44
The Flames
The first glimmers of the flames lit the gaps between trees more than a hundred yards ahead of us. By then the smoke was already choking me, making it even harder to keep up with Reichis, until finally it was only his fear of fire that slowed him down enough for me to catch up. The flames formed a wall that seemed to stretch forever before curving round to form a circle enclosing the glade. Reichis raced back and forth along it, desperately looking for an opening. ‘They’ve ringed the whole area with fire,’ he chittered frantically. ‘My people are trapped!’
‘How did he even find them?’ I asked. ‘I thought –’
The squirrel cat growled. ‘My stupid mother. She told the tribe to gather here.’ He turned and glared at me, the flames giving his eyes a hateful glow. ‘She wanted them ready to help you, to protect you and that damned Argosi –’
More screams cut us off – this time, though, the voices were those of Ra’meth’s men.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, trying to get closer, but the heat was too much for me.
‘My people are killing yours,’ he said, still running along the wall of flames. ‘As it should be. As it always should have been.’
I watched in horror as he got too close and his own fur caught fire almost instantly. ‘Stop!’ I shouted. Without thinking, I threw myself over him again, wrapping my entire body around him. I felt the rest of my shirt burning and had to keep rolling to put out the flames. Reichis was less than grateful.
‘Get off me!’ he snarled, crawling out from under me. ‘I have to go help them!’
I reached over to grab him by the scruff of his neck. ‘You’ll be dead before you get near them.’
He bit me until I let him go. ‘Then get us in there! You’re supposed to be a damned mage. Use that –’ he waved his paws in the air – ‘spell thing of yours.’
There were probably a dozen different spells that could bring down a fire wall, either by removing the original spell or cooling the air around it. None of them were ones I could perform of course.
I started coughing again, struggling for air. ‘Wait …’ Air was the problem. Air was feeding the fire. That gave me two possibilities – one of which didn’t risk blowing my hands off, so I decided to try that one first.
I stepped back from the wall. Breath spells manipulate the movement of air, and one spell in particular can draw air towards the caster. I ran through the somatic forms a couple of times – both hands extending outward, then making the fingers touch the palm in a smooth sequence, alternating the right hand with the left, moving like the air itself. The movement was simple enough, but it had to be performed with perfect fluidity.
‘What are you doing?’ Reichis asked.
‘Just a minute.’ The second part was the visualisation. Concentrating on air is harder than you’d expect. You have to specifically avoid thinking about the things air moves, such as leaves or dust, and focus on the air itself. Once I had that, all that was left was the verbalisation. This one was tricky though – it had to be voiced entirely on an inhalation. Even harder, you had to keep repeating it throughout the entire spell.
‘An-ahl-ha-teht,’ I whispered.
Nothing.
I kept going. Osia’phest always used to say that with magic you had to focus on performance, not outcome. ‘An-ahl-ha-teht … an-ahl-ha-teht …’
‘Keep it up,’ Reichis urged. ‘Something’s happening.’
I continued the spell and watched as the wall began to bend, the six-foot flames losing their strength, slowly starving for oxygen.
‘It’s working, keep going!’ Reichis said.
‘An-ahl-ha—’
My voice was cut off as the smoke filled my lungs. My stomach seized and I crouched over, coughing uncontrollably. ‘Can’t …’ I said. ‘Can’t breathe through the smoke.’ I looked up to see the flames had regained their full strength.
‘Then throw me!’ Reichis said.
I tried to stand up straight and clear my vision. ‘Throw you?’
‘The treetops are on fire so I can’t climb up them to glide down. Throw me over the flames!’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Even if I could, you’d be alone in there!’
‘My people are alone, right now, dying!’
‘Give me a second,’ I said, still trying to calm my breathing.
My second plan was the eminently worse option, but still better than what Reichis proposed. I walked back about ten feet from the wall of flames and took a pinch of powder from each of my pockets. ‘Come here,’ I told Reichis, as I tried to figure out the timing that was going to be required for this to work.
‘What are you doing?’
I nodded towards the flames. ‘The second I start running, you run with me. At my speed. Don’t get ahead of me and don’t fall behind. Understand?’
I looked at the heavy pinches of red and black powders held between my fingers and took a last clean breath.
Reichis clued in to what I had planned. ‘Are you out of your—’
‘Just do it,’ I said, and started running, heading straight for the wall of fire. The instant my right foot hit the ground, I tossed the powders into the air two feet in front of me. As my second step landed and the first spark ignited between the grains of powder, I formed the somatic shape with my hands and spoke the word. ‘Carath!’
The blast shook the ground in front of us, at the edge of the wall of flames, just as Reichis and I leaped in the air. For one brief instant, the explosion drove back the fire and we passed through unscathed. We landed awkwardly on the other side and I found myself rolling head over heels until I finally landed hard on my back. The squirrel cat looked down at me. ‘Not bad. Now get up and help me kill that mage.’
I staggered to my feet to witness the wreckage of burnt trees all around us. Pockets of fire rose from the underbrush as though a mad priest had lit dozens of braziers around a fallen temple. Bodies littered the ground, human and squirrel cat. A bloody fight had been fought here between tooth and blade, between claw and spell. Only one figure still stood, his arms outstretched as if he were dancing alone among the flames. Ra’meth.
I didn’t wait for him to notice me. I didn’t make threats or demands. I didn’t even think twice. Instead I dug deep into my pockets and tossed enough powder into the air to shatter stone. With the word and the gesture, I unleashed the explosion straight at his heart. The blast cracked the night sky and the resulting flames engulfed him. A moment later they faded away as if they’d been nothing more than a faint spark of a worn-out piece of flint.
Ra’meth turned to me. ‘Hello, Kellen.’