The Fire Opal by Catherine Asaro

Author:Catherine Asaro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LUNA
Published: 2007-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

13

Flames of Glass

A chill wind buffeted Ginger, and the torchlight wavered. With dread, she realized Tajman and everyone else was leaving the platform—except two men and a woman who held torches. The Archivist’s words came back to her: The wood shall be put to flame with three torches. Nothing was going to stop them, no protests, no sudden rain, no clemency from the dragon.

If only she had the opal. If only she could bring water out of the air. But that drizzle she made would never put out the inferno they were preparing. She had neither the means to create a spell nor the calm to focus on even a small one, let alone downpour the size of what she needed.

Tears streamed down her face. Dragon-Sun, don’t let me die this way. If I have offended you, give me a chance to make it right. But if he heard her plea, he gave no sign. The fiery colors of his setting were gone from the sky.

As the torch bearers came forward, Ginger stared over the crowd, trying to distance her mind from her body. The Arch-Tower stood across the square, the tallest building in Sky Flames. It had the only stained glass window in the village proper, a large circle depicting a black-wing hawk soaring through the sky. Set under the bulb of the tower, the glass caught torchlight and glowed red, as if it were on fire. Gazing at its round shape, she willed her mind to recede from the flaring torches.

A spell stirred within Ginger.

The torch bearers stopped in front of her. They blocked her view of the tower, dousing her spell, and she was suddenly more aware of the pain in the gashes and welts on her back, especially where her skin pressed into the pole. Had she imagined the spell in her desperation? The trio with the torches watched her with fear. She tried to speak, to entreat them to stop, but her cries were lost to the gag and the rumble of voices below. The smell of burning hemp and the oil that soaked the torches nauseated her. Ashes twirled in the air, and an ember singed her bared shoulder.

Together, in a single motion, they dropped their torches into the firewood around the stake.

“NO!” Ginger screamed.

The torches crackled at her feet, and the trio backed away as if she had cursed them. They strode from the platform, out of her view, and their feet thudded on the stairs.

Ginger could see the clock window again, and she stared at it, struggling for a spell, any spell, while the torches burned at her feet. With a whoosh, dried branches caught fire, and flames jumped in the wood piled around her. Heat licked her legs. It would only be moments before the fire caught her clothes.

As the flames rose, so did the cries of the crowd. Yells came from somewhere, but the lurid torchlight left too many shadows for her to see who was shouting, and the crackle of the flames drowned out whatever they were yelling at her.

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