Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(230)

A woman's voice rang out in an imperious tone, then a second swarm of streaking firedrops flashed through the doomed Immortal. This time, the attack left half a dozen red-hot holes in his helmet, and the man fell.

"Hurry!" called Lady Aquitaine 's voice. Aldrick emerged from the stairway first, hard-eyed gaze sweeping the tower's roof. His eyes widened a bit at the sight of Amara, and the Cursor found herself unconsciously tugging down the hem of her tunic.

"Move!" insisted Lady Aquitaine. "Kalarus is about to-"

Then Amara heard a man speak in an impossibly loud, roaring voice that literally shook the stones of the tower beneath her feet.

"No man makes a fool of me in my own house!" boomed the fury-enhanced voice.

Then a woman's voice answered, every bit as loud, nowhere near so melodramatic, and drily amused. "While the rest of us hardly need try. Tell me, Brencis," Lady Placida taunted. "Do you still have that little problem bedding women, the way you did in the Academy?"

Kalarus's answer was a roar of pure rage that shook the tower, raising dust in a choking cloud.

"Move, move!" Lady Aquitaine shouted from below, then Odiana appeared, shoving frantically at Aldrick's back. The big swordsman stumbled onto the roof, while Odiana and Lady Aquitaine hurried frantically up the stairs, diving to either side of the opening.

Less than a second later, a titanic roar shook the tower again, and a column of white-hot fire exploded from the tower below, roaring up from the stones and rising for hundreds of feet into the sky above Kalare. The air turned hot and dry in an instant, and Amara had to throw her arms across her face to shield her eyes from the blinding light of the flame Kalarus had crafted into being.

The fire passed swiftly, though the bloom of heat from so much flame had parched the air and left several of the bars in the domed cage glowing with sullen fire. Amara looked up at Odiana, Aldrick, and Lady Aquitaine. "Bernard?" she cried, hearing her own voice shaking with panic. "Where is he? Bernard?"

"No time!" Odiana spat.

Lady Aquitaine pointed at the cage. "Aldrick."

The big swordsman crossed to the cage, set his feet, and swung his blade in three swift strokes. Sparks rose from the steel bars, and Aldrick stepped back. A beat later, a dozen sections of iron bar fell to the stones with a metallic clatter, their ends glowing with the heat of parting, leaving an entire triangular section of the dome-shaped cage missing.

Aldrick extended his hand politely to Atticus Elania, and said, "This way, lady, if you please."

Lady Aquitaine gave the girl a narrow look, then turned to Odiana, and said, voice sharp, "Fire crystals."

Odiana's hand dipped into the low neckline of her slave's tunic and she tore at the lining, one hand cupped. She caught something as it tumbled from the neckline and passed it to Lady Aquitaine-three small crystals, two scarlet and one black, glittered in the palm of her hand. "Here, Your Grace," Odiana said. "They are ready."

Lady Aquitaine snatched them from Odiana's hand, muttered something under her breath, and cast them down onto the far side of the tower's roof, where they promptly began to billow with smoke-two plumes of brilliant scarlet and one of deepest black, the colors of Aquitaine.

"Wh-what's happening?" Elania asked, her voice shaking.

"The smoke is a signal," Aldrick told the girl, his tone briskly polite. "Our coach should be here in a moment."

"Lady Aquitaine!" Amara snapped. After pausing a deliberate beat, the High Lady turned to Amara, one eyebrow raised. "Yes, Countess?"