right, Dallen. Time slips away. You and I must say good-bye.”
He stretched out his arm toward one of the torches, and a solitary brand flew from its iron stanchion into his hand. He held it before the other man teasingly and then touched its flames to his clothes and set him afire.
The flames engulfed Dallen Usurient immediately. They should not have burned with such fury, but Arcannen had used his magic to apply an accelerant. The Red Slash Commander lit up like a stack of dry kindling, his entire body engulfed by crackling flames. Reyn had a glimpse of the man’s horrified face as he struggled in vain to break free of the killing fire; then he disappeared into the conflagration and was consumed.
Without giving his victim even the briefest backward glance, Arcannen walked out into the burial ground amid the remainder of the Red Slash soldiers and looked around. “In the time you have left, remember this!” he shouted at them. “You brought this on yourselves!”
His arms lifted and the sleeves of his robes fell away. Reyn watched the sorcerer’s hands weave and gesture. Almost instantly flames leapt from the torches to land on the uniforms of the immobilized men and women. Like Usurient, they caught fire instantly, the flames spreading swiftly over their bodies to consume them.
Down through the ranks Arcannen strode, waving right and left as he passed by his victims, his gestures drawing streaks of flame to one soldier after another. A dozen, several dozen, a hundred, and then so many that it was impossible to count them, these human torches filled the bluff top. Fueled by flesh-and-blood tinder, the flames spread, creating a blaze of light that soon banished the shadows entirely. The sorcerer danced and whirled and laughed as he continued to wreak his vengeance, and all around him Red Slash soldiers died.
It took him no time at all to kill them, and Reyn could feel the weight of his participation in the carnage bearing down on him, crushing his spirit and his hopes, destroying his self-respect and his belief in himself as an essentially good person, rendering him as small and pitiful and dark as the man he was assisting in this atrocity. Making him an accomplice in murder, a wretch he had never thought to become. His voice faltered, and he could feel the magic begin to fail.
Lariana was next to him, grabbing at him, pulling him away. “That’s enough! Stop it! We have to get out of here! Reyn, stop!”
He did not think he could. The magic was clinging to him in spite of his growing reluctance to hold on to it. It refused to let go, as if it were fighting to draw his breath from him. He might not have been able to free himself at all but for the sudden emergence of two figures—wraiths come up the road from the city—that materialized abruptly out of shadows and smoke. They staggered a bit as they encountered the full force of the wishsong’s power, but the Druid threw up her defensive shield immediately, driving it back, keeping it at bay. With the magic already weakening as Reyn fought to respond to Lariana’s urging, they passed through its field and advanced toward the boy and girl unimpeded.
“Reyn Frosch!” the Druid called out to him. “Wait!”
But Reyn had no intention of waiting. Although drained by his efforts, he seized Lariana’s hand and bolted for safety, racing into the midst of the burning soldiers. Escape! It was all he could think about. He would not break free of Arcannen only to fall into the hands of the Druids. But what escape was there for him? What escape for Lariana? Escape to where? This hunt to find and make use of him would never end. Escape, as both he and Lariana had feared all along, was possible only in death.
And suddenly he knew what he had to do.
“Arcannen!” he screamed. On hearing him call out, Lariana wheeled back in astonishment. He ignored her. “Arcannen, help us!”
But the sorcerer was already aware of what was happening. The soldiers that had been frozen in place so completely only seconds earlier were able now to move again. Most bolted for safety, but a few of the more determined ones turned their weapons on him. Had a larger number of them responded, the result might have been different. But only a handful acted, and the sorcerer’s magic was sufficient to deflect the arrows and spears and blue-tinged bolts