“We’ll take whatever you’ve got,” Farley said.
“We need all of the rainmakers!” Ryker yelled at the crowd.
“Do you think there’s enough of us that we can stay here and extinguish the fires?” I asked.
Ryker glanced at the sky before surveying the group of amsirah coming closer to us. There were around seven hundred amsirah in the encampment, and about a quarter of them came to stand in front of us.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe, combined with your abilities, it would be enough, but there’s alotof acreage in the Revenant Woods, and we’d have to coverallof it since we can’t see exactly where the flames are.”
“I don’t think it will work; there’s not enough of us,” Tucker said. “But we could go into the woods and get close enough to put out half the fires. After that, we can return here and focus our attention on the remaining ones.”
“Get us as many poltergeists as you can as fast as you can,” Ryker said to Farley. “And then meet us back here. The rest of you work on gathering as many as you can before meeting us at the Calsar fire.”
They all bobbed their agreement.
“What about our weapons?” Farley inquired.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ryker
It tookFarley only a few minutes to round up about fifty of his fellow assholes. The others remained in the woods, searching for their friends; as much as I disliked the poltergeists, I hoped they found an army of them.
Ianto was right when he said we didn’t have many weapons to spare, even after raiding my father’s weapon room. We’d gotten a lot from there, but not enough to arm all the poltergeists in the Revenant Woods and they were only given daggers.
However, we needed them to be terrifying, and giving the vengeful spirits weapons was a good way to ensure that. They weren’t corporeal, but they were deadly.
“Does your father think he can burnallof the Revenant Woods to the ground?” Farley inquired as he hefted the dagger before him, spun it in his tiny hands, and grinned when the firelight gleamed off the blade.
“No, I think he intends to flush us out. He knows we’ll have to put out the fires and, to do so, we’ll have to get close to his men. He’s also looking to exhaust, and possibly eradicate, some of us.”
Farley tore his attention away from the blade to focus on me. “Do you thinkhe’sin the forest?”
I scoffed. “My father loves to watch death and destruction unfold, but he won’t be anywhere near something that could go wrong and possibly kill him.”
“So,” Farley shifted his attention to me, and for the first time, when he smiled at me, it wasn’t mocking, “you’ll never be in the same room together again.”
“Oh, we will, but only one of us will emerge from it, and it won’t be him.”
“I like your style, Aristodick.”
And just like that, he ruined the moment. “Fuck off, Farley.”
“We should go,” Ellery said. “The more the woods burn, the tougher it will be to put out the fires.”
With a wave of his fingers, Ianto opened a portal into the woods near Calsar. We had to be careful not to get too close to Calsar or we’d risk emerging into the guards or flames; neither was an option I intended to experience.
I went through the portal first to ensure the fire wouldn’t incinerate the others as soon as we emerged. When I stepped out of the portal, it was into a section of woods I didn’t recognize, but the giant had spent some time in Calsar and had hunted in the woods near it.
He’d brought us to a cliff overlooking a winding river that curved through thick, towering trees before vanishing into a valley of flames. The fire leapt high into the air as it devoured the trees a few hundred yards away from us.
Ash rained from the sky as the fire’s heat turned the November night into an August day. My cheeks warmed, and moisture beaded my forehead as I started sweating beneath my deer-skin cloak. Smoke wafted around us, but it wasn’t thick… yet.
Five hundred feet ahead of the fires, guards with torches made their way through the trees as some of them set fire to the underbrush. The others marched on with their weapons at the ready.
From our position on the cliff, they looked small and inconsequential, like tiny ants meandering along a trail. Except, these ants were causing a lot of damage and needed to be stomped.
“We’ll take out as many of them as we can,” I said. “They don’t know we’re here, and before they realize it, I’m going to release my lightning on them.”
