“No, Maia! No! Fight it off!”
He grabbed her arm to pull her after him, but the power flamed to life inside her like a thousand candles, burning away the chill and the frost. She was warm again. She was fire itself. She could feel Jon Tayt’s panic bubbling inside him like a kettle, so she snatched away his fear, crushing it like a tinder flame.
Already she could feel the web of the Dochte Mandar. They were responding to her use of the magic and they were rushing at her to tamp and bind her. When they got close enough, they would knit their wills together to forge a cage to block her access to the Medium’s power. Maia smiled deliciously. She turned back to the mountain and raised her arms to the sky, her fingers hooked and quivering with strain. Then she brought her elbows in, pumped her fists down and hunched over.
A rippling shock shook the mountain.
The jolt sent everyone except for her crashing to the ground. There was a sound, a sloughing sound, a breath puffed from a giant’s mouth. And then the snow began to tumble from the mountain, breaking loose in huge boulders of ice and slush. It came as a wave, a massive slide of tumbling snow that barreled down at them.
She and Jon Tayt and Argus started down the mountainside at a run.
Cries of terror sounded from the men below as well as the men above. The rumble of the avalanche was deafening. Her gray skirts were thick with snow and wet and heavy around her legs, but power and strength flooded her, banishing her weariness. She was plowing the way now, and Jon Tayt and the dog were following in her path. Strange—the snow was parting for her. Fissures of ice crackled and split, shearing away and carving a path down the mountain. They were rushing as fast as they could, a monstrous wave of ice coming hard behind them. The soldiers in pursuit from above were trampled by it, buried alive by the crushing weight of snow.
Down below, the horses were going wild with terror and the soldiers fled into the cover of the trees to escape the coming devastation.
Maia struggled to reclaim her mind. She had lost control of it with a single action, and she struggled to wrench it back. She was still aware, still seeing the scene unfold, but it was as if she were tagging along beside herself. Detached, similar to how she’d felt in the Aldermaston’s chamber. She dreaded harming anyone else.
“Too far!” Jon Tayt warned, one hand gripping Argus’s leather collar.
The snow roared behind them. The trees were just ahead and men cowered behind the trunks, some trying desperately to climb the laden branches to get to higher ground. It was hopeless. The avalanche billowed like a storm cloud forming over the sea as it came down. It rose higher and higher until it towered over the trees and over all the specks of rock and men.
The sound as it rushed up behind her was monstrous, more terrible than the Fear Liath. They were almost to the trees when the plume of white death caught up to them. Jon Tayt grabbed for her arm, but he was pulled away from her, snatched up by the icy flood. The massive cloud picked her up too, smothering her with thick flakes of snow. It carried her down into the trees, where the wall of white blanketed the entire woods.
Maia was shrouded in snow, facedown. Everything was white. That dark part of her gloried in her power, in the unstoppable force of destruction she had unleashed against the men who sought to tame her. The weight of the snow over her was comfortable, like a blanket. She was perfectly calm and experienced an unnatural serenity. The quelling of noise was absolute.
She did not know how long she had lain there, still as a corpse, when the crunch of hooves broke the quiet.
Then there was a voice, a guttural voice, calling out. She heard the slump of a body landing in the snow and the noise of approaching boots. Her hand was sticking out of the snow. A gloved hand grasped it and she felt her body being tugged loose of the womb of snow.
“Gottsveld! Ich naida strumpf! Gotts! Gottsveld!”
Maia lifted her head, the snow dropping from her face in clumps. A man stood above her, gripping her hand and arm and pulling her up. He was short, his hair a brownish gray that belied his age, which was perhaps thirty. His eyes were blue. He wore a fur cloak, but she could see a prince’s tunic beneath it, embroidered with gems and golden thread. His boots were high and rimmed with fur. A hunting horn and a sword dangled from his thick belt.
His eyes were serious as he looked down at her and he seemed anxious to help. But then he saw her face, saw that she was a woman, saw that she was their prey. She read his thoughts as splotches of blood staining the snow, clear and distinct and dirty.
He had not realized who he was saving from the avalanche until that moment. He was alone, his comrades helping to rescue the others.