The merchant’s face, already pale, twisted into a mask of terror. “We can’t leave the cart! The Archmage will—”
“Bugger the Archmage!” Forral roared. “You’ll be killed—”
It was too late. With a crackle and a roar, the tinder-dry barricade of carts burst into flame, ^s the traders fell back, screaming, the mob prepared to charge.
Aurian had followed Forral until he entered the square. She paused then, pondering what to do next. If she tried to join him, she knew he would send her back—and have a thing or two to say to her when the fuss had died down. But he’d be in danger. She should be with him! She felt sick with terror at the thought of losing him forever. Yet Aurian knew from past experience that Forral would be furious if she risked her own life. That’s his hard luck, she decided with a shrug. I’m too big to be spanked this time!
She started toward the end of the alley, but just as she reached it, she noticed that the side door of one of the houses that lined the square was standing slightly ajar. Aurian stopped. She rarely came down into Nexis, but if she remembered rightly, these houses had balconies that looked over the square. Without hesitation she slipped inside. Luckily, the house was empty. Perhaps the occupants had gone to join the riot, Aurian thought.
These once grand houses that lined the market were shabby and crumbling now, for the district was no longer in fashion with the wealthy. Aurian hunted through spacious, well-proportioned rooms until she found one with tall windows leading to the balcony. Opening the shutters, she stepped out _and recoiled from the chaos below. Across the square, a man on horseback was struggling against the crowd, who threatened to drag him down. A fair-haired girl perched before him on the saddle, and the little fool was clinging to him hysterically, hampering his sword arm as he tried to strike at his attackers.
Idiot! Aurian snorted, and turned away to look down to her left, for a glimpse of Forral. She saw him below her, arguing with one of the merchants. Then her blood froze, as she saw a thin, deadly ribbon of flame winding through the crowd as the torch-bearers advanced. Gods! If the barricade burned, Forral would have no defense! Aurian’s mind raced with the impetus of fear. There was one chance to stop this madness—and only she could do it. Rain, she thought. I must bring rain! Yet her guts knotted in terror as she remembered what had happened when she had last tried to use her magic. She recalled the hopeless circling in the d»k maze—her terror—her helplessness. She hadn’t used her magic since then. Would she still be able to function? Would she suffer the same fate again? She’d had no real experience with Weather-magic, which was a difficult and exhausting business. But she had to save Forral.
Her fingers clenching tight around the beveled metal railing of the balcony, Aurian pushed her awareness out beyond her body, as she had been taught. Scanning the sky, she swore under her breath. Blue. Bright, unblemished blue, paling to white heat near the horizon. Where were the bloody clouds that Eliseth was supposed to have been moving? Aurian recalled what she had learned of weather patterns in Finbarr’s archaic books. The west—they should be coming from the west. Able now to focus all her power in a single direction, Aurian pushed her mind out further and further. Ah! There—far out over the western ocean . . .
An explosion of flame and a wild cheer from the crowd wrenched Aurian back to herself with a jerk. She clung to the railing for a moment, dizzy and disoriented from the abrupt return to her body. Then she saw. The wagons were burning! “Forral!” Aurian was unaware that she had called his name aloud. The clouds were too far away—how could she move such a mass of air and water in time?
In that frantic split second, Aurian felt the heat of the flames as they consumed the carts—felt the anger of the mob, like another wall of fire, beating up at her with pulsing hatred. Suddenly the face of her father, Geraint—long forgotten from her babyhood—seemed to hang before her. She could hear his voice: “Energy takes many forms, and the wise Mage can utilize them all. Strong emotions—anger, fear, love—all of these can be used to fuel the potvers of magic . . .”
Aurian never stopped to question. There was no time. She reached out to the mad, frenzied energy of the mob, to the raw heat-energy of the fire—and pulled . . .
It was strange to her, this taking-in of power. It was, strictly speaking, against the Mages’ Code—yet there was so much energy surging around the square that she could easily take what she needed, and do no harm.
The tricky part was to pull energy into herself, and push her consciousness outward at the same time. She had to forget her body completely, her consciousness’almost, She had to become a pipe, a conduit, a vessel; and simply let the energy flow through . . .
Her seeking mind encountered the clouds once more. Would it be easier to push, or pull? But the clouds were moving in this direction anyway. Pull, then. But how? What was there to grasp in a cloud? Ah! Of course. Aurian stationed her will between the clouds and the front of cold pressure that preceded them, and pushed with all her strength toward Nexis, driving the air away to create a vacuum. Air was lighter to move than water. Gleefully, it seemed, the clouds rushed in to fill the space . . .
It was almost too easy, with all this energy at her disposal. Later, Aurian was to realize that what had taken ages in out-of-her-body time was scant seconds in reality. When a thick layer of cloud had capped the city’s valley like a black and sinister lid, she returned to her body, gathered her power, and struck . . .
A bolt of lighting arced down, splintering into forks as it came. In the distance, a rumble of thunder rolled down the river valley . . . Rain! Aurian thought, reaching up to the low-trailing streamers of cloud. Half connected as she was to her body, it felt as though she were clawing at the blue-black canopy, using her fingers to drag the precious moisture down from the skies . . .
She came abruptly back to herself as the downpour hit. It came all at once, in a solid, heavy sheet, Instantly, Aurian’s hair was flattened over her face. She found it hard to breathe, as though she were underwater. It was cold. It extinguished the fire in an instant.
Reluctantly, Aurian pulled herself away from the glory of the elements. Only then, did she hear the cheering of the crowd. The riot had vanished in an instant, as though the rain had washed the fear and fury away. People were capering in the square, swinging each other about in wild, giddy dances, men and women alike. The man on the horse was picking his careful way through the celebrating crowd, heading toward the merchants’ position,
“What have you done?”
Aurian whirled, shocked, to find herself face-to-face with Forral. He’d used the crumbling brickwork of the building to pull himself up to her balcony. “How did you do it? It was you, wasn’t it? How dare you put yourself in such danger? Don’t you remember why I was called back here in the first place?”
Forral’s smoke-blackened face was grim and his voice was harsh with anger as his big hands gripped her shoulders. Aurian shrunk away, remembering the day when he had caught her in the forest, playing with fireballs.
Then her Magefolk pride asserted itself, and she pulled herself erect. How dare he treat her as if she were still a child!
Her reaction was the last thing that Forral had expected. Aurian wrenched herself violently out of his grasp, and for the first time, he realized that she was as tall as he, if not slightly taller. Her chin tilted proudly, and her eyes blazed with cold fire in a face that was white with anger. In her wrath she was a true Mage, and truly intimidating! The storm above him seemed to grow in sympathy with her rage. A bolt of lightning splintered the roof of a nearby building.