The mages raised their arms, and a hush fell over us as we watched. The world seemed to take a collective breath, the calm before the storm. As if choreographed, the mages all began chanting in Loranian at once. A faint, golden light began to emanate from around the perimeter, growing gradually brighter as the chant rose in volume. The clouds above darkened, moving closer together. The wind kicked up, whipping the mages’ robes around their ankles. Iannis’s dark red hair was ripped from its tie. It streamed out behind him like a banner as he stood proud and fierce, chanting the spell along with the others. I sucked in a breath, and immediately noticed that the air seemed too hot, as if someone had lit a fire that was fast spreading through the ground.

I expected the clouds to burst into a torrential downpour, the wind to spin into a violent cyclone, sparks to catch on the grass and trees and set the fire ablaze. But though I saw sparks, they weren’t the kind that came from fire. Rather, they were golden and smelled like magic. They floated up from the ground and down from the sky, converging toward the area that was marked off by the stones. The golden glow that started around the boundary began to rise up as the sparks came, drawing on their strength to become more powerful.

“By Magorah,” Rylan murmured, his eyes wide as he watched the stunning spectacle. “They’re drawing on the power of nature herself!”

That was the closest way to explain it, I thought in agreement, as the golden glow continued to expand. A sense of awe filled me as I watched it form a dome over the compound, glowing brightly enough to give the sun a run for its money. Hell, I wasn’t sure that the sun wasn’t lending some of its energy to the spell in the first place.

The ground began to tremble then, and we gasped as the tremors raced up our feet, sending our hearts pounding. A muffled explosion followed, and then another tremor on its heels that nearly knocked me off my feet. I grabbed Annia, to steady her, since she only had one arm with which to break her fall.

“Get down!” I shouted to the others as I dragged her down to the grass. They followed suit, hurling themselves on the ground, belly down. We were far enough away from the trees that none would fall on us, and the safest place to be during any kind of earthquake was out in the open, away from buildings and other tall structures. Anybody from Canalo knew that. I had lived through quite a few tremors in Solantha.