Page 50 of Kingdom of Spirits
Lija and Ragewing blew fire into the varjuline. They scattered, their forms ragged and bits of their essence floating into the air like clouds of ash.
“Again!” Marius commanded. He cracked the whip twice this time, once on his right and then on his left.
The varjuline howled and Tahlia’s ears rang. Lija and Ragewing let loose two more streams of blazing fire, and the varjuline were no more.
“Quick, Lija, tear up the stones there. Open the place up!”
The Seabreak dove, smashed her talons into the old floor, and rose back into the air. Tahlia couldn’t see beneath her mount, but Lija must have been holding a few good scoops of dislodged rock because some of the debris was missing. Fara slumped, lifeless, in the fiery cage below the broken floor.
Ragewing and Lija flew down to the next level, landing beside the cage.
Marius flexed the hand the varjuline had attacked. “On my count, flame.”
“Stay down, Fara!” Tahlia hoped she would remain where she was. She didn’t want their proposed solution to be worse than the problem.
“One, two, three!” Marius called out with Trevain now hovering just behind him and Ragewing.
The flames from both dragons mingled to create a river of fire colored citrine, sapphire, ruby, and aquamarine. Fara’s head lolled to one side, then she ducked again, hands over her head protectively. The cage shimmered, grew brighter, then dissolved like the creatures who had built it.
Marius leapt from Ragewing, gathered Fara into his arms, then took off. Tahlia and Lija followed close behind with Trevain streaming along beside them.
At the first area of ground covered in moss and low grasses, they landed, Tahlia and Lija quickly getting a fire going for Fara and making her as comfortable as possible considering evil ghosts were lurking about and they only had one heavy blanket between all their bags.
Fara sat up against a boulder. Marius tucked the fine blanket around her. Silver embroidery sewn into cloud-like patternsdecorated the top-notch wool. He stood and turned to face the ghost.
“Trevain, do you know a remedy for what ails her?”
A small shadow oozed from the ground and Marius leapt back.
“Watch out,” he said sharply. “One more.”
“That’s the little one that we saw the first time the shadows attacked,” Tahlia said.
The shadow flew past Marius, its movement erratic, as if it was afraid. It flew into the boulder beside the one Fara was leaning on and bounced backward, trembling.
Ragewing roared at the varjuline, and the shadow cowered low.
“I have heard of too dumb to live,” Trevain said, looking down his nose at the shadowling, “but too dumb to die is a new one, I must admit.”
Marius lifted a hand and Ragewing let out a quick blast of fire. The small varjuline disappeared into the mossy ground. Trevain pursed his lips like he was disappointed in the shadowling.
Tahlia knelt beside Fara and smoothed the blanket so that it lay just under her chin. “Marius brought out his rich fellow’s blanket for you, Fara. Soon, you and I will have enough to buy one of these too. I mean, come on. Don’t die before we get paid, all right?”
Eyes burning from unshed tears, she tucked her friend’s hair behind her ear. Golden boils showed over Fara’s right eyebrow and along her cheek. She wasn’t as pale as earlier, but she still hadn’t opened her eyes or uttered a word.
“I have never seen someone leave any of the fire cages, so I don’t have any information about healing her. It’s not the same as the plague that killed me. This is the plague wrought by Katkand his first champion, the plague set on those with Mistgold blood.”
Tahlia tried to get Fara to drink from her waterskin, but the liquid only spilled over her unmoving lips.
“Tell us the whole story, spirit,” Tahlia said. “We need to know everything.”
“How about I show you?” Trevain waved his hand and everything disappeared.
Chapter 21
Marius
The world flickered back to life. Marius spun, unsheathing his sword. Fully leafed oaks swayed in the breeze, and maples spread their branches along a well-set roadway of light stone.