The Eighth Warden Bk. 03 Ch. 19-20

Sarette nodded. "It's a good idea. I'll stick around for as long as you need me. I can wait to visit home until we're sure it's safe."

"Thank you," Corec said. "I'll admit, that's a relief. You're the only other trained soldier besides me."

"What about Boktar?"

"I haven't talked to him about it yet. I imagine he'll go wherever Ellerie goes. She's offered to help us out, but I don't know if that would be from Four Roads or from Matagor."

"What is Four Roads like?" Sarette asked. "I've never lived anywhere other than Snow Crown. Even when I was in the High Guard, the patrols rotated back to the city regularly."

"It's like any other town in the free lands, I suppose," he said. "Mostly farming with a bit of ranching and mining. It's a lot smaller than Snow Crown, about thirty thousand people. They're a bit like the plainsmen we ran into west of the Storm Heights—very independent. They've got to be. There's no government larger than a town council, so each town has to take care of itself."

"And that's where you want to live?" Sarette asked doubtfully.

He chuckled. "I'm not used to big cities. I grew up in Tarwen Village, which is tiny. Even Fort Hightower, where I trained with the knights, is smaller than Four Roads."

"Still, it sounds like an odd place. Lonely, to not be able to depend on your neighbors."

"It's not that bad. The people in the free lands mostly come from Larso and Tyrsall, both of which have their own problems. And some are from Matagor, I suppose. Matagor actually built some of the major trade roads in the area, but when the dragon took over their keep and destroyed the toll bridge, they abandoned it all. I guess they decided it wasn't worth building new roads that bypassed the dragon's territory."

There was a commotion ahead of them and the wagons slowed to a stop. "Whoa!" Nedley said, stopping his string of horses.

After checking to make sure there weren't any threats on the horizon, Sarette and Corec approached the front of the column, where everyone was gathering around Boktar.

"Josip found a river just up ahead of us," the dwarven man said, pointing to a streak of green growth to the east. The sound of rushing water could just barely be heard in the distance. "And I don't like the look of those clouds. Is that a thunderstorm? It seems a little early in the year for that."

Dark, heavy clouds were approaching from the northeast. Sarette took a deep breath. There was the scent of an oncoming storm in the air. The barrens were the complete opposite of the Storm Heights, but something about them reminded her of home.

"Yes, it's thunder," she said. She didn't need to check her weather sense. The air just felt right.

Boktar grunted. "Elle, how do you feel about stopping early? We've got water here, and I don't see any reason to spend the next few hours getting wet just to get a few more miles in."

"Stopping sounds good to me," Ellerie replied.

"All right, let's get the camp set up."

"Wait!" Shavala said unexpectedly. The elven woman rarely spoke up when the whole group was together. "Aren't we too close to the river?"

"What do you mean?" Boktar asked.

With Hildra's warning about flooding, the group had been careful to stay a hundred feet away from any creeks or riverbeds except when they were watering the animals or filling their own waterskins.

"Look at the patterns in the dirt." There was a series of wavy, graduated lines in the earth, running parallel to the river. "We need to be higher, or farther away."

Boktar frowned. "You mean flooding? It can't reach this far, can it?"

"The land is very flat," Shavala said. "Once the water rises over the banks, it can come far. The storm is heavy and the soil is packed too hard to absorb the moisture."

Corec looked to the northwest. "The ground is higher over that way."

"Let's hurry," Boktar said.

Everyone rushed to get the animals and wagons farther from the river. The spot Corec had found turned out to be a gently sloping hill with a pile of boulders stacked up on its northern side. It was over two hundred yards from the river, and the wavy lines in the dirt had gradually faded as they'd approached it.

Sarette helped Corec check the wagons to make sure the waxed canvas coverings were in place, then she stood facing the clouds. As the others assembled the camp behind her, she embraced her weather sense, letting the feel of the storm flood into her body. It was approaching fast, but before it could reach them, there was a sudden loud roar from the north. A rushing wave of water crashed over the land, flooding the banks of the river.

Everyone paused what they were doing to stare, stunned into silence. The new edge of the river couldn't have been more than fifty feet away. It may have only been an inch or two deep there, but the flooding had seemed to come out of nowhere, happening faster than they'd imagined.

A flash of lightning and a booming crash of thunder reminded everyone of the storm.

"Oh, bloody hell," Boktar exclaimed. "There are no trees or high ground for the lightning to hit. Nedley, help me get this armor off! Yours too!"

Corec quickly shed the brigandine armor he'd purchased in Aencyr, then added his sword to the pile.

Sarette left her own armor on. Lightning didn't worry her.

"Will the wagons be a problem?" Ellerie asked. "They're tall—will they attract lightning?"

Boktar frowned, still unstrapping his breastplate. "I'm not sure. Most of the metal in them is lower down. I'm more worried about the horses, but those boulders are tall. Maybe that'll be enough to protect everything."

Another lightning strike was coming. Sarette didn't have time to warn her friends about what she was going to do. She hefted her staff-spear and ran toward the storm. Just as the blast was about to hit, she leapt up, meeting it in midair. The power filled her and charged her staff, blue and white light crackling up and down the length of the weapon.

She landed fifty feet away, splashing into the shallow flooding water. It was the farthest she'd ever jumped. The last time she'd tried actually using the abilities the storm magic gave her had been shortly after Corec had cast the binding spell on her, but she'd had months of practice since then. She could feel the power surging through her.

She held her spear up, preparing to pull any other nearby lightning strikes her way rather than risk them hitting her friends. When she faced the camp, she found Shavala standing between her and the rest of the group, staring up at the sky. Instead of pushing the lightning bolts away from the others, like she had that day in the South Valley ruins, the elven woman was trying to redistribute the charge in the air and stop the lightning completely. It was an impossible task for a storm this large, but perhaps she'd be able to protect the camp.

Sarette could have helped her, reinforcing what Shavala was attempting, but she thought it best to keep doing what she was doing. The charge was building up again in the sky above her, and she called out to it, providing an opposing charge through her spear. All of her hair stood up on end for a split second before lightning struck again with a searing crack, arcing into her weapon, then her body.

It was more power than she'd ever held before. Could she do it? She'd spent four years learning the theoretical fundamentals of stormrunning, but she'd never been able to put that knowledge to use before. There was no Runner's Summit here, no mountain to leap from, but that was merely an aid, not a requirement. She made a running start through the shallow water, extending her opposing charge from the blade of her spear to cover her entire body.

As soon as she reached dry land, she jumped. This time, she didn't land. She flew into the air just as the rain reached her, the storm welcoming her as part of it.

The power she was holding drained far more quickly than she was expecting, but just as she thought it would run out, another lightning bolt struck her. The additional rush was enough to push her up to the lowest level of cloud cover.

There, the swirling chaos of the storm grew more intense, her weather sense almost overwhelmed with information. There was a mix of different charges swirling throughout the clouds, fighting against each other and the ground. Sarette hovered in the air, extending her arms out wide as she directed the two opposing charges to either side of her body.

Now, rather than wait for lightning to strike, she could force it to form early and in smaller bolts, creating a balance as she simultaneously drained the power of the storm and then redistributed that energy back into it. Flashes of light danced between the clouds, the lightning no longer being directed toward the ground.

Sarette laughed in exhilaration. After all this time, she was finally flying a storm.

She attempted one of the swooping maneuvers Vartus had taught her, ducking below cloud level and then back up again, but had to close her eyes when a wave of dizziness set in. Once she recovered, she tried it again, this time with more success.

She grinned wildly as she flew, carefully avoiding the area just over the camp where Shavala had been realigning the charges. It wouldn't do to end up in a spot where she couldn't replenish her power.

The lightning was focused at the front edge of the storm. Sarette followed it until it was past the camp. She was tempted to fly the storm farther but she was already feeling the warning signs of drain shock. It was time to land. Vartus and the other stormrunners had been insistent about that. If a stormrunner lost consciousness while flying, there was nothing that could be done about it but to retrieve whatever remained of their body from wherever it had fallen to the ground.

As Sarette dropped below the cloud cover, and the power she held began draining out of her once more, she had a sudden worrying thought. All of her training had been on the theory only, because she wasn't strong enough to practice any of it. How was she going to land?