‘Oh, that’s okay.’ He held up a reassuring paw. ‘You can just help us get access to the stuff. Or you can find us other things of equal value later.’
Later. It almost made me laugh that he thought there would be any kind of ‘later’ for me. Once this was done, I was going to be exiled if I was lucky, executed if I wasn’t. A smarter person would have left all this behind the moment he’d realised he had no future among his people. Is that what an Argosi would do? I wondered. Just walk away? But I wasn’t Argosi. I wasn’t Jan’Tep or Sha’Tep or anything else. I was just a guy with one spell, a squirrel cat and a complete inability to stomach the thought of Ra’meth winning or what he might do to Shalla if he became clan prince. ‘All right,’ I said finally. ‘If all this goes smoothly, I’ll get you what you want.’
He gave me the squirrel cat equivalent of a grin. ‘Great. That’s really …’ I think he must have noticed that I was watching him clack his claws together again because he stopped abruptly.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
Reichis lifted his snout. I noticed then that the breeze had shifted and brought with it a strange smell. Fire … and something thick and acrid that made me feel sick to my stomach. Burning flesh.
One last act of courage, Ra’meth had told me. A great gift for our people.
Reichis took off like an arrow and I followed as quickly as I could, ignoring the pain and exhaustion, my muscles fuelled by the scent of death, and pulled inexorably towards the sound of flames and the most horrible screams I’d ever heard.
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—’