She heard Jason's growl-but now she was ready. Her eyes flew open-not that she could see much and she spread her arms wide, calling on the Magick of Air within herself, spending it recklessly into the Realm of Air, leaving herself exhausted. She was not ready for this-but perhaps the fact that her Pact had not involved coercion meant that she would be able to Call not just her own Sylph, but one or two others, if she offered them enough of her energy.
And in that same instant, with a rush of wings, not one or two, but an army of Sylphs answered her Call. They hovered about her like so many angry wasps, buzzing in fury she didn't understand.
"Help him!" she cried to them, pointing blindly at Jason.
She couldn't have described the sound they made if she had tried; it was something like a cheer, something like a cruel, cold chuckle, and something like a screech. She sensed that they had actually been waiting, pressed against the Barrier that separated their Realm from the world, hoping she would give them that order. She understood that at some time in the past, Beltaire had done something to anger the Children of the Air. And she shivered as she felt their soulless hunger for revenge.
Air feeds Fire. Jason might have been waiting for just this moment for he acted instantly the moment the Sylphs appeared. He released all of the creatures of Fire he held in check, and the two sets of Elementals swirled around Beltaire, who shouted profanities in startlement and called up his own army of Salamanders to protect him.
Too late.
Air feeds Fire. The Sylphs created a vortex, a tornado around him, pulling in the Salamanders belonging to Jason and feeding their flames. Now Beltaire was surrounded by a miniature firestorm; although his Elementals sought to shield him, and although they were more numerous than Jason's, they were not as powerful. His own Mastery of Fire protected him for a while-but not forever. Not with the Sylphs feeding Cameron's few Salamanders and the Firemare, making them a hundred times more powerful than before. Beltaire's shouts became strangled cries as the air was sucked from his lungs.
Rose covered her ears, ducked her head, and closed her eyes, as Beltaire found just enough breath to scream.
Cameron lifted Rose to her feet; she collapsed limply against his chest, which told him all he needed to know about how recklessly she had spent herself. She would not have fallen into his arms if she'd had any energy left for herself.
He held out one hand, while with the other one he supported her, and his favorite Salamander, the one that had volunteered to serve as Firemare, dropped the lost spectacles into his hand. He put them carefully on for her; she finally raised her hand to guide them over her ears, and looked up at him, with a huge, livid bruise starting to form on the side of her face.
"Oh Jason-" She shook her head. "I-is he really-"
"He is," Cameron said gravely. She did not pull away from him. "And unfortunately, the manuscript went with him."
"I don't care," she replied fiercely, taking hold of him as if she never planned to let him go.
He took a deep breath, and in his turn sagged against the remains of a building beside them. "I am not apt with words of romance-" he began.
"Nor I," she answered awkwardly.
"Then I will reply for both of you," said a dry, impatient, ancient, and utterly exhausted voice. Master Pao limped slowly out of the smoke, with a younger Chinese man at his elbow-a man hideously disfigured by old burns. "You are in love with Rose; she with you. You are compatible, all will be well. However, the demise of the lamentable Beltaire has freed his Salamanders to rage where they will through the wreckage of the city, and there is very little any of us can do about it except to flee."
"You charlatan!" Cameron roared-or tried to. He discovered he lacked the strength for anything more than an indignant whisper. "Where the hell were you when we needed you?"
Then he took a closer look at Pao-and saw that the man was as exhausted and spent as they, too tired to reply." Master Pao was keeping the Dragons from shaking the earth until there were not two stones left standing from Los Angeles to Portland, Firemaster," said the unknown, and bowed. "Forgive me, Firemaster. I am Master Ho, Master of Eagles."
"Master of Air-" Rose breathed, and straightened. Cameron released her so that she could bow herself. "Are you the reason the Sylphs-that is, the Eagles hated Beltaire so much?"
Master Ho simply bowed again, and gestured. "Please. All this can be explained in the Firemaster's home where it is safer. Look-" He pointed behind Cameron who turned, and saw the red glare of flames just beyond the building that they were sheltering near. He started; he had thought that the growing heat was entirely due to the fight among the Salamanders and Sylphs, not a growing conflagration!
"Dear God-" He started for the fire, intending to try to do something about it. "There are people still trapped in those buildings, alive!"
But he did not get more than a foot before falling to his knees.
"You have no strength left, nor she, nor I, nor Pao," Master Ho said, coming to his aid and helping him back to his feet. "I am sorry, Cameron. These poor victims must live or die without our aid, and we will not help them by perishing with them."
Jason bowed his head, momentarily choked by frustration, and looked up to see Rose gazing gravely and tenderly at him. "I do not want to admit it, but my own Salamanders are spent, and I cannot hope to control a single Elemental that is spending out its rage. You are correct. Do you have transportation?"
Master Pao clucked, and a small cart clattered into the street, pulled by a pair of donkeys. "In!" he snapped, and Cameron found enough strength to lift Rose into the back before clambering in clumsily himself. Master Pao somehow dragged himself onto the driver's seat; Master Ho climbed up beside him, and the cart bounced away, at a much faster pace than Cameron would have expected given that it was being pulled by two such tiny beasts.
He held Rose against his shoulder, and she seemed perfectly content to be there. "Was Pao right?" he asked softly.
"When have you ever known him to be wrong?" she replied, and managed to dredge up a smile for him.
And that was all that he needed. Out of the ashes, out of the pain, out of the rubble, the most precious possession of all remained intact.
Epilogue
Rose Cameron bit the end of her pen, and finished her translation. Master Ho would be pleased, she thought. She was rather pleased with it, herself.
In the past year, San Francisco had arisen from the ashes of the fires that destroyed the greater part of the city much like the legendary Phoenix. Much to the surprise of some, and the dismay of others, China-town had been rebuilt as quickly as any other part of the city. That was due, in no small part, to heavy investment by Jason Cameron.
It had been impossible to contain Simon Beltaire's angry Salamanders until their rage ran out, and by that time, the city was in ruins. What the earthquake had not shattered, the fires had consumed. So many people had been burned in the wreckage of homes and lodging-houses that in all probability the real death toll would never be known. The irony was, many of the fires had begun with purely natural origins, but when the Salamanders got done with them, they rampaged with completely unnatural ferocity.
Master Pao and Master Ho had taken refuge with Jason, and Master Pao still lived here at Jason's request. Master Ho had completed Rose's Magickal education, steering her through her Ordeal-which after the events of April eighteenth had been child's play before returning to the rebuilding of Chinatown. One other thing he had done before returning, since be was an ordained Presbyterian minister, was to formally wed Jason and Rose.
Jason would never be entirely human again-not outwardly. But inwardly, he was more human than he had ever been, except, perhaps, as a child. She teased him that all she had to do was take off her glasses and it wouldn't matter anyway-without her glasses, he was nothing more sinister than a man with an exceptional beard.
Master Pao had come through the ordeal the worst of all of them. He was much more frail than he had ever been; the Dragons had demand
ed much of him in exchange for sparing the countryside. Once the burst of energy was spent that had sustained him through the earthquake and its aftermath, he collapsed, and had to be tended for weeks after. But he was fit enough now to concoct his medicines, and it was his medicines that kept Jason free from pain and with his rage under control. The power of a Firemaster and of a Master of Dragons had kept the precious contents of his shop intact through all of the fury. His Apprentices, both in Earth Magick and in herbal medicine, had brought every box, cabinet, and chest to him here. Every so often, one of his Apprentices would roll up the driveway in a donkey cart with a troublesome patient. Master Pao would dispense wisdom and herbs, and the donkey cart would roll away, back to China-town.
Rose never had learned how and why Master Ho had clashed with Simon Beltaire, nor did she really want to. She knew enough of that dreadful man to know that she did not want to learn more. She rose, stretched, and went to the window. Jason was exercising Sunset, the two of them going through some complicated dressage movements. In a moment, she would go down and join them for a ride, taking her own gentle little Arab mare, Sunset's mate Sunrise.
She wondered, as she watched them, how long he would remain content to stay at home. Not much longer, she guessed. Now that he was fit again, he would talk vaguely of travel-plans.
Well, why not? According to Master Pao, he could probably even move freely among the natives of many of the South Sea islands and in the Far East. They would think him not much different from any other "white devil."
Except, perhaps, a great deal kinder than most. The beast has a truly human heart.
And in the end, that was all that mattered.
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The Fire Rose em-1 Page 40