Thunder, wind, and rain pounded the tent and the ground made it impossible to hear anything clearly.
The fabric of the tent billowed and writhed in the intermittent light, and the poles threatened to pull out of the ground at any moment. Wind caught the tent-flap and ripped it open, sending in a torrent of rain. Quickly, she seized some of the non-conjured pieces of her wardrobe, pulled them on, and ran outside.
She dashed into the worst storm she had experienced; the worst she had ever heard of. Rain drenched her to the skin the moment she left the tent-and then the tent-poles did pull loose, and tent and contents went flying out into the darkness. The tent itself caught on one of the stones, and wrapped around it; she couldn't see what happened to the rest. Hail struck her painfully, and she shielded her head with her hands, as stones fell all about her, seeming to jump up from the grass in the uncertain light. Lightning lashed down nearby again, striking one of the conjured stone walls. Thunder stuck her with a physical shock, just as something hit her from behind, sending her down face-first into the soaked grass.
There was a man clinging to her knees; he crawled up beside her to shout at her. "Stay down!" Hazard bellowed into her ear. "Lightning hits whatever is above the ground! Two have already been killed!" Lighting and thunder punctuated his words; she saw no reason to argue with him.
"What's happening? Where's Faro?" she shouted back, over the howling of the wind. "Where is Ware? How long has this been going on?"
"It just started! It caught us all off-guard, and everything is completely confused! Ware is trancing the animals-the ones he caught before they spooked and ran," Hazard yelled. "Faro is trying to find all the men still alive and bring them to one place so you can conjure a shelter over us!"
That was the best idea she had heard yet. As hailstones continued to pelt them both painfully, she followed Hazard in a crawl across the grass that led them to the huge stone that had held the cook-fire. The fire was out; the very logs gone, washed or blown away. Now it held a huddle of miserable humans, their eyes wide, their hair and clothing plastered to their skins. She could not count them; the lightning made counting uncertain. There were not as many as there should be; that was all she knew.
"This only started a few moments ago," Hazard shouted, as she took her place among them. "One moment everything was fine, then this storm blew in out of nowhere! The tents went flying, lightning hit Lisle and Stef and killed them where they stood, the livestock panicked-Ware went after the mules and his horse, and Faro has been collecting us here-half of us were already asleep, and the first thing we knew was that we were being half-drowned and bombarded with hailstones."
Well, that explained why no one had tried to awaken her; they hadn't had time. Their experience matched hers.
Right now what they all needed most was a shelter that would stand against the wind and rain. And the lightning. She closed her eyes for a moment, gathered her concentration, and began to conjure.
She was afraid to construct anything too tall; it would be a target for lightning. What they needed was fairly basic, a shelter that wouldn't blow away-
Wait a moment; she remembered something. Lightning went to metal; that was why they made fighters take off their armor in a lightning-storm. If she could create a tall metal pole out there -maybe she could get the lightning to hit something besides people.
Quickly she switched her focus, concentrating on the tallest stone in the ring, and creating a thick, heavy rod of metal projecting up from the top of it. She had to work quickly, for she was not certain what the effect on her would be if lightning stuck her creation while she was still conjuring it. So what she made was quite crude, but it did not need to be anything but functional. And it needed to be able to withstand multiple lightning-strikes, for she had the feeling that after this storm was over she would discover it more than half melted away by the power of those bolts.
It was one of the fastest bits of conjuration she had ever performed. And she finished just in time, for no sooner had she pulled her concentration away from her creation, than it became the target for every lightning-bolt for furlongs around. Now they truly did have their very own source of light, as lightning lashed the top of the stone and thunder became a continuous roar. So many bolts struck the stone-slab that it crackled with energy. Their hair stood on end despite being plastered down by the rain, and little blue lightning-snakes and sulfur-yellow balls ran down the stone and into the ground. The air was sharp with the scent of ozone. The men stared in fascination as she turned her attention to getting them some shelter.
Something basic, she told herself. Four-no, eight supports. Heavy stone would be best, something the wind could not pull up or push over. She built eight square, squat pillars of stone, wider at the bottom than the top, and just a little taller than the tallest of the men. Then the roof-a slab of heavy wood, as thick as her waist. Nothing to attract an errant bolt of lightning that was not obeying the laws of nature.
She built a wall only on the side the wind was coming from-another heavy slab of wood. She was afraid to try to put up any more walls; it would be too easy for the wind to topple them. She had no way of bracing them, other than by their own weight.
Shortly after she completed that wall, Faro came dashing in at a bent-over run and cursing under his breath, followed by Horn who was cursing quite audibly; from the other side of the compound Ware ran in under the shelter as well, with the lead-ropes of his stallion and three of the mules in his hands. The animals rolled their eyes in terror every time a bolt struck nearby, and they were pathetically eager to get in out of the rain. Xylina noticed one thing with a sinking heart. None of the three were the two riding-beasts; she and Faro would either have to ride in the wagons or walk unless the two riding-mules turned up. The heavy odor of wet equine filled her nose, but the mules and the horse were warm, and unlike a fire, they were not going to blow out. The wet humans and animals crowded together into the minimal shelter, and Xylina reached for Ware's arm, to bring him near enough for her to ask him for advice-
This storm could not be natural. Was this why she had the headache? Was that a harbinger of the storm? She remembered how her mother used to get headaches before storms. She had a dozen questions to ask Ware, but she never touched him, for at that moment, one of the men screamed, a sound so shrill with terror that it carried even over the pounding of the thunder.
All eyes went to him, blanched and wild-eyed, then followed where he pointed.
What they saw was more terrifying than any of the monsters they had thus far encountered. As if the storm, not content with blasting them with lightning, had decided to grow tentacles to seize them, a dozen groping, black funnels eeled their way across the grassland towards them, moving impossibly against the wind. They towered into the lightning-lit sky, hundreds of cubits tall, larger than anything, living or not, that Xylina could remember. As they drew closer, Xylina made out the shapes of entire trees flying weightlessly around the funnels, trees that had been torn out by the roots and sucked up into the sky.
Even as Xylina gasped, frozen in her place with fear and uncertainty, one of the funnels moved straight towards them, as if it had eyes and could see them cowering there.
Utter panic ensued. The horse and the mules broke away from Ware's hold and dashed madly out into the storm. Several of the men cried out in inarticulate horror and ran out as mindlessly as the animals. Xylina could only stand and stare as the funnel moved closer.