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.”