follow-through spun her around, nearly pulling her to the floor.
Chazaq grabbed a fistful of Karen’s hair and dragged her toward the generator. Screaming, she kicked and tried to slash her captor with the sword, but to no avail. Suddenly, a stream of fire rocketed into Chazaq’s face. Roxil swooped down on his blind side and slammed into his body, knocking him flat. As she swept back up, she roared. “Run! We must hit the other giant while we can!”
Chazaq, his face and beard sizzling, lay motionless on the ground. Mardon was nowhere in sight.
Dropping Excalibur, Karen leaped to her feet and darted back to Walter. Sapphira was already lifting his ankles. “Grab his wrists!” she yelled. “Let’s get him under the roof.” Struggling side by side, they half carried, half dragged him to the covered section of the turbine room. After laying him down, Sapphira pressed her ear on his chest. “He’s alive, but he’s barely breathing.”
“Ashley will heal him.” Trying to smile, Karen swiped back her dampened bangs. “I know she will.”
“But Ashley lost” Sapphira cut her words short.
Karen pulled on Sapphira’s sleeve. “Come on! Let’s get Ashley over here.” Sapphira gave in to Karen’s frantic pull, and they hurried back to the column.
When they arrived, Ashley’s face was almost as white as Sapphira’s hair as she rested her hand on Gabriel’s chest. “He’s breathing steadily now. I tried to get up to help you, but I just couldn’t.”
Karen pulled on Ashley’s arm. “You have to come and heal Walter now.”
Ashley jerked back. “I can’t. I just”
“Look!” Sapphira said, pointing.
Karen and Ashley tipped their heads up. Roxil blew a torrent of flames at Bagowd. As the tongues of fire penetrated his surrounding energy field, they fizzled into plumes of smoke. Two other dragons joined her, and all three spewed a barrage of yellow and orange jets.
“It’s Arramos and my mother,” Ashley said. “They’re all working together!”
“Come on!” Karen pulled on her arm again. “Walter needs help!”
Ashley slid away. “I can’t,” she said, her voice cracking. “I want to … but I just can’t.”
“Why not? He’s hurt really badly. I’ll help you walk over there. I’ll carry you if I have to.”
“I can’t!” Ashley buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “Please stop asking me. Please!”
Sapphira touched Karen’s arm. “Ashley’s too weak. Besides, there’s no energy available. We need Excalibur’s beam, and Walter’s the only one who knows how to use it.”
Tears blurred Karen’s vision as she stroked Ashley’s hair. “How about Ashley’s mom? She has fire for energy. And she’s a healer, so she could do it herself.”
“She’s busy trying to save the world.” Sapphira wiped a tear from Karen’s cheek. “We couldn’t get her down here if we wanted to, and even if she could do it without Excalibur, we would need another dragon to heat her scales. We can’t leave only one dragon up there to battle the giant. It won’t be enough.”
As the trio of dragons joined their flames, they flew in a tight circle, and the fire streams shot deeper into the Naphil’s protective shield.
“They’re making a firestorm,” Sapphira said. “Do we want that to happen? What about the vortex?”
Ashley lowered her hands. Blood from her palms smeared the tear tracks on her cheeks. “I think that’s exactly what Mardon wants. Arramos probably kept my mother away until this moment, and he convinced her and Roxil that this is the only way to stop Mardon.”
Sapphira used her sleeve to wipe some of the blood from Ashley’s face. “It probably wasn’t hard to convince them, since that’s what they did to the first tower. But you said you figured out how we can stop him.”
“It’s only a maybe, but I can’t remember the probabilities.” Ashley hooked her finger around Sapphira’s collar and drew her close. “You have to do it yourself.”
Sapphira pulled back. “Me? But how?”
“I analyzed your light when you flamed up at Mardon. I remember thinking that the balance of frequencies was perfect.”
“Perfect for what?”
Ashley opened her hand, exposing her wound. “To pierce the electromagnetic field the giants are creating. All it takes is a big enough interruption in the field, and it will collapse. Mardon’s code, the one that was supposed to wake up the giants, was really a set of photometer readings, light intensities for seven different wavelengths. It looks like he matched the light waves that would shock the giants into wakefulness with the light that your fire creates. I guess he wanted to give you the ability to wake