Free The Raging Fires by T. A. Barron

shoulder blades, but I didn’t move. Better to have the security of something solid behind me. No more swamp creatures would surprise us this night.
    Rhia, stretched out by my feet, gave my ankle a squeeze. “Thanks for taking the first watch. I’m not used to having someone look after me on a trek.”
    I grunted wearily. “That’s because nobody can keep up with you on a trek.” Then I added, “It’s our mother, I’m afraid, who needs looking after. She must be so lonely right now.”
    “Mother?” Rhia rolled to her side. “She’s upset, worried sick about us probably—but not lonely. She has Cairpré. He’ll stick to her like resin to pine.”
    “Do you really think so?” My fingers slid down the shaft of my staff. “He always has so much to do. I thought he would get her settled somewhere, then go on his way.”
    Rhia’s laughter joined the noises bubbling out of the swamp. “Haven’t you noticed what’s been happening to them? Really! You must be as thick as this boulder to have missed it.”
    “No,” I snapped. “I haven’t missed anything. You’re not telling me they . . . well, have some interest in each other, are you?”
    “No. They’re well beyond that already.”
    “You think they’re falling in love?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Come now, Rhia! You’re dreaming even before you’ve fallen asleep. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to . . . well . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “To mothers! At least not to our mother.”
    She giggled. “Sometimes, dear brother, you amaze me. I do believe you’ve been so wrapped up in your training the past few months that you’ve missed the whole thing. Besides, falling in love could happen to anyone. Even you.”
    “Oh, sure,” I scoffed. “Next you’ll try to convince me that we’ll find a tasty meal in a pool of quicksand.”
    A despairing sigh was her only response. “I’m too tired to convince you of anything right now. In the morning, if you like, I’ll enlighten you.”
    Tempted as I was to reply, I held my tongue. Right now we needed to rest. I adjusted my back against the boulder. Enlighten me, indeed. How could she be so sure of herself?
    Even as I grumbled silently about Rhia, I stretched my second sight all the way across the island. Nothing stirred; nothing approached. The night progressed, full of the ongoing cacophony of the swamp. Yet no creatures joined us on this shore. I began to wonder whether the boulder itself might somehow deter visitors, though I could not understand why. Still, in an eerie way, it seemed more than it appeared.
    Perhaps it was some quality of the rank air of the marsh, or the result of my own exhaustion. Or perhaps it was some silent magic of the living stone itself. Whatever the cause, it was only when I felt Rhia’s hand pulling wildly on my foot that I realized that I had been swallowed by a mouth of stone.
    And by then it was too late.

8: C IRCLE S TONE
    First, silence.
    No wind whispering, no swamp voices echoing, no gasses bubbling. No shrieking, chattering, or hissing. No thumping of my living heart. No whooshing of my very breath.
    No sound. No sound at all.
    What sound can I remember? Quickly! I must not forget. The stream we crossed this morning? Yes! I heard it long before I saw it. Spraying sound as well as vapor, it pounded down the banks. Ice, touched by the first finger of dawn, crackled and burst. Water spilled and splashed, thrummed and gurgled, singing like a chorus of curlews.
    Yet . . . this silence, so complete, so enormous, slowly overwhelms the singing. With each passing moment, the sound of the stream grows more distant. I begin to hear instead the quiet, in all its richness. Soft enough to roll in, deep enough to swim in. No more clanging, no more dissonance. Only silence. Who could desire more than to hear the heartbeat of the void?
    I could! I must struggle to remember. I must. Yet all the sounds I would remember feel so separate, so strangely far away.
    Second, darkness.
    Light