Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(124)

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.