Sun Wolf 3 - The Dark Hand Of Magic by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online

superheated air scalding his lungs like burning sand, and squinted desperately into the smoke to catch a glimpse of Starhawk returning. More screaming, piercing and shrill, sliced through the roar of the flames with a sense of urgency that he could not place . . . He hoped to his first ancestor they’d gotten the horses out of the stable. According to Dogbreath, they hadn’t started out their search with much more money than he had, and it was nearly spent. If they were stranded without horses . . . 
    Downstairs, outside in the yard, a woman was shrieking . . . Animal fear clawed him, but he wouldn’t leave Starhawk alone. They couldn’t lose the books, his only link with what he was . . . Where the hell was the Hawk . . . ?
     
    He came to, gasping, coughing, his clothes and the air all around him rank with smoke, wet horse dung and hay pungent beneath him. By the noise and the hot wind that stroked his face, he knew he was outside. He rolled over onto something soft and threw up what little was in him. The smell of burning pine trees came to him, sappy and sweet.
    He fought the spasms of his lungs to a standstill; it seemed to take forever. A storming chaos of meaningless noise whirled around him, the fire’s greedy bellow, yelling voices, the thin splash of water by the inn-yard well and its cold stony smell, the frenzied whinnying of the horses in the hellstorm of the burning stable. Another piercing shriek, shrill with terror and despair—this time, remembering something Starhawk had said earlier, he identified it. It was coming from the attic where the innkeeper’s children slept.
    In horror, he rolled up to his elbow and opened his eye.
    Flames swirled thirty feet above the crumbling thatch of the inn roof; the sparks cascaded higher still, an upside-down waterfall pouring at the stars. Beyond it, the sky pulsed with a feverish light, and a bass roaring, like the sea in a narrow place, made him shudder. The trees on the mountainside behind the inn had caught. In a wild chiaroscuro of gold and ink, he made out the faces of the line stretching between wellhead and inn—Dogbreath and Firecat were among them, stripped to their shirts and passing buckets that slopped over and turned the ground around their feet to a processional carpet of glittering mud. He himself was stretched on the wet straw of the stable’s muck pile, a safe distance from the buildings, amid a strange assortment of bedding, clothes, bags, silver tankards, and furniture. By the feel of it, the straw had been doused down well.
    There was only one pair of saddlebags beside him.
    His empty belly turned to lead.
    “Starhawk . . . ”
    He tried to rise, but the weakness of smoke and fatigue made his head swim, and he sank down again, retching. Someone came to stand over him. Looking up, he saw the Little Thurg silhouetted against the flare of the burning stables.
    “Starhawk . . . ”
    The round face creased into a frown. “Was she with you, Chief? We found you at the top of the stairs . . . ”
    “She went back for the books.” It was only a dozen feet!
     his mind protested frantically. She should have been in and out of there . . . !
    “Damn stupid thing to do!” He glanced over his shoulder—Sun Wolf now saw that the Little Thurg held the halter ropes of three horses, blindfolded with pieces of sacking. His barrel chest gleamed with sweat as if it had been oiled, where it wasn’t black with grime. “You were hanging onto those like they were your last hope of dinner,” he said, knotting the headstall ropes onto the leg of a huge oak wedding chest on the heap nearby—a monstrosity so garishly carved and painted the Wolf personally would have left it inside to burn. With a quick movement, the little man pulled the blindfolds from the beasts’ eyes, wadded them under one hard-muscled arm, then took a deep breath and turned to dash back to the stables once more.
    Hawk, no!
    
    
     thought Sun Wolf,