The Hidden Fire (Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

and one arrow.  They crept up the ramp and peered into the bright sunlight. 
Before them lay a featureless salt flat.  Kyric scanned the sky for the
firebird but saw nothing.
    Rolirra
broke into a slow, loping run, heading straight across the flats, and Kyric ran
with her, the salamander blood quickly drying to a powder.  They ran for miles,
casting no shadows, the sun overhead and the sky empty.  Suddenly Rolirra
stopped.
    “I
thought it was here, but now . . . can you not find it?”
    “The
way out of the desert?  These salt flats seem to go on forever.”
    “Do
not say that!”  She looked angry now.  “You have to find the way.  You have
to.  You do not understand,” she cried.  “I’m lost .”
    Something
made him look up.  The firebird wheeled above them.  It dipped one wing and
rolled into a dive.  Rolirra ran, but Kyric stood and nocked his arrow — he
would shoot the creature right in the eye, the same way he had shot . . .
someone . . . somewhere.
    He
pushed the thought away.  No time — the firebird bore down on him.  He looked
into its eye and loosed the arrow.  It glanced harmlessly off the creature’s
beak, and then came the long tongue of flame.
    It
was like stepping into a blast furnace, only he didn’t burn.  The stream of
fire cut a black swath in the salt and passed over Rolirra.  She turned back to
him, panic in her eyes, much of the green powder gone, now floating on the air
as grey ash.  Very little remained on his own skin.  The firebird climbed away
from them.
    All
around him the air blurred in the heat of the firebird’s wake.  In the corner
of his eye, a golden dust-devil snaked a course across the flats, winding back
and forth.
    “This
way,” he called to Rolirra.  He took her arm and pulled her into a run.  The
firebird slowly made a wide circle and they beat a tattoo with their footfalls.
    The
whirlwind curved and weaved its way toward them.  It quickly came closer, but
the firebird was quicker.
    “You
have salamander blood on your back,” she said to him, “and my front is still
covered.”
    They
stopped and stood front to back as the firebird made its fiery pass.  The
ground blackened all around them, but they were unhurt.  Kyric felt singed in a
few places.
    “Now
run,” he said, “fast as you can.”
    The
firebird beat its wings swiftly now, banking into a tight turn, its breast
scales glowing red hot.  Kyric ran straight at the whirlwind as it grew taller,
gaining in fury, and taking Rolirra’s hand, he jumped into the flow.  Moments
later they floated in spinning sand, carried along in the hot grip of the wind. 
Kyric tried to turn and look for the firebird, but couldn’t move.  It was like
floating and being pinned at the same time.
    They
skipped across the flats, quickly coming to another rocky drop-off.  The
whirling funnel broke apart as it careened over the edge and spilled them out,
and they dropped in a spray of sand towards a pit where it all drained into the
earth.  They plunged into the pit —
    —
and deep into cool clear water.
    Rolirra
swam up to him, smiling, a bubble escaping from her mouth as she laughed
underwater.  They were in tropical shallows, and she led him deeper, skimming
the sea floor, past glowing purple fan coral, phosphorescent brain coral,
though schools of electrified barracuda.
    They
came to a deeper place where encrusted rock formations rose from the floor of
the ocean.  Hundreds of wrecked ships lay broken on the rocks.  They swam among
the wrecks.  None of them were covered with sediment.  The brass fittings still
shone, and the decks looked as clean as the day they launched.
    Rolirra
stopped and hovered before a wooden figurehead at the bow of a small caravel. 
Her hair floated around her head like a nest of black snakes.
    Like
most of them, this figurehead had been carved in the form of a bare-breasted
woman, but this one wasn’t an idealized mermaid or angel.  It was a Terrulan
woman, eyes