Tavi turned his horse, desperate to flee, but everything moved with nightmarish deliberation. Before he could give the beast its head, the clouds above them lit up with an inferno of scarlet lightning. Tavi looked up in time to see an enormous wheel of streaming lightning suddenly condense into a single, white-hot point overhead.

Tavi tried to kick the horse into a run, but he was moving too slowly, and he could not tear his eyes from the gathering stroke of power-the same power that had massacred the First Aleran’s officers, none of whom were as helpless as Tavi.

The point of fire suddenly expanded into a blinding white light and an avalanche of furious noise, and Tavi opened his mouth and screamed in terror and disbelief. He never heard it.