A yell split the air above them, echoing from wall to wall of the priest hole. Kami felt Ash’s voice cut through the peace in her mind.
Ruth Sherman’s seen us, he said. We have to get out now.
Chapter Five
Fire Burning Bold
“Right,” said Kami aloud, in her normal voice. It sounded obscenely loud in that little space.
She scrambled away from Jared and to her feet, not letting go of his wrist. He looked up at her, eyes uncomprehending and hurt, wide as a child’s.
“Come on,” Kami said. “Get up. You’re being rescued. I came here for you and I am not leaving without you. Get up.”
“I’ll try,” Jared told her.
He did try. It broke her heart to see how difficult it was for him, leaning his weight heavily against her and against the wall. She could feel him shaking from head to foot, and she did her best to hold him up though he was so much taller than she was.
“You’d better try,” she said fiercely into his shoulder. “This isn’t a choice. I insist on rescuing you!”
“Well,” Jared said. “If you insist.”
Kami pushed him toward the rope, and tried to smile at him, though she was not sure that she succeeded or even if she did, if he could see it.
“Just hold on,” she said, and gave the rope two quick tugs. “Rusty and Angela will bring you up. Hold on. I’m with you.”
He climbed as best he could, trying to haul himself up with the rope. She stood and watched his faltering progress: at the moment when she saw his hands slip, she willed him not to. She sent him with magic up along the stones, light as air, light as the rope, up to the outside world.
He looked down at her when he reached the opening. Kami made a gesture at him to go.
She stood there for another instant with the dead boy at her feet. If she had not come for him, if Rusty had not learned a sorcerer’s secrets and Holly guessed a sorcerer’s riddle, how long would it have been before Jared died? How long would the two dead boys have sat in each other’s silent company, turning to dust?
“I’m so sorry nobody saved you,” Kami whispered.
It was an absurd thing to say, but she said it in thanksgiving for the boy she had been able to save, in pity for this boy and those who must have loved but not saved him. She had been so terribly, frighteningly lucky.
The rope began to lower again, but Kami heard running footsteps on the stairs. It was no time to wait for ropes. It was time to help herself.
She set her fingers in the wall and told herself, I will not fall. I am going to climb.
It was not quite like climbing, or like falling either. It was like being lifted by both air and her own grip on stone, by the sheer force of her determination.
She reached the opening in the wall, one knee up on the stone, and saw Ruth Sherman throw a bolt of fire at Rusty.
Kami quenched it with a thought, lifted a hand, and sent Ruth tumbling down the stairs.
Angela and Jared—though Jared was not strong enough to really help—pulled her out of the space in the wall and set her on her feet. Ash was on the stairs above them, fighting with another one of Rob’s sorcerers and Sergeant Kenn. Kami pulled away from Angela’s and Jared’s hands to run up the stairs and catch the sergeant’s arm. She put the force of her rage into the touch and sent ice hurtling through his veins. She heard him gasp and stiffen, and Ash knocked him to one side and grabbed her hand, bringing her back down the stairs to the others.
“We’ve got to go, come on, now, now, now,” Kami said.
“But we’ve only just got here,” Rusty remarked as they charged down the stairs, a chaos of limbs because they were trying to keep as close together as they could and everyone was trying to give Jared a helping hand. “And I was having such a lovely time.”
“Holly, you help Jared,” Kami ordered.
Rusty and Angela could fight, and Ash and she could do magic. Holly was the only one who could be spared, and Kami could trust her to be gentle and not to leave him, not for any reason. They had always liked each other. Holly tucked the books she was carrying under one arm and put her shoulder under Jared’s, her arm around his waist: made herself a crutch for him.
Amber yanked out of Rusty’s grasp and made for the stairs, launching herself down after Ruth. Kami grabbed her back without touching her, as if Amber was a toy in one of the fairground machines that could be picked up and let go by a metal claw. Amber looked briefly stunned to be back at Rusty’s side.
“You said you’d let me go!”
“Not until you help us to get out,” said Kami. “It’ll look like you came rushing to stop us, like the others, and we grabbed you. You’ll be fine. Or they’ll catch us all.”
Amber’s face went grim. She ran with the rest of them, like hunted animals through the grand rooms of Aurimere. Kami had to stop and fall behind when they passed Ruth, trying to get up. Ruth gestured and Kami fell hard on the floor, knocked down by nothing at all. She absorbed the impact on her hands and knees, and glared over at Ruth’s scarlet head.
She filled Ruth’s lungs with water, so Ruth gagged and collapsed again.
“Every one of you can burn and drown, for all I care,” said Kami, and got up on unsteady legs to run after the others. Her legs and her lungs both hurt, she was running so hard, but up ahead she could see Holly and Jared, leaning close together, Holly helping him as much as she could and both of them going as fast as they were able.
Beyond them, beyond Amber and Rusty, she saw Ash and Angela lunge for the great doors of Aurimere and pull them wide open.
Kami ran to catch up and arrived a split second after Jared and Holly did, on the threshold of Aurimere.
“Everybody grab hold of Amber,” Kami commanded. “Go now!”
Everybody did except Kami. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement: she whirled back into the hall of Aurimere and saw Rob Lynburn coming down the stairs.
She thought of the dead boy down in the hole, and turned the grand staircase to dust.Rob was lost in the sudden carnage, a dust storm in Aurimere’s great hall, and Kami turned back to see that the others had gone. The fire had leaped up after them with a ferocious snarl and leap of flame, like a tiger robbed of its prey.
She could see the others behind the fire, as if behind a scarlet veil. She could see Jared.
She had to go through, or he’d come back for her.
Kami took a deep breath of smoke: even that burned. She stepped into the fire.
Pain enveloped her, scorching and flaying: pain and fire blinded her. She crushed the impulse to use her magic to kill the fire. She held on to the shape of herself, whole and unhurt, made her skin impervious to flames, willed her blood to cool. She told herself she was not burning, and she stepped out of the fire iron cold.
As soon as she was out onto the grass, Angela seized her and shook her hard, though Jared tried to stop her. Angela brushed him off as if he was a fly.
“You crazy girl,” Angela said. “Other people name their children after their best friends. I am going to name my ulcer after you! I am going to be forced to drink milk and take antacids and abstain from spicy food, and every time I want Indian takeout I will shake my fist at the sky and shout, ‘Damn you, Kami.’ Don’t ever do that again.”
“I promise not to walk through fire ever again, Angela.”
Angela released her and gave her a sour look. “I know you’re just saying that.”
“Can I go now?” Amber asked, an edge of desperation in her voice.
Kami turned to look at her. She looked so terrified that she seemed utterly beyond the reach of being brave.
“Sure,” Kami said. She had Jared back. She could afford to be generous. “Go. Be safe.”
She did not say she was sorry for torturing Amber, and Amber did not say she was sorry for cutting Jared, but Amber glanced over to where Jared stood, still leaning on Holly, Ash beside him.
“I’m glad you’re out,” she said. “I wouldn’t have let you go, but I am glad.”
Jared raised an eyebrow. Out in the sunlight, he looked far worse than he had by darkness: there were more and deeper wounds on his chest than Kami had seen in the priest hole. He looked gaunt and his dark gold hair was dull, tarnished with dirt.
“That means so much,” he said, his voice flat.
Amber nodded, her copper curls swaying, then disappeared behind the flames. Kami saw the door slam behind her in the rising smoke.
She turned away, back to Jared, and blinked for a moment in sheer astonishment.
Ash had turned to Jared and grabbed him, his arm tight around Jared’s neck, his bright golden head on Jared’s filthy shoulder. “I thought you were dead,” he said in a low voice.
Jared stood for a moment with his arms spread wide as if he was being crucified and was very surprised about it. His eyes met Kami’s over Ash’s bowed head and he raised his eyebrows in silent frantic inquiry. Kami shrugged and made an encouraging motion.
After a moment, Jared let one hand drop and patted Ash’s back tentatively.
“Um,” he said. “There, there, buddy. I’m alive, but you don’t need to take it so hard.”
“You’re not funny,” Ash raged at him, and punched him, very carefully, on the shoulder. His arm tightened around Jared’s neck, his body tense as a bow. Jared hesitated, then laid his other hand on the back of Ash’s neck, fingers touching the ends of Ash’s hair in a brief self-conscious caress.
“All right,” Jared murmured. “All right.”
“We have to go,” said Kami, staring through the flames and dust. She could not see sorcerers coming, but that did not mean they were not.
They went down the path away from the great golden house on the hill, walking as fast as Jared could manage. Ash had hold of Jared on one side, having jealously taken the position as if someone else might seize it from him.
Heightwise, Kami supposed someone else should be on Jared’s other side, but he looked for her: not raising his eyebrows or doing anything else to call her to his side, but concentrating on her as if the absolute force of his focus would bring her there.
He was right. She came to him, ducking her head and feeling absurdly shy, and then much less so when a good deal of his weight abruptly hit her shoulder.
Jared ducked down his head and murmured in her ear, his breath warm against her skin: “What was that about?”
“Shush, you heartless monster,” said Kami. “He’s happy you’re alive. I thought it was very sweet.”
“I can hear you both,” Ash grumbled from Jared’s other side.
Kami couldn’t see him, but she could feel how he was feeling, of course. It was the same way she felt, embarrassed but radiantly happy.
“Oh, Jared,” said Rusty, mimicking Ash’s voice. “I am sooooo overcome with joy that you are alive.”
“Oh, Ash,” said Angela. “The inbreeding has done such different things to us. You are so girlish and emotional, prone to swooning and embracing people, while I stand here with a face like a stone and eyes like a rabid squirrel’s.”
“All that stuff you’re saying about your face is true, Jared,” said Rusty. “But I still wish to clasp you to my bosom.”
“I was buried alive five minutes ago,” Jared muttered. “Already with the mockery?”
Kami glanced over her shoulder at Angela and Rusty, arm in arm and snickering with delight, and Holly on Angela’s other side, smiling like a cheerfully wicked angel.
“That’s how we roll,” Kami said. “We live a mock-and-roll lifestyle.”
She looked ahead to Sorry-in-the-Vale, and the curves of streets and the spiky lines of the roofs looked as if the town was opening its arms to receive them.
Wonderfully and strangely, nobody followed them. They made their way slowly, because Jared could not go faster, and halted a few times when Kami had to make him stop and rest because his face had gone ashen, but finally they reached the High Street of Sorry-in-the-Vale.