thing, both to catch him and pull out of the dive in time. The coach would have valuable minutes to flee, to place more distance between it and the observers, so that Lady Aquitaines veil could hide it from sight once more.

Amara pressed her numb-tingling hands against her sides, keeping an eye on the diving Knights, and banked around to glide back to the coach. From here, she could see through the crafting Lady Aquitaine's furies held around the coach, though she could not make out many details. It was like staring at a distant object through the wavering lines of heat arising from one of Alera's causeways in high summer. If she'd been much farther away, she might not have seen the coach at all.

Amara shook her head. Though she could, if she had to, veil herself in a similar fashion, her own abilities would be pushed to their utmost to do so. Lady Aquitaine's veil was twenty times the volume, at least, and she did it while also muffling the gale that held them all aloft, as well as propelling herself. She might not have Amara's training or experience in aerial conflict, but it was a potent reminder of how capable-and dangerous-the woman truly was.

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.