Above and still to Ilapara’s right, the rider on the kongamato now has a sphere of red fire hovering above one palm. She glances at Tuk, who’s staring at the fireball with a worried look in his eye. “Try aiming up!” she shouts.
He checks his gauntlet and shakes his head. “Still charging!”
With an anxious shiver she takes a peek over her shoulder and sees that he’s more than halved the dingoneks chasing them. They also seem to be hanging back a little now, almost like they know what’s about to ensue. She looks back up in time to see the rider on the kongamato releasing his spell and is not in the least surprised by how slowly the fireball floats down toward them.
“If you have magic that can save us,” she shouts at Salo, “now’s the time to use it!”
Riding on his clan totem, Salo bites his lip in thought while he stares up at the approaching spell. A moment later he comes to some decision, setting his shards aglow and adjusting his grip on his staff. “Ride closer!” he shouts.
Tuk and Ilapara immediately obey, steering their mounts closer to Salo so that they flank him in a tight formation.
“How long till you can blast that thing again?” he shouts at Tuk.
“Not sure,” Tuk shouts back. “Maybe a minute.”
“Then I’ll buy you a minute!”
Magic is now swirling around Salo’s arms. Ilapara’s ears pop from a change in pressure, and she feels the air around her thickening. The ball of heat flattens and stretches until it is a bar of red flames—a bar that then folds on itself to become the flapping wings of yet another kongamato, this one a spirit of pure moonfire. A massive triangular head appears between the wings, and fire comes out when it opens its long bill and dives down toward them.
“Salo!”
He fails to respond.
She braces for the worst.
But suddenly a cocoon of fast-moving wind rises all around them, encasing them in a dome of rapidly swirling grass and dust that matches their speed so that they are always at the center. The winds are so thick she can’t see much beyond the dome, and when the flaming spirit finally slams into it, the entire world becomes red fire.
Ilapara gasps. The flash of heat is barely tolerable, but the moonfire gets sucked into the dome’s currents and slingshots around them like honey poured onto an upturned, rotating bowl.
Salo raises his staff and screams in effort. “Tuk!”
A visibly fretful Tuk checks his gauntlet again, only to shake his head. “Not yet!”
Outside the dome, a portion of the red flames coalesces into the spirit’s hammer-like head. Ilapara watches as it rears back and smashes into the dome with so much force part of its fiery bill makes it through the barrier, though not far enough to do them any harm.
Salo cries out again, his staff trembling in his hand. It strikes Ilapara that he is recently awoken; his power can’t be much compared to a high-ranking Umadi disciple, let alone a lieutenant of the Dark Sun. In fact, that they aren’t already dead is no small wonder.
“Tuk!”
“Hold on, Salo! Almost there!”
The magic pulsing from his shards becomes too bright to look at. Ilapara once heard that magic has a certain peculiar taste when it is cast in great concentration, something akin to the tingle of lightning on one’s tongue. She begins to feel such a tingle, except throughout her entire body, as though the fabric of space were being stretched and warped around her.
“On my mark,” Tuk finally shouts, and he waits three infinitely long seconds before his eyes go wide. “Now!”
Mukuni emits a roar Ilapara feels in her bones as Salo raises his staff—and with it the entire vault of fire. The dome curves outward and upward first, becoming a bowl of fire, and then inward at the top into a sphere that completely envelops the spirit. It thrashes violently inside its new prison, and from the way Salo shouts, she can tell he won’t be able to keep it imprisoned for long.
Tuk has already fallen behind on his abada and takes aim with his gauntlet. The ensuing discharge of moonfire is so fast Ilapara almost doesn’t see it tearing into the skies. But she sees the chunk of underbelly that subsequently rips away from the disciple’s kongamato and hears its screech, so terrible it hurts her ears. The creature flaps uselessly for a moment, stalling in the air, and then plummets down with its flailing rider. They hit the ground seconds later with a great booming thud.
An explosion above makes her shield her face with a hand, the winged spirit finally roaring out of its prison. But it has expended itself considerably, so Salo manages to guide it away and over them in a radial starburst. It gradually loses its form and fizzles out into floating embers.
She doesn’t waste time. Her instincts take over, and she directs Ingacha to gallop toward the fallen beast, ignoring the pounding inside her chest. The beast is still stirring when she arrives, and its rider is a motionless lump next to it, tangled unnaturally in the harnesses. She is off her kudu in an instant, bringing her spear with her. The rider senses her approach and blinks his reptilian eyes open, but given the state of his mangled limbs, it is probably all he can do.
Apart from speaking, it seems. “You,” he rasps, his unsettling eyes fixing on her. “I know you.”
Ilapara doesn’t give him a chance to say another word. She thrusts into his chest, and as his life leaches into her weapon and their gazes connect, she sees fear in his eyes, the fear of a predator suddenly forced to confront his own mortality.
The world may be a dark place, but it seems that even the darkness can be made to be afraid.
She used to hold the rules of surviving in Umadiland sacred, but now, having broken the most sacrosanct, she feels like a part of her soul has been liberated.
Next to her the kongamato snaps its long, toothed beak. She proceeds to finish it off with a single deep thrust, grimacing at the reek effusing from its torn bowels.
Salo and Tuk join her as she remounts her buck. They stare grimly at the dead creature and its rider. Neither of them comments on what she has done.
She notices that Salo is breathing heavily and that his shards are still pulsing furiously with lights.
“Everything all right?” she asks him, getting worried.
He nods, though he looks like he’s just run a hundred miles. “I . . . borrowed a lot from the future. My shards are making up for it.”
That makes no sense to her, but she’s relieved their hearts are still beating. “To make things perfectly clear,” she says, “I expect to be paid for this. Handsomely.”
Both boys chuckle despite the circumstances. “Keep me alive, and I’ll break into the queen’s personal vault if I have to,” Salo says.
“Good.” Ilapara goes on to scan the horizon and sees that the dingoneks are nowhere in sight. They’ve probably fled now that their master is dead, but they might return. “We should keep moving,” she says, and no one objects.
She falls back a bit, however, when she spots a flock of ravens soaring on the winds in the east. She squints in thought for a moment, but the flock retreats before she can make her mind up about it.
29: Isa
Yonte Saire, the Jungle City—Kingdom of the Yontai
The simple pleasures a king can enjoy while confined to the Red Temple: taking long walks along vaulted walkways and beautifully landscaped gardens, awaking to the uplifting sounds of choral music and drums, and braiding a friend’s hair beneath a tree by a pond.