Chapter Eighteen
“Fire!” I shout, as I rush through the manor. The hallways are dark, but I hear voices downstairs. As I careen down the foyer steps, Mrs. MacDougal emerges from the kitchens, her eyes wide.
“Miss Pryor! What on earth—”
“Wildfire, to the east!” I gasp out. “I . . . saw it from my window. Where is Sylvie?”
Fates, let her be nearby.
Thankfully, the girl herself appears, dressed in armor made of silver tea trays and a great many brooches strung together. She clatters as she walks. “What’s going on? Where’s Connie?”
“He’s out doing an inspection of the grounds,” says Mrs. MacDougal.
“What? In the middle of the night?”
“He said something about some missing sheep. He’ll be out till dawn if he must, off to the east.”
“East . . .” The same direction as Lachlan’s camp. The hills there are steep, the land full of crags and crannies. If he’s down in one of the ravines, he may not see the fire till it’s overtaken him.
“Mr. MacDougal is down at the pub,” the housekeeper frets, wringing her hand. “I cannot send him out to warn the laird.”
“I’ll go, then.” I push through the front doors and pause on the gravel drive.
“Take one of the horses!” says Mrs. MacDougal. “Quickly!”
“Ariadne’s the fastest,” says Sylvie.
I push aside a wave of panic; I almost say I’d be better off walking than trying to stay atop one of Conrad’s tall horses.
But I go to the stable anyway, opening the stall door.
Sylvie helps me saddle a gray-flecked mare, and I hastily Weave thread into her mane: a spell to calm her, a spell to speed her gait, and an empathy knot to make her pliant to my commands.
All too soon, it’s time for me to mount up. Sylvie pushes a block my way, and I force myself into the saddle before I have a chance to think about it. The calming knots, or else the animal’s good breeding, prove effective, and she waits placidly for me to find my seat.
“Find Connie!” says Sylvie. “Please, Rose!”
“I will.”
I channel into the empathy knot, and Ariadne’s mane begins to glow as the threads light.
At once the spell takes hold of her, infusing her mind with my sense of urgency.
I shout at Sylvie to stand back as the mare bursts from the stable.
I barely keep my seat when the horse spins on the drive, her hooves flinging gravel as she turns east.
Ariadne thunders over the earth with me clinging to her back like an alarmed cat. When the reins tumble from my grip, I hold fast to her mane, my eyes straining to open against the wind. My threadkit jounces over my shoulder; I fear its strap will break.
In the distance, the dark sky brightens to an unsettling shade of orange—the fire is spreading fast. Ariadne’s hooves crush the heather and rip up clods of mud, her muscles bunching and releasing beneath me as she skids down hillsides.
My feet are knocked from the stirrups. Teeth clenched, I send up a silent prayer to the Fates that the horse does not snap her leg in the darkness, or my neck.
We approach the fire in mere minutes, a fraction of the time it would have taken me to reach the blaze had I been running even at my fastest pace. When we near the edge of the fire, close enough that the heat washes over me in a wave, Ariadne rears and whinnies, and will go no closer.
The flames before me are savage and frenzied, no ordinary fire.
The blaze takes the shape of great beasts, like red-orange bears trampling the earth and swinging their heads about, throwing fire in all directions.
Even the sound the fire makes is animalistic, the fire-bears’ roars as deep and angry as thunder.
One catches sight of me and Ariadne and rears up on two legs to bellow a challenge.
From its mouth pours a torrent of hot sparks.
I recognize a curse when I see one and know this must be the work of either Tarkin or the queen’s faerie servant—the Gatekeeper Tarkin attacked.
Their fight has set the entire eastern moor ablaze, despite the snow and damp.
And if these fire-bears are not stopped, they will reach Ravensgate in minutes.
Suddenly I hear a high whinny to my right and turn to see a black shape hurtling toward us, out of the flames.
Bell.
I recognize the muscled gelding from watching Conrad ride off on him each morning.
But where is Conrad? Bell’s saddle is empty, his reins swinging loose. As he thunders past, I see the white of his rolling eyes; the horse is crazed with terror.
But there’s no time to search for Conrad. I must stop the fire before it reaches the manor, with Sylvie and Mrs. MacDougal inside.
Hands shaking, I open my threadkit and take out the spool of sturdy twine. Hurriedly, I Weave a ward spell between my hands. Then I heel Ariadne and shout at her to run.
She does so with alacrity, nearly throwing me from the saddle. I grip her girth with my knees as tightly as I can and channel.
The magic is strong and eruptive; along the edge of the fire, the earth splinters, a crack following Ariadne’s hooves.
A similar crack shatters through my chest, gouged by the torrent of magic coursing through my heart.
My vision blurs, and I nearly topple from the saddle with a shuddering spasm of pain.
I slump forward, gasping, and grip as tightly as I can to Ariadne’s sides with my legs.
When my twine turns to ash, I Weave another spell, and another after that, turning the horse back and forth across the wall of flames.
Every spell drives spears of agony through my chest. I ruthlessly crush the voice inside me that begs for relief, even as I wonder how much longer I can keep this up.
Choking on smoke, gasping as my heart seizes, my body and mind seem to separate.
My fingers work by rote, Weaving spell after spell, while my mind screams within a cage of pure pain.
But it is working. The ward spells slowly congeal, creating a shimmering barrier rooted in the ground and towering overhead, a great glassy curtain shot through with an auroral array of colors.
When the fire-bears reach the barrier, they rage but do not cross it.
I pull Ariadne back, my skin and dress blackened with soot, my lungs choked with smoke.
I cough and watch as the fire-bears spew flames, thrashing their paws, roaring in fury.
A wall of flame builds up against my barrier like water behind a dam, flames sloshing and reaching higher, searching for any weakness.
“Oh, Fates,” I breathe, my eyes widening, terror clenching my stomach.
The barrier begins to bow outward, and then it rips. Flames pour through.
Ariadne starts from under me, releasing a wild whinny. Unprepared, I tumble head over heels and land hard on the ground, the breath knocked out of my lungs. The corner of my threadkit jabs into my side. The horse bolts back to the manor, and I can’t blame her.
I look up, just as a wave of fire rushes hungrily toward me.
I cannot even scream.
Then a hand grabs me and pulls me back.
“Get down!” Conrad pushes me behind him and then raises his hands. Strung between them is a wide net of silver thread, and all at once it begins to glow. Captain is snarling at Conrad’s side, hackles risen along his back.
Silhouetted against that terrible orange glow, his hair and coat whipped by the hot wind, the laird of Ravensgate holds his ground. He strains against the raging heat, pushing his spellknot forward, his teeth flashing white as he bares them in a snarl.
I gasp as a powerful wind, cold as ice and called by Conrad’s spell—his spell, which he is channeling with magic—rushes from the sky and attacks the flames. It carries with it gusts of snow and sleet, and wherever the enchanted flames rise, it bites down with wolfish savagery.
Conrad’s thread turns to ash, and then he grabs me and we run from the fire, letting the cold wind do its work.
The laird is limping, his pace slowed by his old injury, and my chest is a tight knot of fiery pain from the effort of channeling the wards.
We lean on each other, struggling to get free of the elemental battle raging over the moor.
Captain bounds all around us, still alert and growling, protecting his master.
At last we collapse onto a bank and watch as Conrad’s wind-wolves harry the fire-bears, drawing them apart and leaping high to smother them to the earth.
The two primeval forces clash again and again, and the sky is bright with clouds of sparks and hot embers, and despite the terribleness of it, I cannot look away.
“Are you hurt?” Conrad asks me, his voice hoarse.
“No,” I lie. My heart feels like a pincushion, stabbed through with needles. Every breath is a battle. But the pain is familiar. I can bear it.
What I cannot bear is the revelation that Conrad can channel. Conrad can Weave. Conrad, who despises magic, just called upon it to save our lives.
In moments, the wind-wolves prevail; the last of the fire-bears is brought down and crushed to smoke, and then the wolves dissipate into a wind that rushes in all directions, flattening the grass and sweeping ashes everywhere. I throw my shawl up, shielding Conrad and myself.
Then it’s over.
Stillness settles over the land, and the only sound to be heard is our own heavy breathing.
The air smells of ash, and all the way to the horizon, the moor is black and charred.
But behind us, Ravensgate stands safe, a dark silhouette against a deep-blue sky.
A few faint stars flicker to life beyond it, watery blue through the haze of smoke still clouding the air.
I look at Conrad. He stares at the scorched earth, his eyes vacant. Captain sits beside him, watchful and silent.
My throat is tight with angry questions. I wait for him to defend himself, to order me to ignore what I just saw or to try to explain it away with some lie. But the damnable man silently avoids my gaze, looking like a dog that knows it’s done wrong and is waiting to be judged.
Then I see the burns on his hands.