“I’ll stay with you, Mama,” Raisa said, plunking herself down at the edge of the blanket and looking the High Wizard in the eye, knowing instinctively that they were enemies. Wishing her father didn’t spend so much time away.

Byrne’s soldiers had continued to load the increasingly restive horses, though it wasn’t easy. Now the tall captain came and stood over them. “Your Grace, I think we’d best go back. There’s a fire close by, and it’s headed this way.”

“A fire,” Lord Bayar said. He scooped up a handful of damp leaves, crushed it in his gloved palm, and let the soggy mass drop. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know, Lord Bayar,” Byrne said doggedly. “It doesn’t make sense. But there is one, and it’s upslope from us on Hanalea. I’ve seen them come down on people before they can get out of harm’s way.”

“But that’s only in late summer,” Queen Marianna said. “Not early spring.”

“Exactly.” Lord Bayar rolled his eyes. “You’re an alarmist, Byrne.”

Queen Marianna touched Bayar’s arm, looking anxiously from him to Byrne. “I do smell smoke, Gavan. Perhaps we should listen to the captain.”

While they talked a sullen dusk had fallen over the meadow. An odd wind sprang up, blowing upslope, carrying the smoke away from them, like some hidden beast inhaling. Raisa scrambled to her feet and walked out into the clearing, looking back toward Hanalea. As she watched, a dense, purplish cloud billowed skyward from the ridge above, under-lit by orange and green fire. A whorl of flame rose from the ground, a fire tornado sixty feet tall. She could hear it now, too, the pitch pines snapping in the heat, the throaty roar of the inferno.

It was like one of those dreams where you try to scream and it takes several tries to make a sound. “Captain Byrne!” Her voice seemed small against the howl of the fire. She pointed. “It is a fire. Look!”

Just then, a dozen deer exploded from the trees, bounded across the meadow, and raced into the canyon, oblivious to the would-be hunters in their path.

Immediately after, Raisa heard the pounding of hooves, and three riders burst into the meadow from the direction the deer had come. Their horses were lathered and wild-eyed, the riders only a little less so.

“It’s coming! Right behind us! A wildfire! Run!” shouted the rider in the lead, and it took Raisa a moment to recognize cool, sardonic Micah Bayar behind that soot-smudged face. It was the missing Micah and his cousins Arkeda and Miphis Mander.

By now, everyone was up, the picnic forgotten.

“Micah?” Lord Bayar blinked at his son. “How did you…? What did you…?” Raisa had never seen the High Wizard so inarticulate.