Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [39]
Swirling and reforming, it became an elongated body that ended in tatters of mist and nothing. Farns held up his hands, shouting, and Caelan stood rooted, unable to move or even think.
The wind spirit formed a face, one as white as a skull, a face that would haunt Caelan’s nightmares for the rest of his life, a face fanged and narrow like a viper’s. Eyes like red coals suddenly glowed at him. It shrieked again, and his name was somehow entangled in that hideous sound.
Reaching out with long white talons, it rushed at him and engulfed him before he could run.
It was all around him, swirling and intangible. It billowed through his clothes, slid across his skin, burning him with cold. Caelan beat at himself, wild with fear, trying to drive it away.
But how could he fight the wind? The demon had him. He felt its talons rake his shoulder, and he screamed again.
“Caelan!” Old Farns shouted and clutched his arm.
The wind raged around them. Caelan toppled over and felt himself being dragged across the ground. Then he was lifted bodily on the current of wind despite Farns’s desperate attempt to hang onto him.
Fear congealed within Caelan. He realized it was taking him, carrying him off like prey.
Its screams drowned out his own.
He fought and struggled, his flailing arms hitting Farns instead of the wind spirit.
“Help me!” Caelan cried. “Farns, get help—”
At that moment a second wind spirit came boiling into the struggle, whirling like a miniature cyclone. It caught Farns and ripped him away from Caelan. The old man’s screams rose into the night, and Caelan could not see him at all within the white, twisting column.
“No!” he cried. “No! Farns!”
He struggled with all his might, yet the spirit that had him could not be touched. One of Caelan’s flailing hands struck something hard ... a post. Realizing he was near the stables and had rolled into the railing where horses were tied for grooming, Caelan gripped the post with all his might, while the spirit buffeted and clawed him.
“Caaaaeeelaaaannnnn!” the spirit screamed.
It shrieked his name at him again and again, filling his mind, driving his consciousness down, hammering at him.
Sobbing with fear, Caelan hung onto the post, but his strength was failing fast. The wind yanked at him hard enough to break his grip. Dragged bodily, he went bouncing across the cobblestones, and heard something clang beneath him.
It was the warding key, still in his pocket.
Twisting around despite the wind that clawed him, he dug into his pocket and pulled out the key.
It was still cold and lifeless. Dismay rose in him. Why didn’t it activate! Why didn’t its spell work like it was supposed to?
“Caaaaeelaaannnn!”
The wind spirit lifted him off the ground. He found himself flying, his cloak sailing away, his clothes shredding and whipping in the wind, his hair blowing back and forth as though it would be yanked out by the roots. The demon’s face reformed right in front of his, just inches away, close enough for him to inhale the frosty, lethal vapors it breathed out.
He choked, gagging on his own fear. His heart was hammering so fast he thought it would burst in his chest.
The spirit shrieked in triumph. Its eyes glowed red, and it opened its mouth wider and wider, until all Caelan could see was a whirling maelstrom. And he was being sucked straight into it.
Panic filled him. He held up the key with shaking hands and remembered that he’d severed it. Crying out to the gods for mercy, Caelan instinctively used sevaisin, the joining. He poured back all its fire and heat, all its fearsome power.
The key ignited with heat and light, an immediate response that shone across the wind spirit.
The spirit squalled and dropped Caelan.
He hit the ground with a jolting thud and dropped the key. The sound of metal hitting stone cobbles rang out loud and clear, cutting off the wind spirit’s shrieks. It drew back, shredding into mist, then vanishing in a swirl of snow.
The key was shining