I’m not sure Relos Var was that powerful.
“Stop Ty!” I yelled at Teraeth, although I was running too. “I need her help!”
Teraeth didn’t run faster than me, but he could use one of his illusions to catch her attention.
“Scamp, we need to go!” she shouted.
“We can’t outrun it,” I said, “but maybe we can redirect it.” I pulled out the saymisso and ran the bow over the strings. “The mountain’s mostly basalt, right?” I looked at Teraeth for confirmation, but he just shrugged. Evidently, he hadn’t paid attention.
“Basalt and obsidian,” Tyentso volunteered. “The cloud itself will be pumice.”
“I don’t need to match the composition perfectly, just enough to cause a landslide.” I frantically thought back over my knowledge of Ynisthana geography. The best place to divert the flow would be at the caves, which had the advantage of having already been hollowed out (assuming they weren’t filling up with fresh magma). The trick was keeping all of us alive for long enough to make sure I could cast the spell.
As if to emphasize that point, the Stone of Shackles went hot around my neck. I looked up in time see a giant glowing orb of rock batted to the side by Tyentso.
“What can I do?” Teraeth asked, looking as nervous and uncertain as I’d ever seen him, but then his illusions were useless against the foe we fought, and he likewise faced nothing he could poison or stab.
“Guide us,” I said. “I’ll be playing. Ty will be keeping us both alive. Neither of us will be watching our step. We need to be just close enough to see the caves and not an inch closer.”
That cloud seemed like it was just seconds from swallowing all of us, but I knew it wasn’t a short trek up that mountain, and the scale of the damn thing made judging distance difficult.
I muttered a prayer out loud to Taja, because I needed all the luck she could give me.
Three times on the way, Teraeth either pulled us to the side or Tyentso used her magic to save us from lava fountains or fast, lethal projectiles. I didn’t have a target yet. This wasn’t what I’d spent years practicing, but the theory seemed sound. If I could collapse the cliff edge away from the temple, the cloud would follow that easier path, and we would reach safety.
If I miscalculated, I would either damn us to an earlier death or bury the temple in burning ash, making escape impossible.
Finally, Teraeth pulled us to a halt. Ahead of us was the mountain and the giant cliff face that housed both the caves used as shelter by the Black Brotherhood and, farther to the side, the large temple built into the mountain. The volcanic avalanche would reach that temple, and just after would reach us, in a matter of seconds.
The spell I cast at that moment was considerably less subtle than the first. I had no time to waste on a stealthy ritual that would go unnoticed until it was too late. While I played I hoped Doc was still using Chainbreaker to cloud the Old Man’s mind, because if the dragon felt me cast this same spell a second time from somewhere else on the island, the whole con would be for nothing. He’d know I was still alive.
I bowed the strings violently, seeking the necessary disharmony and vibration so they could be amplified. All I was doing, you understand, was encouraging rock to do what it wants to do anyway. Rock wants to crumble. Stone wants to turn back into sand. You might think the ground would fight this, but you’d be wrong.
Everything falls.
“Damn,” Teraeth said next to me, while Tyentso said nothing as she concentrated on keeping dangerous gases out of our breathing air and boiling rocks away from our skin.
The sound of the volcanic eruption was so loud we couldn’t hear the avalanche, but a giant section of the cliff face detached, sheared away, and collapsed to the ground, rolling downward into the jungle. The glowing cloud acted like a river that had just found a new course made available; it jogged to the right, following the new bed as it wreaked its path of destruction.
We ran for the temple.
68: THE LION’S DEN
(Talon’s story)
Thurvishar D’Lorus raised an eyebrow as Kihrin D’Mon entered his private curtained booth at the Culling Fields.
“You didn’t have to humiliate him, you know,” Kihrin said as he sat at the table. “I’m glad you didn’t kill him, but you didn’t have to make him look like a fool.”
The corner of Thurvishar’s mouth quirked as he regarded Kihrin with affection. “But he is a fool. He is absolutely a fool. He seems like a nice man, don’t mistake me. He seems loyal and brave and true to his friends. However, only a fool challenges someone like me to duel in the Arena and doesn’t come prepared for the possibility that I will melt his spine.” He picked up the bottle of Raenena wine he’d had waiting for him on ice and poured himself a glass of pale blue liquid. “Be grateful I’m a nice man myself, and only delivered an object lesson.”
“That’s right. You like object lessons, don’t you?” Kihrin remembered the blood on the man’s hands from the night before.
Thurvishar swirled the blue liquid in its glass. Then he focused his attention on Kihrin again. “I do. Had circumstances been different, I like to think I’d have made a fine teacher. Now why are you here?”
“You wanted everyone watching to think you twisted chance, but if you had, if you could really do that, then you shouldn’t have lost last night.” Kihrin paused. “Unless losing was the whole point. I’ve worshipped Taja for a long time, but I never had a run of luck like that. Never. I didn’t win last night because I cheated. I won last night because you cheated. You wanted to spark a duel—just not with Jarith.”
Thurvishar smiled. “You’re smarter than you look, kid.”
“Who did you expect you’d be fighting anyway? Darzin?”
“If I had fought Darzin,” Thurvishar admitted, “our duel would have ended very differently. Darzin is many things, but not a fool.” He gave a small half-smile and shook his head as he stood.
“Why do you hate my father so much?”
Thurvishar paused, one hand on the curtains. “I don’t hate your father at all. I hold him in high regard. He was, after all, one of my father’s closest friends.”
“But you just said—” Kihrin frowned. He knew that Thurvishar hated Darzin. He remembered the threats exchanged between the two men, the unequivocal anger. How could he look Kihrin in the eyes and claim—