I looked down at the spoke of firewood that had led to my log.
It was gone. I mean, it no longer burned from the center bonfire to me.
Instead, the wood seemed to have been scattered all over the dais around me. The fire around the stone basin had been broken into several pieces, too. I could see bushes burning in addition to the men's clothes, along with patches of dried grass and solitary logs on the stone steps, some as much as ten yards away. The branches of one overhanging tree had also caught fire. The slender fronds waved in the breeze as I watched, looking like they might spread the fire to the tree on the other side, which had the same thin leaves and willowy branches.
The seer on the log across from me was staring at me in shock, her violet eyes wide, shining in the dim space where her face hung. Her smoke-smudged skin made her eyes stand out more, especially their whites. I couldn't see her expression exactly, but the emotion I saw there was almost wonder...maybe even relief mixed with something closer to reverence.
It occurred to me only then that the spoke of wood leading to her log had been blown all over the place, too. Individual logs and pieces of crate were burning in clumps in other areas of the cement dais, but none of it close enough to put her in danger. One of the bigger logs had lit the dry grass on the opposite stretch of lawn, a good twenty feet away, and it was spreading fast to the clumps of rose bushes and bulb flowers in that stretch of garden.
The crates and branches leading to the third guy were somewhat more intact, but they'd been blown into a diagonal line away from his log, too. The man with the symbols cut and drawn and burned into his skin was staring at me, too.
Instead of the relief I felt from the seer, though, the man stared at me as if frozen. I could see his expression better though, as the fire nearer to him still illuminated his face.
His eyes held abject terror. He looked terrified of me.
The men around the three of us continued to scream, beating at flames that in some cases were starting to eat through clothes to skin. One man I saw was holding his face, screaming where his hair was on fire while another dark form was trying to get him down in the grass, where he could beat out the fire. No one seemed to remember the three of us tied to logs.