Wind Rider by Teddy Jacobs Read Free Book Online

couldn’t
hear anything but the crackling of the campfire. It was almost as if there were
voices in it, speaking to me. The flickering flames too seemed to beckon me in.
I stared at the flames and felt something change in me, felt like I was leaving
my body and falling into the fire. But it wasn’t fire. It was my home, and
there was my uncle, smiling at me…
    Come home. You belong with me, not with those
traitors. You know the one truth; we will rule together. All the rest is lies
and half-truths.
    I felt confused and lethargic; I couldn’t move my
body. I stared at the fire and saw my uncle. My uncle beckoned to me with a
fiery hand. His face smiled and his laughter crackled in the fire. Come.
Together we will free your mother, and live together, all three of us.
    It was then that I felt something. I realized how
numb I had become, and felt a buzzing at my side. I reached down and then the
sword was in my hand, and then it was out of the scabbard, and I swung it in
between myself and the fire. At last my mind was clear again, though I still
saw the eyes and the face in the fire. I held out the sword like a wand, facing
the fire, and the face smiled at me. Bring the sword with you. With it, we
can rule everything and everyone.
    I felt all the power I possessed move from my body
to my mouth, and follow my arm to the sword: “VERSCHWINDEN!”
    A bolt of blue fire shot forth from the tip of the
sword, hitting the smiling crackling face of fire straight in the forehead. For
a moment the face looked panicked, shocked. Then he held up a hand, a pentagram
on the palm, and then the fire was just a fire.
    I sat back down again, exhausted.
    Woltan crouched down
next to me, and Elias with him.
    Elias looked me in the face, concerned. “What
happened?”
    I shook my head. “I saw him, again. Through the
fire. He was trying to get me to come with him again.”
    Woltan looked disgusted.
“Fire gazing is an old art, another way of scrying .
You must keep your mind focused and alert. The dark lord will obviously stop at
nothing to find you, and to bring you to him. Could you see where he was?”
    I shook my head, again. “I only saw his face, and
his palm.”
    “His palm?”
    I nodded. “When I spoke the spell, it hit him in
the head. But he brought up his hand to ward it off.” I got to my knees, and
stood up then, and they stood up with him.
    Elias touched my arm. He looked worried. “Was
there a design on his palm?”
    I nodded. “A pentagram. Why?”
    Elias shrugged. “A recurring dream I have. Of a
hand, with a pentagram on it, raised, and I scream, and then I wake up.”
    Woltan put his hand on
Elias’s shoulder, and we stood there for a moment, watching the campfire that
was now only a campfire once again.
    Then he was waking everyone up, and Elias was
throwing dirt on the fire; we broke camp in all of ten minutes.

 

IV

 
    It started to rain just as we hit
the road, and the rain followed us all morning. The clouds above us were so
dark and full of wrath that Woltan did not discount
Elias’s suggestion that perhaps the dark lord had cursed us. Soon everything we
had that was not protected in a bag was soaked through and through. The rain
became torrential by mid-morning, and when the road became more of a small
stream, Woltan suggested we seek shelter. But we
found nothing but trees …
    Now I stood huddled with the others under a huge
pine tree, just twenty paces from the road. The smell of sap and needles
mingled with the rain, and although we were soaked, I felt a little better
huddled next to the others. The pine tree was big enough for us to all stand
huddled around it, and the pouring rain slowed around us. I wished I could cast
a spell, to dry myself and the others off, but if the dark lord knew more or
less our position, any spellwork would only make it
clear to him exactly where we were.
    Elias spoke then. “This tree is very very old. I can hear its thoughts.”
    Kara nodded, wiping water off her face.