Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [75]
Now, of course, her native ability to breathe water came into play. But now was the time when she worked that little bit of magic….
She went limp. And though she was breathing just fine, it would appear to anyone else that she had lost consciousness at best, and had drowned at worst.
Now as long as the Rusalka didn’t think to unlock that collar and start choking her just to make sure—
The weight was suddenly taken from her back, and she floated to the surface.
There were hands all over her, and as her head broke water, she heard her fellow captives shrieking in a quite convincing manner as they pulled her from the fountain and down onto the gravel path. While the others interposed themselves to keep the Jinn from seeing exactly what was happening, practical Marina turned her over and began pounding her back.
That was her signal to cough, wheeze, and gag, as if she were expelling water from her lungs.
“Katya!” Marina cried, “you’re alive!”
The others kept screaming, though—which was not what she had told them to do. And there was a roaring sound, and more heat than was coming from the sun. And a very odd, burning smell.
She rolled over onto her side, wanting to see what the Jinn was doing.
He was incoherent with rage. A circle of fire flared around him, and at least one set of shrieks was screams of pain, because they belonged to the Rusalka. The Jinn’s hands were burning her arms where he held her, feet dangling, well off the ground.
Not a word did he speak. He only held her, looked into her eyes, and laughed cruelly.
“I told you there would be peace!” the brazen voice boomed. “I told you that you would not touch the other captives! Now you pay the price of disobedience!”
Then he burst into flame, exactly as if someone had soaked him in oil and lit him.
She hung in his hands, on fire as he was, but alas for the Rusalka, she was not immune to his flames. Katya and the others watched in horror as she screamed and screamed, as the scent—not of burning flesh, but of burning water weed—filled the air. They watched as she stopped screaming, but still writhed in his hands, watched as she finally stopped moving, and then watched as, with a burst of white-hot fire, the last of her corpse was consumed and the pitiful caricature of a husk crumbled into ash in the Jinn’s hands, and the ashes rained down as a pile at his feet.
The fires abruptly vanished, as if they had been sucked into him.
He turned, slowly, and stared at them all, as they sat there, struck dumb. His eyes blazed still, burning like twin suns in his head.
“You will obey me when I give an order,” he said.
They all nodded, numbly.
“Go to your room.”
They fled, Katya being half carried between Marina and Lyuba, her legs rubbery with a weakness she did not have to feign.
The little paper crane had found what it had been sent to find. There was only one small problem. How to get the two Champions’ attention? They were very large….
Chapter 12
Sasha waited patiently beside the door to the stable, arms crossed, leaning his back against the wall. The newly cleaned shovel, fork, and barrow stood beside him. The stable was now lit by two cleaned and filled oil lamps. There was not the slightest trace of stink about the place. The only aromas in the air were the smell of fresh straw, the scent of fresh-cut rushes, and the sharpness of the bunches of fleabane he had hung in each stall.
Wonderful smells were coming from the witch’s hut; baking bread, roasting meat, the sweet smell of little tea cakes, all wafted from the chimney.