Iylaine sees from the roof

Iylaine walked down the corridor to the stairs, but she paused before going down. Behind that door, she thought, was the ladder to the roof of the southwest tower. She didn’t think any of the boys were up there, since the view was better from the northern towers. She heard no one coming… she would just go see.

From the roof she had a view of the whole scene, and not merely the slender portion that she could take in through Gwynn’s window. It was breathtaking. The sky glowed a murky red, as if a sinister alien sun had set in the northern horizon, and below the sky was the roiling smoke, and below the smoke was the fire.

Now that she was outside – now that there was only the smoke-​​laden air between her and the flames – now that she was an elf and not merely a girl – she saw that the fire was not the otherworldly enemy she had believed. The fire was only a thousand years of sunlight being released in the space of a few hours. It was glorious.

She no longer thought of Malcolm. She no longer thought of the picnics and the ferns. She only thought that her beloved trees were living their last, sublime, ecstatic hour, and she was being kept away from them. By the men.

She crouched on the roof and cast her narrowed eyes all around. More than that, she listened. From her high perch she could hear conversations coming from all over the inner court and the outer. The men were uneasy. The men were afraid.

She had soon determined that only two guards were at the gatehouse – the others were scattered over the castle and in the nearby buildings to watch for fire. If she could only distract those two…

She scanned the court for something she could use… she would not endanger the inhabitants of the castle by starting a fire in the inner court, but in the outer…

That was it. There was a wagon near the stone wall and far from the wooden outbuildings. Its load could not be valuable if it had been left overnight in that way.

Iylaine stood and clenched her teeth and clenched her trembling hands. She did not know whether she could set wood alight without touching it, but she was about to find out.

“I hate you, stupid wagon,” she hissed. “I hate you, hate you, hate you!”

Nothing happened.

She took a deep breath and steadied herself. She would do as Vash had told her, and think of the fire in the wood, and make it all move out to the tip of one of the poles.

It seemed obvious at first that she would have to stare at the wagon to make it burn, but she felt a need to close her eyes. As soon as she relented, she felt the distance between herself and the wagon disappear. She was the fire inside the wood, and she flowed easily to the tip of the pole. When she opened her eyes, the entire pole was ablaze.

It was only a moment before the men began milling about the wagon, shouting for buckets. The two guards left the gatehouse and joined the others. She saw the boys begin clambering down the ladder of the northern towers, and then she too descended and ran into the court.

In all the panic and the blare, it was the easiest thing in the world for a small and silent girl to slip out through the gate.