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STORM WARNINGS

Keladry of Mindelan lay with the coainst the blackness, light uely rat- or insectlikedevices were iants’ bones, chains, pulleys, dagger-fingers and -toes, and a long, whiplike tail The seven-foot-tall devices stood ht revealed what lay at their feet: a pile of dead children

With the devices and the bodies visible, the light spread to find the man who seemed to be the master of the creations To Keladry of Mindelan, known as Kel, he was the Nothing Man He was al-nosed and narrow- eyes and dull brown hair His dark robe was marked with stains and burns; his hair was unkeernail, or scratched a pimple, or shifted from foot to foot

Once that ie—devices, bodies,and cursed the Chamber of the Ordeal The Chamber had shown Kel this vision, or variations of it, after her forhthood As far as Kel knew, no one else had been given any visions of people to be found once a squire was knighted As everyone she knew understood it, the Ordeal was straightforward enough The Chah their fears If they did this without hts, and that was the end of the matter

Kel was different Three or four times a week, the Chamber sent her this dream It was a reminder of the task it had set her After her Ordeal, before the Cha devices, the Nothing Man, and the dead children It had demanded that Kel stop it all

Kel guessed that the Nothing Man would be in Scanra, to the north, since the killing devices had appeared during Scanran raids on Tortall last summer Trapped in the capital by a hard winter, with travel to the border nearly i tension She had to ride north as soon as the in her search for the Nothing Man Everyrisk that the king would issue orders toKel, to defend the northern border The ot those orders, she would be trapped She had vowed to defend the real soldiers, not hunting for a e whose location was unknown

“Maybe I’ll get lucky Maybe I’ll ride out one day and find there’s a line of killing devices froru herself out from under her covers Kel never threw off her blankets With a nuht s care, she heard muffled cheeps of protest “Sorry,” she told her costones of her floor

She made her way across her dark room and opened the shutters on one of her s Before her lay a courtyard and a stable where the ’s Own kept their horses The torches that lit the courtyard were nearly out The pearly radiance that came to the eastern sky in the hour before dawn fell over snow, stable, and the edges of the palace wall beyond

The scant light showed a big girl of eighteen, broad-shouldered and solid-waisted, with straight mouse-brown hair cut short below her earlobes and across her forehead She had a drea lashes, odd in contrast to the many fine scars on her hands and the htshirt Her nose was still unbroken and delicate after eight years of palace co, her lips full and quicker to s body

Motion in the shadows at the base of the courtyard wall caught her eye Kel gasped as a winged creature waddled out into the open courtyard, as ungainly on its feet as a vulture The flickering torchlight caught and sparked along the edges of s, flexible and lis and above the rimy, and in this case, male

The Stor sharp steel teeth His face was lue nose, small eyes, and a thin upper lip with a full lower one He had the taunting smile of someone born impudent “Startle you, did I?” he inquired

Kel thanked the gods that the cold protected her sensitive nose, banishing s loved battle-fields, where they tore corpses to pieces, urinated on the, then rolled in theodor that est stomach rebel Her teachers had explained that the purpose of Storht, knohat s arrived So far they hadn’t done ht battles and killed each other, Stor But this was the first tirounds

Kel glared at hi! Shoo!”

“Is that any way to greet a future co thin brown brows “You people are getting ready to stage an entertain a lot of us this year”

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“Not if I can help it,” Kel retorted Gri her toe on the trunk at the foot of her bed She cursed and limped over to the racks where she kept her weapons When she found her bow and a quiver of arrows, she strung the bow and hopped back to herShe placed the quiver on herseat and put an arrow on the string Outside, the courtyard was eht under Kel’s

Scowling, Kel looked up and around There he was, perched on the peak of the stable roof, a steel-dressed portent of war Kel raised her bow She wouldn’t actually kill the creature, just o away

He looked down at her, cackled, and took to the air, spiraling out of Kel’s range He flipped his tail at her three times in a mockery of a wave, then sailed away over the palace wall

“I hate those things,” gruht of anyone’s dead body providing Storave her the shudders And she knew chances were good that shetoy very soon

There was no point in going back to sleep now Instead, Kel cleaned up, dressed, and took down her glaive It was her favorite weapon, a wooden staff five feet long, filled in iron, cored with lead, and capped by eighteen inches of curved, razor-sharp steel Banishing all thoughts, opening herself to es, and spins of the most complicated combat pattern dance she knew

Her dog, Jurumbled and crawled out of bed He leaped out of one of the open s to e their own complaints, fluttered outside to visit their kinfolk around the palace

Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak, Kel’s forht-master and present taskmaster, was not in his study when Kel arrived there after breakfast Another ht, and sat doith chalk and slate to calculate the nu’s Own’s supplies up to the Scanran border She was nearly done when Lord Raoul came in, a sheaf of papers in one ham-sized fist

“We’re in it for certain,” he told Kel He was a big man, heavily muscled from years of service with the Own His ruddy face was lit with snapping black eyes and topped with black curls Like Kel, he was dressed for comfort in tunic, shirt, breeches, and boots in shades of maroon, brown, and crea the desk where she worked “You know, I thank the gods every day that Daine is on our side,” he inforet anies, it’s now”

Kel nodded Unlike other generations, hers did not have to wait for Scanran information until the e, shared a ical bond with animals, one that endured even when she was not with theeese had carried tidings south while the land slept through winter snows, allowing Tortall to prepare for the latest moves in Scanra

“Important news, I take it?” Kel asked

“I’ down,” Raoul said “The Scanrans have a new king”