spitting colored fire of its own and spouting tongues of purer fire that licked
up towards the heavens.
Horses thundered, coming near.
Strat was there, lifting her up onto the bay’s rump as if she were a child, and
Crit did the same for Randal.
Neither asked if the task was done. All could see the globe, spinning brighter,
whirling larger, consuming the lesser flame of burning wood and stone and thatch
and blazing like a star.
The horses were glad to be reined back; the heat was singeing. You couldn’t hear
a word or even the trumpets of mounts who hated fire as they reared and walked
backwards on hind legs.
For it seemed, as the house collapsed, that the sky itself caught fire. Demons
of colored light slunk through that wider blaze and slipped away.
Wings of lightning beat against the firmament where a rising sun was dwarfed to
dullness by their light.
And down from purple lightning and clouds that came together, combusting to form
a great cat-thing with hell-red eyes who swiped at it as it came, flew an eagle.
A flaming eagle, descending from the sky, chased by a giant cat of roiling cloud
so black it swallowed all the heat, as if a house cat chased a sparrow in the
dwelling of the gods.
The bird plummeted, wings bent. The cat struck, sent it spinning, struck again.
A scream like heaven rending issued from one, a growl like hell’s bowels
settling came from the other.
And the bird tumbled, then righted, then darkened and streaked, shrinking, into
the lessening flame that had been the witch’s house.
Ischade saw that bird dive among the timbers where a Globe of Power was now