He knew the answer before he finished asking himself the question. Magic. The sorcerer had used magic. It was an image the flash rip had destroyed.
He separated himself from Avelene by a few steps, searching for a way to disable their adversary. If he could get close enough, it should only take a moment to render him senseless. But it would be tricky, and he would only get one chance. He hesitated, glancing at Avelene. She was continuing her own advance, white fire flaring at her fingertips, tense resolve mirrored on her narrow features.
“Wait,” she whispered at him.
The man continued backing away from them, working his way toward a gap in the ruins that would give him access to the coastline. “I’m not so stupid as these others, Arcannen!” he shouted at the ruins about him. “Not Bael Etris! I see you. You can’t hide yourself from me, witchman!”
The mist was shifting in front of him with such frequency that he was disappearing into it every few seconds. Any attack would be semi–blind in these conditions. But Paxon knew they had to do something.
“You want this boy dead, Arcannen?” Bael Etris screamed suddenly. “Show yourself or he’s meat on the–”
An explosion of smoke infused with a brilliant crimson light cut off the rest of what he intended to say, flooding the whole of the ruins surrounding Etris and the boy, completely enveloping both. At first, Paxon thought Avelene had caused it, but when he glanced over she was down on one knee, shielding her eyes from the glare. Throwing caution aside, knowing there was no time for it, he charged into the swirling miasma, the black blade of his sword alive with movement, its emerald light flaring in bright streaks against the crimson of the haze.
If he could just reach the boy …
But it was the girl he found instead. Blinded by the smoke and groping futilely for direction, she stumbled out of the gloom and collapsed at his feet. Kneeling beside her, one eye on his surroundings in case the next person to appear happened to be the one with the knife, he pulled her up and held her, whispering that she was all right, that she was safe.
She grasped at him in response, her words urgent, grateful. “Reyn, are you all right? I saw what happened to you! You used too much again, tried too hard! I warned you …” Then she stopped abruptly as she looked into Paxon’s face. “No! Where is he? What … ?”
Abruptly she realized he wasn’t the boy and pushed him away violently. She leapt to her feet in an effort to escape, but she wasn’t strong enough to free herself from his quick hands, and he brought her down again with a rough yank.
“Whoa, hold on!” he said. “Not so fast. No running away until I find out what’s going on.”
She struggled for a moment and then gave up. To her credit, she didn’t cry or whine. Instead, she faced him squarely. “You have to let me go! I have to find him! You don’t understand what’s happening!”
“I’ll give you that last part,” he replied, pulling her to her feet, one hand firmly clasped about her wrist. “So let’s go have a look and see if we can change things. What’s your name?”
She glared at him. Her delicate, beautiful features had turned hard and tight. “Lariana.”
“Sharp eyes then, Lariana. Don’t let us get caught by surprise.”
They advanced cautiously, but no one else appeared until after several long minutes a crouching Avelene materialized almost on top of them. Her appearance was so sudden that Paxon barely managed to stay his sword arm from striking out at her.
“Calm down, Highlander!” she snapped at him, flinching away. Her narrow features took on an ironic look. “We’re on the same side, remember?”
He exhaled in relief. “Can’t see anything in this stuff.”
“Why don’t we get out of it then, give the winds a chance to blow it away? Who is this you have with you?”
“Lariana. She hasn’t told me more than that, so far.”
Wordlessly, the Druid led them away from the ruins and the mist and out onto the rocky flats where the air was still clear. Paxon glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see that the crimson haze wasn’t dissipating. It was hanging motionlessly above the rocky terrain, almost as if anchored in place, its weight enough that the sea winds couldn’t budge it.
Avelene came close to Lariana, eyes fixing on her. “How do you come to be here?”
For a moment, it looked like the girl wouldn’t answer. It seemed to Paxon as she hesitated that she was making up her mind about something. There was an air of desperation to her that issued in part, no doubt, from her concern for Reyn Frosch. But he thought something more was at work, too. She was young and beautiful, and she was out in the middle of nowhere. That couldn’t have happened by accident, so there was a story waiting to be told and she was trying to decide how to tell it.
Or at least how much of it she wanted to reveal.
“If I tell you, will you agree to help me look for Reyn?” she asked.
She was looking at Paxon, but he held his tongue. It wasn’t his place to answer. “The boy?” Avelene asked. Lariana nodded, and the Druid shrugged. “Of course we will.”
The girl took a quick breath. “I was brought here by Arcannen. He took me out of Rare Flowers, a school for young women in troubled circumstances, and brought me with him to this place. On the way, we picked up Reyn. This was no accident. Arcannen knew who he was. I was to help persuade Reyn to use his magic, to practice with it. He never told me why. Then these men came, trying to kill Arcannen. But he disappeared, and Reyn had to face them alone. I tried to help him, but then … well, you saw. The man with the knife knocked me down, and then that mist swallowed everywhere and the man disappeared and so did Reyn …”
“What was wrong with Reyn?” Paxon interrupted. “He didn’t do anything to try to help himself. He seemed almost unconscious.”
Lariana glanced at him and shrugged. “He must have been frightened. I don’t know.”
Paxon was reminded suddenly of how his sister had looked after she had first used the wishsong’s magic and gone catatonic. The boy had worn a similar look, and he didn’t think the cause was simply fear.
“Why did you help Arcannen?” Avelene demanded before Paxon could pursue the matter. “Don’t you know who he is?”
The girl gave a sardonic smile. “I do now. At the time, I didn’t care. He was going to get me out of Rare Flowers, and he said he would teach me to use magic if I helped him. That was reason enough for me to go with him. I knew what would happen if I didn’t take the chance he was offering. No one else was going to do anything for me. Not anything I wanted them to do, anyway. I was on the verge of being thrown into the streets. They didn’t like me at Rare Flowers. I was too difficult, they said.”
“So this boy, Reyn, what kind of magic can he use?” Avelene pressed. “Have you seen him use it?”
Lariana shook her head. “I won’t tell you anything else unless you help me find him. Or just let me go so I can find him on my own. I’m not afraid to do that.”
Avelene smirked. “I guessing you’re not afraid of much. But there’s more to this than you know. We need you and Reyn to help us understand it. So you don’t get to do anything on your own. We can search the ruins together, if you want.”
This time Avelene didn’t reenter the red haze as Paxon had chosen to do earlier, but conjured a spell that brought the wind about from the ocean and caused it to blow the scarlet mist out over the choppy waters and away. It took considerable effort to achieve this; the haze was stubbornly resistant to her efforts. But in the end it dissipated and was replaced by the familiar sea mists of earlier.
With the way forward more readily visible now, the trio plunged ahead, scrambling until they reached the spot where Reyn Frosch had last been seen. It took them only moments, and then they stood together casting about the empty terrain fruitlessly. Then Lariana spied the open door in the cliff face, a black, gaping hole in the rock, and she charged over with a sharp cry, heedless of any danger. Paxon and Avelene followed, and quickly they were down the hallway beyond and inside the sorcerer’s lair.