14
Night fell, and as they flew into the dark skies, the cold and the wind became a blessing in disguise – they had an excuse not to talk. It felt awkward now, to clasp Sylva round her midriff. He hated it. Hated it so much that he almost missed the smoke.
A wisp of black, far in the distance, appeared in the overlay of the scrying stone. Was that the shadowy outline of a mountain beneath? He spoke for the first time in several hours.
‘There,’ he said, pointing.
He knew Sylva couldn’t see it, but his stomach lurched as Lysander corrected their course. Minutes passed as they flew on, staring into the darkness. Already, the first tinge of light above signalled the approach of dawn. They were cutting it close.
‘My god,’ Fletcher whispered, hope flooding through him like a drug. ‘I think we did it.’
The wisp had turned into a column of black smoke, widening as it rose into a mushroom of grey that was lost in the ether’s skies. Beneath it was a single peak, jutting from the ground like a vast pyramid, layered with a topping of green forest and dark volcanic soil. The orange glow from the zenith became visible as they neared, the molten lava illuminating an enormous caldera. The lava lake was as large as Vocans’ atrium, and the bowl of earth in which it was centred was twice that size again.
As Lysander swooped down towards the crater’s edge, the heat hit them like a wave. The hairs on Fletcher’s forearms shrivelled as they landed and, then, boom: Fletcher turned his head away as a fresh blast radiated from the volcano, beating his face with its force.
There was a thick band of steaming soil around the lip that their boots could barely stand, strewn with boulders that sported surfaces like candlewax. The red-orange pool of lava bubbled and popped, flinging droplets of molten rock that sizzled on the earth. The ground they stood on leaned in an incline towards the deadly lake, and Fletcher’s mind reeled with the irrational fear that they were being sucked in towards the incandescent centre.
‘How could anything grow in a place like this?’ Sylva said, raising her voice so it could be heard over the roiling roar of the lava.
‘We need to spread out,’ Fletcher said, summoning Ignatius. He knew it was a risk, after what had happened last time the little demon had been near lava.
Still, the Salamander was made for this search, able to approach the hottest areas that they could not reach. He guessed, if it came to it, he could yank the demon out again using a kinetic lasso, as he had done the last time.
Lysander’s claws could not take the soil’s temperature, nor could Athena’s, so the two demons settled on the rim for a well-deserved respite. The Griffin was dead on his feet, the gruelling nights of hard flying and intermittent sleep leaving him sprawled on the cooler soil, his eyes closed with exhaustion.
Ignatius ran ahead of Fletcher as he and Sylva parted ways. They were forced to shelter behind boulders as they rounded the edges of the caldera, darting from rock to rock to protect themselves from the radiating heat as they hunted for the elusive flowers. Nothing could be seen but raw, fuming earth.
Despair began to set in as Fletcher slowly surveyed the volcano’s caldera. Nothing. Just dirt, and rock, and fire. They were going to die in this world, choking on the poisonous air as their paralysed lungs lay stricken in their chests.
Sylva must have yelled, but the tumult of the lava meant he realised it only when he glanced up and saw her waving from the other side of the lava pool. It took him five minutes to work his way around; hissing with pain each time he braved the space between boulders to shelter behind.
His heart dropped when he saw what Sylva had found, the image blurred as his eyes teared up from the oppressive dryness. A patch of broken stalks were all she had discovered, growing in the lee of a large boulder. The buds had been removed, torn roughly from their seats. A fragment of yellow petal remained here and there, torn and insubstantial, but enough to confirm these were the plants they were looking for.
‘I tried healing them,’ Sylva yelled, her face stricken. ‘It didn’t work.’
‘There might be another patch nearby,’ Fletcher replied, looking around in desperation. Ignatius was approaching them from the other side, having searched the area he and Sylva had not. The demon yapped, and Fletcher could sense the demon’s frustration. Nothing there either.
He fell to his knees and scrunched his eyes tight. They had been so close.
‘I thought Jeffrey’s journal was going to save us,’ Sylva growled, her voice barely discernible over the roar of the volcano. ‘All it’s done is waste the little time we had left.’
She picked at the remaining fragments of yellow, arranging them in her palm until they were in the shape of one intact petal. Then she brought them to her mouth and chewed slowly.
‘This is Euryale all right,’ she said, shaking her head with disappointment. ‘Five hours’ worth.’
Her low voice was barely audible over the volcano’s noise, but Fletcher wasn’t listening. Jeffrey … his name had sparked a memory. In a perverse way, the traitor had helped them get this far. Now, he would unwittingly aid them again, with the spell he’d taught them on their first day in the orc jungles. The growth spell.
‘Wait.’ Fletcher raised his soil-stained hand and etched in the air.
A symbol gradually formed, shaped like an oval leaf, complete with the webbing of veins through the line bisecting the centre. Fletcher fixed it in place, then aimed it at the patch of withered stalks.
‘I hope this works,’ he prayed, filling his body with mana.
A stream of green-tinged light flowed from his hand, making a beeline for the broken stalks. His mana drained from him faster than ever before, but the effect was nearly instantaneous. The stalks erupted into bloom: fat, waxy petals unfurling and twisting into a conch-like bud.
‘Fletcher, you genius!’ Sylva screamed, wrapping him in a fierce hug. For a moment she forgot herself and clung to him, and it was only Fletcher’s hesitantly returned embrace that made her pull away.
Embarrassed, she avoided his eyes and plucked a bud from a stem. Detached from its base, the petals separated into a pile on her hand. There was a dozen of them. Looking at the twenty-odd flowers, Fletcher calculated that they had bought another—
‘Ten days,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘That’s not enough.’
‘No, Fletcher, don’t you get it?’ Sylva said, grinning from ear to ear.
She had already removed most of the flowers, stuffing them into her pockets. Fletcher joined in, mystified.
She lifted her own fingers as the last of the petals were poured into Fletcher’s satchel. This time, she etched the growth spell in the air herself, pointing it at the plants they had just deflowered. Understanding dawned on Fletcher as another flash of green made them bloom once more.
‘Twenty days.’ She winked, bending to harvest them again.
Fletcher stuffed a few more bunches into his pocket. Then he froze … something was wrong.
‘Ignatius.’
He spun, only to see the mischievous Salamander haring towards the lava, wading through puddles on the borders of the main pool. Fletcher leaped to his feet and sprinted after him, ignoring the blast of heat that enveloped his body as he left the shelter of the boulder.
‘Stop!’ he yelled, his voice hoarse with the dry air.
He whipped out a kinetic lasso, but the Salamander was already too far away. Ignatius hurled himself aside, easily evading the translucent line of shimmering mana. Fletcher skidded to his knees. This was the second time one of his demons had disobeyed him. They didn’t have time for this.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, grasping his mind’s connection with Ignatius and ordering him to stop. But the demon’s consciousness was as slippery as an eel, evading his mental grasp.
‘Fletcher, what are you doing?’ Sylva shouted.
Ignatius was in the very centre of the lava pit now – Fletcher could see the demon’s burgundy head bobbing along, like an otter swimming in a lake. He’d never be able to reach that small, distant target with a kinetic lasso.
Worse still, he couldn’t move any closer – it was too hot, his feet were burning, even through the leather, and he could barely keep his eyes open as the dry heat crashed over him.
Perhaps the shield spell, to protect himself from the heat? Then, to his surprise, the head disappeared. Ignatius had dived.
There was nothing Fletcher could do for him now. All he could do was wait.
He staggered to his feet and turned back, the oppressive temperature so powerful that he felt as if his eyebrows were being burned from his face. Cursing, he ran back to the shelter of the boulder and collapsed in its shadow.
‘Goddamn mischievous little imp,’ he growled. ‘He’s gone for a swim in the lava again.’
Sylva was stuffing petals back into her pack. Strangely, she had dug out each plant, unearthing the stems and clods of soil with their root networks exposed. She caught his expression and shrugged.
‘I’m out of mana, but we’ve got thirty more days in the ether now,’ she said. Then she pointed at the plants. ‘If we take these with us, maybe we can regrow them later.’
‘Won’t they die without the volcano’s heat?’ Fletcher asked. ‘Maybe I should use up my mana to regrow them again too; Ignatius is just going to drain it all anyway.’
But he never heard Sylva’s answer.
Fear. Sudden and all-encompassing, filling his body. Athena had seen something, and the pink overlay of his crystal came into stark focus as he sought the source. He froze.
Wyverns. They were heading straight for the volcano, already so close that Fletcher could make out the colourful riders on their backs and the long tails that lashed behind them. Leading the pack was the pale form of the white orc, astride the smaller Ahool.
‘Sylva, they’ve found us,’ Fletcher said, frantically scooping the plants and petals into their satchel. ‘We have to leave, now!’
It was all so obvious. The stripped flowers – few demons would brave the heat and height of the volcano to eat them. It had been the orcs. They had come here to harvest and lie in wait, knowing the fugitives would need them eventually.
There was a thud as Lysander landed beside them, hunching in the shelter of the boulder. His plumage was singed and smoking – he had flown directly over the centre of the volcano.
Athena leaped down from his back, and Fletcher swiftly infused her. Her added weight would do them little good. Weight …
‘Get on,’ Sylva yelled, mounting Lysander with the satchel slung over her shoulder. ‘We’ll come back for Ignatius later.’
But Fletcher couldn’t. On a good day, Lysander was faster than the Wyverns, maybe even the Ahool and the dozens of lesser demons in the Wyvern’s entourage too. But with their combined weights on his back, in his current, exhausted state? Not a chance.
‘We’ll never make it,’ Fletcher said, the words like stones in his mouth. ‘Not the two of us. He’s dead on his feet.’
Fletcher saw the understanding in Sylva’s eyes, but she shook her head, as if to dislodge the truth of his words.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said, and Fletcher could see a tear cutting a trail through her soot-stained face. She glared at him defiantly.
‘I can’t leave Ignatius,’ Fletcher said, almost gently.
At that moment he knew. Perhaps he had always known, deep down. Khan would never personally lead his entire air force on a dangerous mission into the ether for a mere five fugitives. Or, at least, not for this long, nor this far.
He was here for a prophecy. For the Salamander that had been seen in the battle in the pyramid, the same one that was engraved on the walls of their most sacred place. He was here for Ignatius.
The Wyverns would arrive any minute. He slapped Lysander on the rump and the Griffin leaped into the air like a startled horse.
‘Look after my mother,’ he yelled.
‘I’ll come back for you,’ Sylva shouted, her words half lost in the air.
Then they were gone.