The Shattered Mountain

5

SHE pauses at the edge, about to plunge into the gully, but movement catches her eye. There, by the smithy. A dark shape in the smoke.

Mara can’t tell if it’s a person or a horse, but either one is worth the risk. She dashes toward it. Arrows rain down around her, and her greatest fear roils in her heart like a black cloud. If the Inviernos are shooting again, it means Julio no longer distracts them.

She plunges into the cover of smoke, choking and coughing. “Hello!” she calls. “Anyone here?”

“Here,” comes a tiny voice.

She drops to her knees and crawls toward it. It’s Carella, the smith’s wife. She huddles against the stall, clutching her small daughter in her lap.

“Barto is dead,” the woman moans. “Dead, dead, dead.”

Mara should feel sympathy, but all she can muster is panic. “On your feet, woman! Or your child dies too.”

Carella blinks up at her. Tears streak her ash-dusted face.

“There’s a group of survivors waiting for us,” Mara says. “We’re making a run to the next village.”

Carella whimpers, clutching tighter to her daughter.

Mara slaps the woman across the face, but then she chokes out a sob, shocked at herself.

But Carella is getting to her feet. “Which way?” she says wearily, then doubles over with coughing.

“Let me,” Mara says, grabbing the child from Carella’s arms. The girl is about five or six, too big to carry easily, but her mother’s movements are slow and staggered, as if she’s badly injured. Or maybe she has breathed too much smoke.

Carella steps from the cover of the smithy into the plaza.

“Wait!” Mara calls. “This way; we must stick to cover.”

Carella looks over her shoulder. “Take her. Keep her safe.” She hobbles forward, into the light, clear air, revealing the blood soaking the back of her skirt, streaming down her right ankle. She reaches her arms to the sky as if summoning heaven itself. “Go, Mara! Now!”

Mara freezes.

A firebolt streams through the sky and plunges into Carella’s torso. She stumbles but does not fall, even as her blouse and hair catch flame, turning her into a fiery goddess. “Go!” she screams.

A second firebolt sends her crashing to the ground.

Mara hitches the child tight to her chest and flees.