The Fickle Winds of Autumn

68. A Thief is Discovered

Kira's ears prickled with nervous alarm; the anxious acid stung through her being.

It was senseless for them both to die.

"They're coming!" she hissed to Ellis. "Run!"

She crawled her bruised and winded body back along the slender beam of bridge; her ribs jarred and stole her breath with every tender movement.

The Reevers were coming - there was no hope for her - she was completely exposed on the barren strip of rock, suspended and vulnerable above the hostile pool of bubbling lava.

Ellis stretched out his hand to her.

"I won't leave you! You can make it!" he urged.

The bitter rock dug into her knees and blistered palms; the forbidding heat bellowed up its venomous sulphur at her.

Glwnn and Adden moved from the shadows. Aldwyn stooped into the room and uttered a low, mesmerising chant where he knelt.

The footsteps hurried and grew louder.

She hardly dared glance toward the entrance - what good would it do?

Her tight, forlorn stomach knew they were sure to catch her; to devour her; to torture and destroy her.

She forced herself forward; she was nearly within touching distance of the solid floor.

Three or four heavy-set Reevers lurched into the chamber; her panicking eyes refused to stop and count their menacing outlines.

"Kill them!"

The voice that echoed through her dismal fear was the Prince she had overheard before.

A blurring arrow streaked across the room from the shadows by the grille. It thudded into the chest of the closest Reever who cried out as a twisting column of dissolving embers gushed out from his wound. He fell to the shocked ground, a crumbling a pile of tormented ash.

The Reevers charged towards the direction of the arrow, their bodies a darting confusion of speed and anger.

A fierce clang of metal echoed across the chamber; the swords of Glwnn and Adden flashed in the orange flare of the lamps; the Reevers' broad axes sparked and crackled in their furious clubbing contacts; Aldwyn's solemn chant deepened in fervent intensity.

Two more thickset Reevers charged into the chamber.

The taller one wore a heavy jewelled collar around his powerful neck.

"Stop the magikant!" his voice boomed as they tore towards the clashing melee.

Ellis's desperate face reached out to her, stretching over the harrowing, raucous lava.

A Reever sprinted towards him. He was out in the open, on the exposed floor of the chamber - he was sure to be killed.

"Behind you!" Kira shouted.

Ellis turned to draw a hunting knife from his belt.

The on-rushing Reever pounced and thudded into Ellis's unprepared body.

The violent impact of the blow sent Ellis sprawling to his back; he skidded toward the scalding edge of the lava pool; his knife clattered useless to the ground; his head dangled limply above the ferocious glowing magma.

A scream rang out from the shadowy corner by the grille; another Reever clutched at a spiralling stream of distorted fiery fragments billowing up from his wounded chest.

Aldwyn's mouth murmured in a frantic, deep focus.

What was the spell he was preparing?

Why was it taking so long?