They were not even twelve steps into this part of the journey when the ground beneath them began to shake. At first, Kayla thought it was the mountain fighting with them again, but when the temperature in the room shot up like it had in the cavern, they began to run without Shiona having to say a word.
A crack appeared in the trail ahead of them, glowing red from the heat beneath, steam shooting upward as they lunged away. Thankfully no one was injured, but it spurred them on faster until they were sprinting at a breakneck pace.
They made it to the next portal, steam geysers shooting up behind them as they dove through the oval and into the cold stillness of the transfer. Kayla couldn’t catch her breath before the long jump, and when she sprinted out of the portal, she bent over, gasping, her knees shaking with the effort to hold her up.
“Sit,” Shiona wheezed, and even T’Kato listened, collapsing on the spot. “Catch your breath for a moment, then we need to go. Something is wrong.”
Kayla chuckled. “That is rather obvious.”
Shiona glanced at her without humor. “It’s not just about the lava. Can’t you feel the mountain calling for help?” she said, throwing her arm out toward the wall as if she barely had the strength to hold her limb up. She probably didn’t.
Kayla tipped her head to the side and listened, then felt stupid for doing so. The mountain did not have a voice she could hear with her ears, only one that spoke to her heart. She closed her eyes and tried to open herself to it, and there, in the deepest, most quiet part of her soul, she found its voice.
Pain. Confusion. Fear for its charges. Helplessness. All these emotions came through. Shiona was right. The mountain really was calling for help.
Kayla came back to herself and looked at Shiona. “I heard it. You’re right.”
Shiona stood. “Let’s go.” They groaned, but got to their feet and followed her, more slowly this time, but the last few hops through the portals were the shortest ones yet, and Kayla began to see evidence of habitation. Stock rooms here. Bathing pools there. When they made their final jump and exited into the midst of a group of youngsters, they all stopped.
One small, red-headed girl was yelling at the group, but no one was listening. The children were in a panic, like a spooked herd of cattle.
“You’ve got to leave,” the girl cried. “Ezeker commands it. You are in danger here.” No one listened. Instead, they tried to push past Kayla’s group to reach the portal.
Mistress Shiona put a stop to that. She achieved the volume the young, desperate girl could not. “And what do you think you are doing?” she yelled at the crowd. Everyone stilled and turned toward her. No one dared answer. The red-headed girl swam through the group and nearly pleaded with Mistress Shiona.
“Please, councilwoman, make them listen! The lava is coming and they are not safe here. They won’t listen to me, but they have to leave. Help me, please!” she cried.
Shiona bent over so she was eye-to-eye with the girl. “It’s okay, Tyese. I’ll take it from here. Why don’t you run on, find Ezeker, and tell him we’re here with the Sapphire Flute.”
Tyese’s eyes got really big, but she nodded to the councilwoman, turned, and ran from the group. Shiona went back to crowd control. “I am ashamed of all of you. All of you!” she said in almost normal tones. Several of the kids hung their heads. “You know the codes. Why won’t you listen? Are you trying to get yourselves killed?”
A few mumbles came from the group now.
“We just barely escaped the lava and steam geysers ourselves. Do you want to be roasted alive? Why won’t you listen?”
“We didn’t know,” one of the kids said, whether stupid or brave, Kayla wasn’t sure.
“Well, you should have. When Tyese told you that Ezeker sent her, you should have listened. Now go. Get! All of you go out. That way,” she said, pointing in the direction Tyese had just taken. “Do what you can to help, but get out of harm’s way.” When nobody moved, she shouted. “Now!”
That got them moving, and they truly did sound like a cattle stampede as they ran away from the tall woman.
She turned back to the two of them. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but if Ezeker is evacuating the school, it’s bad. We need to go fast too. Can you do it?”
They nodded, and in an instant they were racing after the children, who, after having to be prodded so hard, were traveling at a tremendous pace, going so fast, the long-legged adults could not catch them.
The group jumped through one last portal and stumbled out behind a tapestry that was half pulled down. Kayla tripped over it and went to her knees, crying out in pain. Immediately, T’Kato was there, lifting her up, and when he was sure she was stable, they all raced down the spiral staircase and out the door.
Once out in the open, they stopped in shock.
To her right were two wolves, a girl, and a man in glowing armor battling what seemed an endless army of people who zipped here and there like shadows caught on a kite string. She froze—the Ne’Goi had beat them here. The group seemed to be handling themselves well, so Kayla turned her attention elsewhere.
It looked as if Helar had surfaced outside the mage academy. Lava flowed freely, not down toward the village, but up toward the tower where they stood. It was impossible, and yet there it was, against all the laws of nature. Kayla looked around. There was no way the lava could be flowing uphill without magic. That was the only answer. Setting aside the shock and terror of running into the middle of a battle, she looked around to find the source.
Down the lane,there was a magic battle taking place with two people at its center, surrounded by a barrier of some kind. Kayla guessed they were the ones pushing the lava toward her. Kayla squelched the horror she felt. She had faced down C’Tan, swam to the deepest parts of the sea, ridden behind a water horse, and been given gills by a prince of the MerCats. She had defeated a legion of Ne’Goi and survived the death of the man she loved. If she could do all of that, she could deal with this.
She took a deep, steadying breath, pulled the Sapphire Flute from her bag, and raised it to her lips. She closed her eyes to block out the distraction, though she couldn’t shut out the battle and death screams, nor the heat of the molten rock. She pulled in a breath, sucking in the hot air, then blew out a long stream of notes.
She felt it when Brant boiled out of the flute in a cyclone, the wind screaming and tearing at her clothes, and couldn’t help but open her eyes for a moment. This time he didn’t resolve himself to his old appearance, but stayed the ferocious-looking air elemental that he had become, bigger than she had ever seen. He looked at her without speaking. Kayla waited for a moment, but when she realized he wasn’t going to say anything, she nodded toward the mage battle and said, “Help them! Freeze the lava!” The elemental that was Brant nodded and leaped toward the group down the hill.
Kayla kept playing, but seeing Brant deal with the two magi controlling the lava, she realized there was someone else in need of her help. A woman of medium size with dark hair had been separated from the others who fought around her, and though she fought as hard as T’Kato, she stood alone against the Ne’Goi and several dragons. The woman seemed familiar somehow, but Kayla knew there was no way she could know her. She only knew she needed to help, so walking slowly toward the brown-haired woman, Kayla continued to play and turned the lava against the Ne’Goi. She spun fist-sized pieces of rock up from the river and threw them at the shadow weavers. It worked, and soon the numbers were gone, and the dragons had disappeared as well.
Kayla took her flute from her mouth for a moment to introduce herself to the woman. She reached out a hand and was greeted with a smile that again reminded her of someone. The woman spoke before Kayla could. “Thank you for your help. I’m not sure I could have kept them away much longer. Would you help my daughter now?” she asked, pointing to one of the wolves in the group Kayla had initially seen. She fought the surprise she felt. If there were MerCat shapeshifters, why not wolves? They had been in
legend for it seemed forever. This was just the first proof she had seen.
“Absolutely,” Kayla answered. Her fingers grasped the woman’s and they shook hands. “I’m Kayla Kalandra Felandian,” she said, not sure why she used her full name.
The woman froze. Even her breathing stopped for a moment, and, then she began to laugh. “This is impossible. The Guardians must be manipulating things again,” she said. Kayla was confused, and it must have shown on her face.
“My name is Marda, but your mother knows me as Brina. Brina Balania. I’m your mother’s sister.”
Brina or Marda or whatever-her-name-was reached out and took Kayla into her arms. “You look just like your mother. I should have known. Now, come help your cousin, the Wolfchild, would you?”
Kayla remained speechless, but she ran uphill alongside her aunt to aid her cousin.
The Wolfchild.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Music floated across the lava river, sending a wave of cool air wafting toward Ember. For a moment she forgot the battle as she turned toward the sound. It was beautiful music, but it seemed to have a purpose. Ember saw an elemental form at the sound, nod to the girl, and head down the flow of melted rock toward Rahdnee and Brendae, leaving cold in its wake. Ember had never seen an elemental before, but she knew what he was the moment she saw him and stood in awe, despite the battle before her. The lava river began to darken and slow, then suddenly froze with cracks and pops and bits of shattering glass flying upward. The stream of magma went from a glowing orange to a glassy black.
The girl glanced at Ember before slowly walking down the hill toward Ember’s mother. Even from here, Ember could tell that her eyes were blue as the deepest ocean—as blue as the flute she played.
It was the girl from her dreams. Ember was beginning to believe more and more that those dreams she’d been having her whole life were not just nighttime visions, but were actual prophetic dreams, and this girl was part of them. She hoped she lived through the battle to meet her.
And speaking of the battle, she came to herself, realizing it was nearly upon her now. Still wolf, she lunged at the weaver nearest her. It was the tactic that had worked best when they first ambushed her—but there were so many. She didn’t know how the four of them would last long enough to eliminate the whole group. There had to be a way to destroy them as a whole. If only they had archers. The Weavers didn’t seem to fare as well against non-magical weapons, DeMunth’s sword being the exception.
Her fangs were non-magical, and so were Shad’s. They had proven most effective against the enemy. They couldn’t take down many at once, but she’d destroyed the weavers before, she could do it again. Ember dove into the action, biting left and right, dodging swords and knives as the shadow weavers focused on her and came in force. Ember fought her hardest, moved her fastest, but still it wasn’t enough. Even she could see that they were fighting a losing battle, and felt it even more when a strike caught her across the leg, slashing clear across one of the bracelet tattoos visible even in her fur. She yelped, backed out of the fight, and went to higher ground.
Quickly shifting to human, Ember tore off the hem of her robe and bandaged her arm. Thankfully it was her left and not her right so she could allow it time to rest and heal, but being wounded took her out of the fight. What could she do to help?
That brought her back to her previous thought. Archers. Ember glanced around. They didn’t have arrows, but she had an entire river full of potentially lethal glass, if she could break it up and somehow throw it at the Shadow Weavers. But she still hadn’t had enough training to know what she was doing. How was she supposed to take the still-hot glass and throw it at them? She couldn’t do it by hand. There wasn’t enough force behind it, and she would get horribly burned.
Perhaps if she used magic like a wave to shove it at them? It had worked in her training with Lily, so why not here? Mahal had told her time and again to trust her heart when it came to magic, that her heart would lead her in how to use it more often than not.
This felt like one of those times.
Ember tentatively reached out, both physically and magically, and sent thoughts of broken glass, about the size of her thumbnail, at the frozen lava. The ground began to shake, everyone standing nearly knocked to the ground, rocks tumbling down the hillside and taking out several of the shadow weavers. She hadn’t thought of that, but was grateful the mountain was throwing its own rocks at their enemies, then wondered if it really was, or if it was an accident. She hoped for the former.
In the meantime, great cracks formed in the river of glass, then more spider-webbed out until there were millions of bits of broken glass lying there, just waiting to be made into something useful. Ember intended to use them, all right.
She didn’t know how she did it, but she lifted up a large swathe of sharpened lava rock without using her hands. The black shards floated in mid air as if held on strings, just awaiting her command. Ember could feel little strands of herself flung out to each one, and it gave her an idea. She mentally yelled, “Lily, Shad, DeMunth! Get down! Now!” The three of them dove on the ground, and Ember used those strings like a sling, the glass arcing overhead with power she’d never find in the use of her arm alone. The pieces of glass bit into the shadow weavers, breaking through armor and shields and helms. It took out at least thirty of the dark magic users all at once. Grinning, Ember picked up another swathe and flung it at the next wave of shadow weavers charging her over the bodies of those she had already killed.
“Good work, pup,” she heard Uncle Shad’s voice whisper in her head. “Keep going!” Again, she raised the shards and flung them forward as hard as she could. Ember was successful and took down several groups, but now, as she raised the glass up for the third time, she could feel the drain on her energy and knew she wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long—she was already exhausted, and the shadow weavers seemed endless.
She flung the glass, then instantly went wolf again, forgetting the slice in her leg. She climbed, but she couldn’t go much higher. Lily, Shad, and DeMunth joined her, and they all put their backs together to fight off what they knew would only end in their death.
Better to die fighting for something that had meaning than to die tied up in a room because you said no to C’Tan.
The battle was never-ending. Ember’s fangs were getting sore from all the biting. Lily had run out of weapons and resorted to using the fallen Shadow Weavers’ own weapons against them. She had no shield, no helm, and Ember was scared for the girl. It would take one hit to disable or kill her. DeMunth, of course, looked none the worse for wear. He fought unwearyingly, but one man standing against the army was not enough. Shad looked tired, but charged endlessly. She knew he wouldn’t give up until he took his last breath.
Ember wanted to pray for a miracle, but she knew it would never come. Life just didn’t work that way. You did your best. Fought the good fight. And then you died and hoped you had lived well enough to deserve at least a small corner in heaven. Miracles were for the kind of believer she could never be.
In an instant, she was proven wrong.
Ember lunged at a Shadow Weaver and sailed beneath him. She looked up, leaping into the air at the man just out of her reach. He seemed as surprised as she was when he continued to rise into the air. When Ember looked around, she saw he was not he only one. The entire group of shadow weavers were hanging in the sky as if they were puppets on a string. They looked left and right and tried to get down, but nothing moved them until they began to spin.
As if their heads were caught on a string, they begin to swing outward, faster and faster, until they spun in a giant circle above the three tired fighters. The Shadow Weavers thrashed about, and a few of them got sick as they swung and swung and swung. Then all of a sudden, they disappeared with a distinct pop.
Ember looked around and didn’t see any more Shadow Weavers. None near her, anyway. She glanced behind her, saw the miracle worker, and trotted up to stand beside her.
Not knowing if the girl could hear her, she mind spoke. What did you do? Where did they go? Tyese must have heard, for she answered.
“I sent them away. Home.” The girl turned red, but beamed at Ember, snapping her notebook closed and sliding her charcoal stick behind her ear. “You looked like you needed a little help.”
I did. Thank you, Tyese. You saved us. You saved all of us.
The girl went more red and ducked her head. “It was just something I had to do. Thanks for your kindness, Ember.” At that, the girl shifted into wolf shape and took off down the road to help the others who still fought against C’Tan and her agents.
Tyese was Bendanatu as well? Who would have thought? Shaking her head, Ember headed up the frozen lava field. It was time to meet this flute player from her dreams.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Kayla had watched with admiration as the girl across the lava flow had taken the glassy river of cooled lava, broken it into bits with her magic, and used it like shrapnel to destroy the Ne’Goi who attacked her. This had to be the Wolfchild, she thought as she watched the girl slip casually from human to wolf in the blink of an eye. She had known the term meant she was the Chosen One, but she hadn’t realized it would be so literal. She was part wolf. Only the Bendanatu could change shape the way she did. Kayla was fascinated by this Wolfchild cousin of hers.
“I guess she didn’t need our help after all,” Marda said. “Why am I not surprised?”
Kayla chuckled. “What should I call you? Marda? Brina? Auntie?”
Marda laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Auntie is too odd after all these years, and I haven’t been called Brina much at all for fifteen years. How about Marda or Aunt Marda?” She followed the river of lava to meet her daughter, who was headed the same way.
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