David Baldacci - The Keeper

We dashed outside. As we looked back, Asurter had grown to a height of a hundred feet. And what he did next made my lungs seize up. He reached down to the ground and gripped something metallic that appeared to have been driven into the dirt.

As he pulled it free, we all saw that it was a sword set afire that was fully half as long as Asurter was tall. When he turned to look at us, it was terrible to behold. His face was simply a mass of flames. And when his mouth opened, the scream coming from it could have melted iron.

Fortunately, I had recovered my senses and cried out, “ Embattlemento. ”

The flames met the spell head-on and thankfully the spell held, though the magical shield was white hot and I felt the heat emanating from it though I was twenty feet away.

My victory was short-lived.

Asurter turned, raised his sword and smote the ground behind him a terrific blow. Fire hit the ground and then flames towered a hundred feet in the air. And, as we watched horrified, the line of fire raced right up the face of the mountain, setting afire everything in its path, moving faster and faster as it went, so that it traveled from where we were all the way to the top of the Blue Mountain with such velocity it made my head spin and vanished the breath from my lungs.

And then it happened.

The top of the Blue Mountain blew off with a force so powerful I had never witnessed anything close to it before. Though we were many miles from it, the force knocked us all forty feet into the air, and we rolled and tumbled across ground that was now heaving and pitching like a boat on a storm-tossed sea.

When we finally came to a stop and managed to look up, the entire mountain was on fire and a wall of flaming mass was roaring down the long slope right at us. It was a thousand feet tall and miles across. It was unstoppable. It was coming right for us.

The Fifth Circle had just won.

“Run, Vega Jane!” screamed Delph.

I could sense him beside me, tugging on my arm. But I didn’t look at him. I could hear over the roar of the mountain of fire heading our way that Lackland was fleeing down the side of the mountain, screaming for us to run as he went.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Petra on her knees, her head bowed, awaiting the end. At my feet was Harry Two. He was doing the same thing I was doing — staring at fiery death coming our way.

I looked at my wand and knew, despite its considerable power, that it would not be nearly enough. The flame from Asurter’s mouth had nearly buckled my shield spell. What was coming now was a million times more powerful. My Engulfiado spell would simply turn to mist in the face of it.

I had Destin around my waist, but I could not fly us high enough to escape the flames. And as I continued to watch, the most amazing thing happened to me.

My panic ceased and a peaceful calm took over. I don’t know if it was simply resignation that my life would be ending momentarily. Or something else entirely.

As Delph kept trying to pull me away, my feet seemed to become even more deeply rooted to this spot.

This was my last stand. I would die here. Or I would survive here. It would be one or the other. This I clearly understood.

I put my hand in my cloak pocket and withdrew the Finn. I don’t know what made me think of it, for many thoughts were flashing through my mind at that point.

I had retied the knots on the Finn. I looked down at it, unsure what would happen once I did what I planned to do.

I undid the first knot on the Finn.

The wall of flames hit Asurter’s shack and it evaporated into steam.

I undid the second knot on the Finn.

The wall hit Asurter and all one hundred feet of the bloke disappeared into nothing.

Now nothing stood between us and cremation.

“VEGA!” Delph screamed.

But I was not listening. I was watching our death coming at us with unfathomable speed and ferocity.

I undid the third and final knot of the Finn. It was the only one that had not been untied before. And when my fingers let go of the freed string, I wasn’t sure what was worse: the flames...

Or what I had just unleashed.

I was catapulted straight into the sky with such force that I could feel my lungs collapse, my brain spin and my clothes nearly rip from my body. The Finn had been wrenched from my grasp. The wind that was propelling me also shot outward like a titanic wave, and it hit the mighty wall of flames with a cataclysmic blow that I thought nothing could survive. Had I still been ground bound, I was sure I would have disintegrated from the effects of this collision beyond all collisions. It swept over the spot where I had been with such power that I had to close my eyes. I was afraid that my mind could not contain what I was seeing, that it would simply burst if I didn’t stop looking.

But finally, I had to open my eyes. I looked down and froze. It wasn’t just that trees were bent over. It wasn’t that rock was smashed flat. It wasn’t that the fire had been quashed.

Truly, all of those things happened.

But something else happened too.

The entire Blue Mountain was gone. It was laid flat as the palm of my hand. There was nothing left. And not only were the flames extinguished, but there was not even a wisp of smoke left. The air was as clear as I had ever seen it.

And I had a bird’s-eye view of this, because I was nearly a mile high. It had nothing to do with Destin because all the others were up there with me. Delph, Lackland, Petra and Harry Two. We were all suspended in the sky as though ropes from above had glided down and encircled us. Next to us our tucks floated in the air.

Everything in the path of the Finn’s third knot of power was gone. As far as the eye could see ahead, there was nothing. It was like someone had rolled up the Fifth Circle and taken it away.

And then, as quickly as the mighty wind had come, it left us.

And we started to fall as though the ropes from above had been severed.

I confess to having been in a trance as I watched everything below us vanquished. But now, as we plummeted to our deaths, the trance ended.

I flipped over in the air, shot to my left, grabbed Harry Two and buckled him in. The others were below me, falling fast. I pointed my head down and shot toward Delph, who was nearest. I pointed my wand and cried out, “ Lassado. ”

I roped him in and, without missing a beat, zoomed toward Petra and did the same with her. Now only Lackland was left to save. I turned in midair and accelerated toward him.

As I drew nearer, I saw it from the corner of my eye.

A bolt of fire. How could that be? I turned.

Asurter had risen from the flattened earth. How he could have survived the wall of fire and the third knot of the Finn was inexplicable to me. Yet he had suffered, for though he was still a giant, he was no longer aflame. He was but a charred ruin.

But he had some fire left in him and had just hurled it directly at us. I screamed out, “ Embattlemento .”

The bolt of fire hit my shield and exploded. Then I pointed my wand at Asurter and said, “ Impacto. ”

Asurter was blasted into a thousand fragments and was no more.

It was then that I heard the scream and turned back.

In time to see a flailing Lackland strike the ground with an almighty thud.

And then he lay still.

I pointed myself straight down and raced to the dirt, hitting so hard that we all tumbled down. I ran with Harry Two still buckled to my chest and reached Lackland before the others had regained their footing.

I knelt down next to him. His body looked crushed, but he was still alive.

He looked up at me and a strange smile played over his lips.