Academ's Fury (82 page)

As he ran full tilt down the stairs, Tavi thought to himself that it was probably just as well Gaius had him running up and down the crows-eaten things over and over for the past two years. Because if he had to run down them one more time, he was going to start screaming.

He reached the last several dozen yards of them and caught up to the wax spiders. "Kitai!" he screamed. "Kitai, more Keepers! Look out!"

He heard the sudden clash of breaking glass, then he came down the last of the stairs and into the antechamber.

Kitai had evidently heard Tavi's warning in time, and her response had been to fling herself at the First Lord's liquor cabinet, where she seized bottles of hundred-year-old wine and started flinging them with deadly accuracy at the oncoming wax spiders. By the time Tavi's feet hit the floor, three of them were already lying on their backs, partially crushed by Kitai's missiles. Even as Tavi ran forward, a pair of spiders dropped down onto Max's recumbent form, and three more headed for Maestro Killian.

Kitai leapt to protect Killian, whipped her swords out of her belt, and shouted a challenge at the wax spiders. Tavi rushed over to Max and seized the sword nearby him—Gaius's blade, which Max had been using earlier. One of the spiders ducked down to bite at Max. Tavi swung the sword before he'd really gotten a good grip on it, and he struck mostly with the flat of the blade. The blow at least knocked the spider off Max, and Tavi followed it with a hard kick aimed at the second beast.

"What's happening?" Killian demanded, his voice thready and thin. "Tavi?"

"Wax spiders!" Tavi shouted. "Get into the meditation chamber!"

Kitai drove one of her blades into a spider. The creature convulsed, tearing the blade from her hand as it dashed drunkenly across the room. She swung a kick at another, which bounded backward in a dodge, but the third leapt upon Killian and sank its fangs into the old Maestro's bloodied shoulder.

Killian screamed.

Kitai seized the spider and try to pull it off the old man. It hung on stubbornly, and every time she tugged on the beast it drew another cry of pain from the Maestro.

Tavi took two steps over to Killian and snapped a swift warning. Before he'd gotten the words fully out, Kitai had dropped the spider and rolled to one side. Tavi swept the First Lord's blade at the spider, and the razor-edged steel cut cleanly through the body of the spider, severing it at what passed for the creature's neck. "More bottles!" Tavi snapped aloud, and knelt to help the old man.

Killian thrashed and shoved the Keeper's body aside, and Tavi reached down to jerk the head—still biting—from the old man's shoulder. He had deep puncture wounds, and they were already swollen. Some kind of yellow-green slime oozed out of the punctures. Poison.

Tavi bit his lip, seized the handle of the door to the inner chamber, and shoved it open. Then he grabbed the old Maestro by the collar and hauled him across the floor and into the room. The old man cried out with pain when Tavi moved him, the sound pitiable, undignified, and Tavi had to steel himself against it. He got the Maestro inside the room as more glass began breaking in the antechamber, then dashed back out.

Kitai, back at the liquor cabinet, flung a heavy bottle at one of the spiders near Max, striking it and sending it flying. Another leapt at her, and she seized another bottle and swung it like a club, shattering it and crushing the spider.

"Here!" Tavi barked. "Break them right here, in front of the door!" He grabbed Max's collar and started pulling. His friend weighed twice what Killian did, but Tavi found that he could move him. It was an enormous strain, but Tavi's additional training and conditioning with the Maestro was paying off, and the fear and heat of battle made him stronger yet.

A spider leapt at Max, and Tavi took a clumsy swing at it with the First Lord's blade. To his shock, the spider simply caught the blade in its jaws, then swarmed up it in a blur of spindly legs to Tavi's arm.

It didn't bite him. It only swarmed up over his shoulders and down the other arm, toward Max. Tavi released his friend and flapped his arm around wildly, tossing the spider upward and away from him, precisely in time to see a deep green bottle crash into the beast, taking it down.

"Hurry!" Kitai cried. "I am running out of bottles!"

Tavi seized Max, dragged him through, and screamed, "In front of the door, hurry!"

Glass shattered upon the floor, splattering wine and harder liquors everywhere, as Tavi pulled Max into the inner chamber.

"Aleran!" Kitai shouted.

"Come on, get in here!" Tavi yelled. He ran back to the door.

Kitai flung herself across the antechamber, scooping up her dropped blade on the way. Two more spiders came down the stairs, joining the half dozen or so remaining, and flung themselves through the air toward Kitai.

"Look out!" Tavi screamed.

Again, before he'd completed the first word, Kitai was in motion, ducking to one side—but she slipped on the spilled liquids and fell to one knee.

Both spiders landed upon her and started biting viciously. She let out a wail of terror and rage, tearing at them, but she had no more luck peeling them off her than she had with Killian. She struggled to rise and slipped again.

A third spider hit her.

And a fourth.

They were killing her.

A rage like nothing he had ever felt engulfed Tavi in a sudden cloud. His vision misted over with scarlet, and he felt the fury run like lightning through his limbs. Tavi launched himself forward, and the First Lord's sword was suddenly not too heavy for him to wield effectively. His first strike split one of the spiders in half and knocked another one clear.

He thrust the blade through one of the remaining spiders, then had to kick it off the end of the sword. He killed the other in the same way, grabbed the girl by the wrist, and hauled her into the inner chamber.

The remaining spiders were right behind them, chirruping in those eerie whistles. Tavi whipped around to the doorway, seized a furylamp off the wall, and hurled it down onto the liquor-covered floor in front of the door.

Flame exploded in a rush, engulfing the remaining spiders. They let out shrieking whistles and dashed mindlessly around the room. One of them bounded through the doorway, evidently by blind chance. Tavi knocked it to the floor with his first slash, crippling it, then finished it with a swift thrust, impaling it on Gaius's sword. Then he spun and hurled the dying spider from the blade, at the partly open door to the outer chamber. The spider hit it in a burst of greenish gore, and its weight slammed the door shut.

Tavi dashed to the door, threw the bolt, then ran to Kitai.

She lay there shivering, bleeding from a dozen small wounds. Most of them were swollen and stained with poison, as Killian's was, but others were more conventional injuries, cuts from the broken glass littering the floor.

"Kitai," Tavi said. "Can you hear me?"

She blinked green eyes up at him and nodded, a bare motion. "P-poison," she said.

Tavi nodded, and sudden tears blinded him for a moment. "Yes. I don't know what to do."

"Fight," she said, her voice a bare whisper. "Live." She looked like she might have said something else, but her eyes rolled back, and she went limp except for tiny, random twitches.

A few feet away, Killian had managed to partially sit up, leaning on one elbow. "Tavi?"

"We're all in the meditation chamber, Maestro," Tavi said, biting his lip. "You've been poisoned. So has Kitai." Tavi bit his lip, looking around desperately for something, anything that could help them. "I don't know what to do now."

"The First Lord?" Killian asked.

Tavi checked the cot. "Fine. Breathing. The spiders never got close to him."

Killian shuddered and nodded. "I'm very thirsty. Perhaps the venom. Is there any water?"

Tavi grimaced. "No, Maestro. You really should lie down. Relax. Try to conserve your strength. The guard is sure to be here soon."

The old man shook his head. The pulse in his throat fluttered wildly, and there were veins on his forehead and temple swelling into twitching visibility. "Too late for that, lad. Just too old."

"Don't say that," Tavi said. "You're going to be all right."

"No," he said. "Come closer. Hurts to talk." He moved his hand and beckoned Tavi.

Tavi leaned close to him to listen.

"You must know," he said, "that I have been involved with Kalare. Working with his agents."

Tavi blinked down at Killian. "What?"

"It was meant as a ploy. Wanted them close, where I could see them moving. Feed them false information." He shuddered again, and tears ran from his blind eyes. "There was a price. A terrible price. To prove myself to them." A sob escaped his throat. "I was wrong. I was wrong to do it, Tavi."

"I don't understand," Tavi said.

"You must," Killian hissed. "Spy. Kalare's…" He suddenly fell back to the floor, and his breath started coming faster, as though he'd been running. "H-here," he gasped. "Kalare. His chief assassin. You m—"

Suddenly Killian's blind eyes widened and his body arched up into a bow. His mouth opened, as if he was trying to scream, but no sound came out—nor any breath, either. His face purpled, and his arms worked frantically, clawing at the floor.

"Maestro," Tavi said quietly. His voice broke in the middle of the word. He caught one of Killian's wrinkled hands, and the old man clutched Tavi's fingers with terrified strength. Not long after, his contorted body began to relax, deflating like a leaking leather flask. Tavi held his hand and laid his hand on the Maestro's chest, feeling his frantically beating heart.

It slowed.

And stopped a moment later.

Tavi gently put Killian's hand back down, frustration and pain a storm in his chest. Helpless. He had watched as the old man died, and there was not a bloody thing he could have done to help him.

He turned away and went to Kitai. She lay on her side, half-curled upon herself. Her eyes were closed now, her breath coming in swift rasps. He touched her back, and could feel the frenzied pounding of her heartbeat. Tavi bit his lip. She'd been bitten many more times than the Maestro. She was younger than Killian, and unwounded, but Tavi did not know if it would make any difference in the end.

He took Kitai's hand, and now he did weep. His tears fell to the tiled mosaic floor. Pain stabbed at his heart with every beat. Rage followed close behind it. If only he could perform watercrafting like Aunt Isana. He might be able to help Kitai. Even if he wasn't as powerful as his aunt, he might be able to help her remain alive until help came. If he had even a laughable talent with watercrafting, he could have at least given Killian some water.

But he had none of that.

Tavi had never felt more useless. He'd never felt more powerless. He held her hand and stayed with her. He had promised her that she would not be alone. He would stay with her to the end, regardless of how painful it would be to watch her die. He could, at least, do that.

And then the door to the meditation chamber exploded from its hinges and slammed flat to the stone floor.

Tavi jerked his head up. Had the Guard arrived at last?

The taken Cane stepped onto the fallen door and swept its bloodred gaze around the chamber. The Cane was wounded, blood wetting the fur of its chest and one thigh. It was missing one ear completely, and a slash to its face had opened one side of its muzzle to the bone and claimed one of its eyes.

For all of that, it moved as if it felt no pain at all. Its eye settled on Max. Then on Gaius. It looked back and forth between them for a moment, then turned and stalked forward, toward Max.

Tavi's heart erupted with pure terror, and for a moment he thought he might swoon. The Canim had gotten by Fade and Miles. Which meant that they were probably dead. And it meant that the guard was not closing in to save them.

Tavi was on his own.

Chapter 54