pool of lava, relishing the fierce intensity of the heat, adding it to his own. He stepped forward, through the gap he had made….
He turned to the temple grounds and reached out for the fires, drew them to him, fed off their energy. The power!
Howling, screeching, the cat-things fled from him. As well they should! He laughed as they scampered over themselves in their hurry to escape into the grain fields, their cat-like eyes glistening with an eerie orange glow. Cat-like eyes? He was wrong! There was no need to follow after them; they weren’t the plains folk….
He turned to the temple, to the fishmen….
Energy surged through him, as he strode forward, into the room, rock melting beneath each footstep, lava dripping from his fingertips.
They had their weapons drawn. Some of them charged, but as they advanced, Angus reached out for the threads wrapped around him and fed the energy through them. Whip-like, writhing pulses of flame cascaded outward from him to strike the axes, the fishmen. He sent more and more energy into the maelstrom of tendrils snaking out from him….
The other fishmen tried to run, but he was blocking the entrance, the exit. He stepped forward, bringing the inferno with him….
They scratched at the walls, trying to pull them down, but it was no use. He stepped forward….
They tried climbing the walls. A few tried to run past him, their charred bodies crumbling to ash. He stepped forward….
The power surged through him, struggling to be set free, and he let it go!
Shrieks, smoke, singed flesh….
The intensity of the heat raged through him, from him, but there were no more targets. The fishmen who weren’t dead—if there were any—had fled. The cat-things were long gone. All that was left was him, and—
How do I stop it? he thought suddenly. And then he knew; one knot held the whole spell together, and all he had to do was let it go….
Too much power! he realized as the knot unwound. I can’t control it!
The flames were trying to devour him, and they would, unless—
He drew the energy into him, channeled it to his hands, lifted them above his head, and released it in one massive burst. It roared upward, struck the ceiling and spread outward, melting the rock. Then it erupted skyward, sending up a huge geyser of flame….
As the last of the energy fled from him, he sagged to his knees and gasped. It was over; he had survived the spell. He would live—
Pain.
Sudden, intense pain swarmed around him, flames flickering out from his sleeves, from the hem of his robe. He was on fire!
Flames, Voltari had told him over and over again, are a fickle ally. They will resent your control, and if they ever have a chance to consume you, they will. You have only one defense against such an attack: smother them.
Angus dropped to his knees, gathered his robe close about him, and fought the urge to run.
The robe will protect you, Voltari had said. If you let it.
He screamed….
10
An eternity seemed to pass while Angus counted to twenty. A fierce cocoon of heat enveloped him, and the air around him was crisp with flames. When he finally reached twenty, he lifted the robe from his chest to look down—smoke but no flames.
He took a shallow, scalding breath and ran from the desolation around him and into to the temple grounds. The fires were contained, sputtering; there was no more fuel to feed them. He ran a bit further, his fingers working to untie the sash. By the time he stopped, his robe hung loose about him. By the time he tossed it to the ground, flames were once again beginning to flicker on his smoldering tunic.
He didn’t bother trying to untie the tunic; instead, he reached for his dagger—and quickly let it go, his right hand stinging from the fresh burn. He gripped the ties and wrenched at them until they broke. He pulled off the tunic and threw it away from him.
The belt burned his fingers before he was able to unclasp it, and then his breeches slid down and he stepped out of them. He left the boots on—his feet were the only part of his body that weren’t hot—and quickly surveyed the damage.
Burns on his wrist—bad ones; the skin was charred away.
His neck was ringed with blisters, and they dipped down his chest and back.
There were minor burns spotting his torso where the tunic had burned through.
His legs were bright red, but the burns were superficial.
His palms and fingers had welts on them.
But he was alive.
He stripped down the rest of the way, and then looked around for the first time.
The temple grounds were empty.
No fishmen.
No cat-things.
Small fires flickered wherever there was fuel to feed them.
The rubble where he had landed radiated heat and glowed red where the man-sized wedge had melted through it. Footprints of hardening lava ran from it to the room where the fishmen had been—where he had been. It was bright orange with heat, and there was a huge hole where the ceiling had been.
He stood there, near-naked, alone, amid the carnage of the ruins for what seemed like hours before he heard horses approaching. He didn’t bother turning when they reined in behind him. He simply said through clinched teeth, “Bring my pack.”
Several seconds passed, and then Ortis stood silently beside him, Angus’s pack in his hands.
“Healing salve. On top the scrolls,” he said. “Don’t lose the scrolls. They burn.”
Ortis knelt, set the backpack down, and opened it.
“Where are the fishmen?” Hobart asked from behind him. “We saw the cat-things fleeing as we approached.”
Angus shrugged and immediately regretted it as the skin on his back and shoulders stretched, intensifying the pain.
“Is this it?” Ortis asked, lifting out the clay pot.
“We’ll find out,” Hobart said. “Giorge, Ortis, standard deployment. Secure the area and report in.”
“Yes,” Angus hissed.
Ortis took out a dagger and pried open the lid of the pot, set it aside, and stood up. “How much?” he asked.
Angus held out his fingertips, and when Ortis tipped the pot toward him, he reached in to scoop up a small amount of the ointment. He spread it over his fingers, palms, and wrist before rubbing it lightly into the burn. Where it touched his skin, the pain subsided but didn’t disappear completely.”
“How did you get burned?” Ortis asked.
Angus didn’t answer. He needed his concentration and energy to keep from crying out in pain, to keep from flinching away from Ortis’s rough hands as they pushed the healing salve over the blistered skin, the missing skin…. Still, despite using too much pressure, the pain subsided, and by the time Ortis had finished, it was manageable.
“That should do it,” Ortis said. “But I can’t be sure in this light. Maybe we should move closer to the fire.”
“No,” Angus said, shuddering. “I’ve had enough of fire for the time being.”
“What happened?” Ortis asked.
Angus sighed. “I made a mistake,” he said. “I’ve been wearing those—” he pointed at the smoldering tunic and breeches “—under my robes. When my spell ended, the tunic caught on fire.”
“It must have been some spell,” Ortis said. “If there are any dwarves about topside, they know we’re here. So does everything in this valley.”
Angus half-smiled, reached down to pick up his robes. “They weren’t flares,” he said, then realized he couldn’t explain what they were. He had been intoxicated; there had been far more energy in the strands he had used than there should have been, and it had nearly overwhelmed him.
“We weren’t sure about that,” Ortis said. “Hobart said the first one was a call for help, but Giorge didn’t think so. He had seen your magic up close and thought that was all it was. We were still discussing it when we saw the second one.” He shook his head. “If we weren’t surrounded by mountain peaks, it would have been visible for hundred
s of miles. That convinced us, and we rode at a gallop to get here.”
Angus shook his head. Although he hadn’t intended it to be a cry for help, it couldn’t have worked out any better for him. He slipped into the robe and tied the sash. It began to itch, but he didn’t care; itching was much better than burning. “What have they found?” he asked.
“Not much,” Ortis said. “That room is too hot to enter, so they haven’t been able to get very far. They haven’t found any other entry points into the temple, either.”
“Any more fishmen?”
“We can’t tell,” Ortis said. “If there are any they’ll be deeper in the ruins, and we can’t get to them right now. It will take quite a while for it to cool down enough to risk investigating it.”
Angus nodded. “You and Hobart speak their language, don’t you?”
“Hobart understands it better than I do. All of Tyr’s soldiers learn enough words to deal with them, but commanders have to learn the language. He was slated to be a commander until his affliction.”
Angus nodded and said, “If there are more of them, tell them to surrender or the lava man will come back.”
Ortis frowned and asked, “What’s the lava man?”
Angus half-smiled. “I am. At least, that’s what I call the spell I cast. It merges the magic within me with the strands of flame around me to encase me in flame. But it isn’t supposed to reach high enough temperatures to melt stone.” He shrugged. “The strands here are incredibly powerful.”
Ortis’s orange eyes grew somewhat distant for a moment, and then he said, “I’ve told Hobart and Giorge. If they see any fishmen, we’ll give them a chance to surrender. But don’t count