The Demon King Read Online Free PDF

overhead. Although the sky to the south was a clear blue, overhead it had gone milky gray, the sun a bright disk swimming in a gathering haze. Raisa sniffed the air. Her nose stung with the scent of burning leaves.
    “Is something burning?” she asked nobody in particular. She’d spoken so quietly she didn’t think anyone had heard, but Byrne rose from his seat at the edge of the woods and walked to the center of the meadow, scanning the slopes on all sides. Frowning, he gazed at the sky for a long moment, then looked over at the horses. They shifted, stamping their feet and straining at their tethers.
    Raisa felt the growing conviction that something was terribly wrong. The air seemed to catch in her throat, and she coughed.
    “Load up the horses,” Captain Byrne ordered, setting his men to clearing the camp and packing up the picnic things.
    “Oh, do let’s stay longer, Edon.” Queen Marianna raised a glass of wine. “It’s so pretty here. It doesn’t matter if we don’t take a deer.”
    Lord Bayar sprawled next to her. “I can’t climb much farther without violating the Naéming and all that. But you go on, Captain Byrne, and find our princesses a deer. I will stay here and look after the queen.”
    Raisa stared at the scene before her—the blanket spread under the trees, the darkly handsome wizard with his boots crossed at the ankles, bejeweled hand resting on the blanket. Her pretty blond mother, a confection even in her riding clothes, cheeks flushed like a girl’s.
    It reminded Raisa of a painting in the galleries at home—a frozen moment that left you wondering about what had happened before, and would happen after.
    “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, underlit 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