The room was in darkness now except for the splashes of fire that ran over the floor and up the window curtains and in erratic streaks on the wallpaper. Birrel grabbed Kara's hand and lunged for the outer door.
"Holmer!" she cried frantically, dragging back.
"He's dead, you heard—come on!" He pulled her, with rough determination.
They banged out over the sagging porch-floor into darkness, and he ran, not toward the car but toward the brush beyond the house, the black thickets that promised protection.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the leaping red glow spreading fast inside the grimy windows. The screams of the Irrian had sunk to a kind of groaning, and Birrel could hear Vannevan's fierce voice over it.
He kept tight hold of Kara's wrist, and now they were in the thicket, moving through saplings and brush. Then Birrel stopped.
Back there, three dark figures had come out of the house. Two of them were twined together, as though one half carried the other. The third was alone and in the lead. They stood silhouetted against the glowing windows, looking this way and that.
Birrel whispered to Kara, "Quiet. If we try to get any farther, he'll hear us."
"They will search until they find us," she whispered.
He shook his head. "That house is beginning to burn nicely. I don't think they'll stay here long."