The Rising (The Rising #4) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,21

had not noticed them.

I turned back to Silence, and the instant I did, she proclaimed, “Your wind. My fire.”

My wind?

Her…fire?

I had no chance to ask after this.

She’d dug her heels in her mount and started charging toward the sorcerers.

Without thinking, I followed her, and as I did, as an automatic precaution, I called upon my magic, feeling it gather in the small of my back, a tingle, an itch, a burning.

Silence was bent over the neck of her horse, but as we grew closer to the line of sorcerers, she sat back, raised both hands, palms open but fingers slightly curled…

And to my amazement, in them formed two balls of fire.

She hurled them both toward the first sorcerer.

His robes caught fire, and on a shriek, he plummeted out of the line, snaking this way and that before throwing himself to the ground and rolling.

By the gods.

Silence had command of fire!

She turned her head and looked down her body at me, shouting, “You!”

Now I knew what she meant by “my wind.”

I had something to command too.

And in this dire time, I had to command it.

I sat up, brought my hands crossed before me at my chest, then flung them out to my sides.

The next sorcerer in line whirled up into the air in a twirl of damp leaves as if caught in a wind funnel.

I then swung one of my arms to the right and he went flying through the forest.

“I did it!” I cried with excitement.

Silence did not share in my excitement.

She was focused.

Thus, the next wizard took Silence’s fire.

I needed to focus as well.

I did this and the next I sent careening into a tree.

More fire from Silence, this time, one of her projectiles hit the next wizard in line and another projectile, the one after.

The skin all over my body raging but my breath coming calm and easy, I caught the next three up in a mighty gale and sent them soaring over the naked treetops, trailing dead leaves in their wake.

At this juncture, the line of conjurors had noted our attack, thus they started to break formation and scatter.

“What the bloody hell are you doing?” I heard Wallace shout from behind me.

“My queen, stop!” Silence’s guard Kyril bellowed.

We both ignored them with Silence again looking back, down her body to me.

I jerked my head one way and pulled my reins in that direction.

She went the other.

“Gods dammit!” Wally yelled.

I chased the sorcerers, leaning left to right in my saddle as Regina dodged the trees, all the while hearing Wallace bound behind me at Regina’s heels.

Sending forth a gale, I caught several of the fleeing men, forcing them back to whence they came, where a wall of fire was opening in a circle.

I carried on, grateful to Wallace, who noted my gambit and broke from his chase of me in order to bear down on our foes to force some of the wizards into my line of magic.

We caught as many as we could, which drattedly wasn’t all of them, before Silence and I passed each other on our mounts, and she closed the ring of fire.

Then Silence, without pause, again tore off on her mount.

I watched, marveling at her seat on a horse, which was exceptionally skilled, and I noticed she was intent on tracking the sorcerers we had not caught in her corral of fire.

Kyril raced after her, but as I would do the same, Wallace rounded in front of me, cutting me off, shouting, “Have you lost your bloody mind?”

“No!” I shouted in return. “We captured twenty of the enemy and incapacitated nine!”

“They could have turned their magic on you.”

“They did not get the chance,” I told him what he had to have seen. “And now we must help Silence find the rest.”

But I had lost his attention. Two Dellish soldiers had approached.

“Guard them,” Wallace ordered the men, jerking his head to the sorcerers caught in the flaming circle.

I took that opportunity to turn my attention back to the battle.

I was not a military genius, but it was not difficult to see that the surprise arrival of the a four-nation contingent was unexpected, as was the incapacitation of their sorcerers.

Two catapults and three trebuchets were ablaze, scores of enemy soldiers were on their knees with their hands held behind their backs, True and Mars with some of their men were racing after enemy cavalry that was trying to escape, and Cassius and Elena, with their unicorns in the lead, were galloping into The Enchantments at