Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(97)

‘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.’





45


The Voice of Fire


The next thing that happened was that Reichis went berserk. The sight of his fellow squirrel cats dead all around the clearing tipped his crazy-but-controlled ferocity into a heedless rage that swept over him so completely that I swear I nearly got caught up in it too.

‘Reichis …’ I warned, seeing the muscles bunching in his haunches as he prepared to attack. ‘Wait. We need to—’

Whatever he growled at me then was too primal. It didn’t have any human equivalent so I couldn’t understand it. I tried to grab at him but he was too fast, kicking up dirt and brush behind him as he raced towards Ra’meth. There was a moment when I thought he might have a chance – his speed and rage propelled him at his enemy like a spell. If he just got his teeth into the mage’s neck before he could raise his arms, he could – but no. Even as the squirrel cat leaped into the air, Ra’meth turned and uttered a single word. Reichis froze, his body swaying in the air as if he were hanging from a rope. ‘They really are fierce little vermin, aren’t they?’ Ra’meth flicked his fingers and the squirrel cat flew through the air before his body crashed into a tree. I heard the sounds of bones snapping.

I should have run. I should have taken off and hidden and tried to come up with some plan to survive this. I simply couldn’t. The sound of Reichis’s broken growls of pain echoed over and over in my ears, deafening me to the sound of the flames, of the trees creaking as they fell, of everything but his pain and my heart beating faster and faster and faster. Finally another sound broke through – a growl that came from my own lips. I dug my hands into my pockets and pulled out more powders than I’d used the other times I’d cast the carath spell. I flung them into the air and made the somatic forms and spoke the word. The explosion lit up the night sky, surrounding Ra’meth in a perfect sphere of fire. It raged on for a second, then another, but finally it faded away. The mage was unharmed. ‘Fascinating,’ he said, taking a step towards me. ‘Do it again.’