“It was a strain upon all of Alera, young Gaius,” she replied, her voice quiet. “You upset natural order on a scale that is rarely seen—in concert with the eruptions of two fire-mountains, to boot. You and your people will feel the aftereffects of these few days for centuries to come.”

“I sincerely hope so,” Tavi said.

The great fury glanced at him and smiled, briefly. “Ah, there it is. I sometimes think that if one cut open the scions of the House of Gaius, they would find well-chilled pragmatism flowing in their veins instead of blood.”

“I have provided abundant evidence to the contrary, today, I believe.”

“Have you?” she replied.

“And again,” he said, “you have avoided answering my question.”

Her smile widened, briefly. “Have I?”

“Infuriating habit,” he said. “My grandfather must have learned it from you.”

“He picked that one up very quickly,” she acknowledged. “Sextus was strongly devoted to the idea of being as mysterious as possible when it came to his capabilities of furycraft. He would have looked at his staff and shrugged when they wondered how such a thing as an unthinkably late freeze and a steady breeze for several thousand miles’ worth of travel would be possible.”

“When in fact, anyone with a High Lord’s talent could manage it,” Tavi murmured. “If he had, as his partner, someone such as you, who could direct his power to precisely when and where it needed to be to have the greatest effect, however widely dispersed those places might be.”

“I suspect the scions of Gaius did not wish the notion to become widespread,” she said, “for fear that all of those folk with a High Lord’s talent would immediately set about creating such partners of their own.”

“Could such a thing be done?” Tavi asked, curiously.

“Almost certainly—to one degree or another. It is also nearly certain that they would not be able to create a… shall we say, a balanced being.”

“Someone like you,” Tavi mused, “only mad?”

“I suspect the results of such an effort would make the current definitions of madness somewhat obsolete.”

Tavi shivered. “The potential for conflict on that scale… It’s… unimaginable.”

“The House of Gaius is many things,” Alera said. “But never stupid.”

Tavi sighed and settled back down on the cot again. He rubbed wearily at his eyes. “Where is the main body of the vord now?”

“Closing on the mouth of the Calderon Valley,” Alera replied.

“Aquitaine is still trying to draw them all there?”

“It would appear so.”

“Playing the anvil to our hammer,” Tavi mused. “With all those civilians at stake, behind his lines. I’m not sure if he’s brilliant or a bloody fool.”

“His foolishness has been limited to a fairly narrow spectrum, all in all,” Alera replied. “His tactical ability in the field has been sound. If he can force the vord Queen to oversee the assault on Calderon, he effectively pins her in place for you. My suspicion is that he expects you to lead a team of Citizens to find and neutralize the Queen.”

“Of course. That’s how he would do it,” Tavi mused. “But he doesn’t know about Varg and his warriors.”

“Indeed not. And I think it possible that the vord do not, either. The path ahead of us is empty of anything but token enemy forces.”

Tavi grunted. “The Queen is laying a trap of her own. Expecting me to march in with a pair of Legions and drive straight toward her, find her, and send all our finest furycrafters after her. So she’ll let me through in order to know where the strike is coming from. And she’ll have something in mind to counter it. Once she’s destroyed me, she’ll be able to finish Calderon at her leisure.”

Alera opened her mouth to speak, paused to consider, then simply nodded.

Tavi grunted. “Have you been able to locate her any more precisely?”

Alera shook her head. “The croach remains… foreign, to me.”

“Impenetrable?” Tavi asked.

She mused over the question for a moment. “Imagine the way your skin feels when aphrodin paste is applied to it.”

Tavi grunted. It was often used upon cattle, minor injuries, and in certain cases of the healer’s craft. “It goes numb. You can’t feel it at all.”

“Just so,” Alera said. “I can guide you to within a mile or so, if she holds position for any length of time. But where the vord have claimed the territory… I am too numbed to be of use in any task so fine and focused.”

“I’ll find her,” Tavi said quietly.

“I expect that you will,” Alera said.

He looked over at her. “Can I defeat her?”

Alera considered the question for a time, her face looking more sunken. “It… seems doubtful.”

Tavi frowned. “She’s that strong?”

“And growing stronger by the day, young Gaius. In a way, every vord is nothing but an extension of her body, her mind, and her will. So is the croach.”

Tavi assembled several thoughts into a logical order. “As the croach grows, so does her furycraft.”

Alera inclined her head. “What I lose, she gains. When she fought the campaign against Sextus last year, she was already his equal in raw power. By now, she is stronger still. Considerably so. When one adds that to her native strength, speed, resilience, and intelligence, she becomes a formidable opponent. More so than anyone in your kind’s history has seen, much less defeated.”

Tavi inhaled deeply and blew his breath out very slowly. “And you cannot help me.”

“I was created to advise and to support, young Gaius,” Alera said. “Even when I was at the height of my strength, I could not have helped you in that way. I can and will help you find her. I can and will support your efforts to close to grips with her, as I already have since you landed at Antillus. But that is the limit of my power. You will prevail, or not, on your own.”

Tavi was quiet for several moments before he said, “I’ve been doing that my whole life. This is no different.”

Alera lifted her chin, a small smile on her strained mouth. “He used to talk about you, you know.”

Tavi frowned. “You mean… my grandfather?”

“Yes. When you were at the Academy. After. He would watch over you, though you never knew it. Often, he would look in on you while you slept. Making sure that you were safe seemed to give him… a kind of satisfaction I never saw in him, otherwise.”

Tavi frowned quietly up at the ceiling of the tent. Alera said nothing and let him think. She had, literally, inhuman patience. If it took him a week to consider his answer, she would be there waiting when he was ready. It was a portion of her personality that was both reassuring and annoying. One simply couldn’t employ stalling tactics against her.

“I… We didn’t speak to one another very often,” Tavi said.

“No,” she replied.

“I never understood… if all that time he knew who I was, then why didn’t he ever… ever want to talk to me? Reach out?” Tavi shook his head. “He must have been lonely, too.”

“Horribly,” Alera said. “Though he never would have acknowledged such a thing openly, of course. He was, perhaps, the most isolated Aleran I have ever known.”

“Then why?” Tavi asked.

Alera turned to one side, frowning thoughtfully. “I know your family well, young Gaius. But I cannot say that I knew his thoughts.”

Tavi squinted at her and thought he had picked up on what she was hinting at. “If you were to guess?”

She smiled at him in approval. “Sextus had the gift of many of your bloodline, a kind of instinctive foreknowledge. You yourself have demonstrated it, now and then.”

“I had rather assumed that was you,” Tavi said.

She smiled whimsically. “Mmmm. I’ve already noted tonight how much your folk do without being aware of it. Since I am created by them, perhaps it follows that I am just as blindly unperceptive. I suppose it is possible that I am somehow unaware of knowledge I am inadvertently sending you.”