Free The Wizard and the Warlord (The Wardstone Trilogy Book Three) by M. R. Mathias

summon forth Gerard—uh... the Dark Lord or whatever you want to call it. Can you remember anything else?”
    “I remember trees that weren’t aflame, but were on fire.”
    Phen grunted and scratched at his hardened chin. He’d recently heard a similar description of trees from someone, but he couldn’t remember who.
    “If we can get out of here, we will escort you to the High King. He will know what to do.”
    Phen stood and looked toward the southwest, where many, many miles away the island of Borina sat with a few other little atolls. “If those red-robed fools have opened up another gateway there’s no telling what has crawled up into the world.”
    He stood there for a long moment, contemplating, then he turned back to the elven girl. “I can tell that your shoulder was magically healed. Do you remember any—” His voice trailed away. She was curled up into herself, lying like a babe and sleeping.
    Phen sat down, closed his eyes, and sought out his familiar, Spike. The lyna cat responded to his magical probing quickly. Through their link Phen had the lyna seek out Captain Biggs at the helm of the
Royal Seawander
. They had established a few signals with the captain before leaving the ship. There was nothing that would explain to the captain that they were hundreds of miles southwest of the Serpent’s Eye at the edge of the Leif Greyn River Delta, but he could let them know they were alive.
    After having Spike pester him long enough, the captain realized what was happening. “Where are they?” Biggs asked the lyna excitedly. He looked haggard. No doubt they had been searching since the storm passed. Phen knew the captain of Queen Willa’s royal vessel wouldn’t want to return to tell the High King that he’d lost two of the realm’s greatest heroes on a lark.
    Phen felt for the man. He and Oarly had more or less bribed him into this. Now that he had Captain Biggs’s attention, he thought about how he could say what he wanted to say through his familiar. He got the captain to follow the lyna down into the Royal Compartment where Phen and Oarly were quartered. There was a map of the southern coast spread out on the booth table. Spike hopped up onto it and began trying to unroll it further westward. The captain watched stupidly for a moment, but after Spike pushed a paperweight off the table Biggs suddenly got it and helped the strange animal unfurl the rest of the parchment.
    Phen had to struggle to see through Spike’s eyes in the dimly lit cabin, but he managed to make out the coastline on the map. He had Spike indicate the marshland west of O’Dakahn, the area labeled
Leif Greyn Delta
.
    “You drifted past O’Dakahn, then?” Biggs asked.
    Spike paused and nodded his quill-covered feline head.
    Phen tried to be more creative and had Spike trace the shape of the letters S M O K E, but that only served to confuse the exhausted-looking captain. Finally, Spike, on his own, darted up to the unlit lantern and began thumping on it with his tail. A few minutes later Biggs finally said he understood that they would light a fire for him to use to locate them. He said he felt stupid talking out loud to the little feline, but he did it anyway.
    Biggs told the lyna that it would be midmorning before he could get the ship that far west. Phen wished he could talk back to the captain through Spike, but that just wasn’t possible.
    Sometime later the grunting, huffing sound of Oarly’s return came to Phen’s ears. He stood to see what all the commotion was about. Oarly had dragged the dinghy the entire quarter mile across the grass by himself.
    “What did you do that for?” Phen asked him.
    “So we’ll have a way to leave this blasted lizard den, boy!”
    “You should have said that’s what you intended to do, Oarly,” Phen said matter-of-factly. “Captain Biggs is on his way. I imagine they will row the cargo skiff right up to our fire.”
    “Bah,” Oarly plopped down and scowled.

Chapter 8
    “Are