Glamour of the God-Touched Read Free Page A

familiarity was
with the simple spells of cleaning and mending, and even if he
could cast those more powerful wizardries, none would stop
Arianna’s bleeding. He concentrated on his spell gates and he
reached for his link. Maybe something would come. Maybe he could
create something in the moment. His link opened and raw magestuff
poured forward. He set his thoughts, pressed trigger points, and
molded the flow until power throbbed in his fingertips.
    He had no spell for it, though. The raw
magestuff merely pooled in his mind. He poured it directly into the
cut, but felt no response. He tried a binding spell but her skin
continued to grow ashen.
    Still blood poured forth.
    “Help!” he screamed again.
    The evening’s darkness twisted his voice,
and Arianna’s eyes glowed unearthly pale as they rolled to the back
of her head. Tears rolled down his cheeks. What had he done? It
wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t. He had to fix this, but he looked at
Arianna and he saw her dying in his arms and he had nothing for it.
Nothing. The musty aroma of mildew was overwhelming. He touched her
forehead and felt slippery blood run between his fingers.
    “Help!” He screamed into the nighttime sky.
“Anyone! Help!”
    The moon glowed above.
    “Anyone,” he whispered, his throat raspy,
his head sagging limply to hers. “Anything. I’ll do anything.”
    A strangeness filled the ravine then, a
sensation unlike anything Garrick had ever experienced before.
Energy rolled over the ground with a scent as sharp as a summer
storm. It was high sorcery. Wizardry more powerful than even
Alistair was able to use.
    The hair on his arms rose. He was
mesmerized, confused but oddly thrilled.
    A voice spoke from inside his mind.
    Would you truly accept responsibility for
the power of life and death?
    Fear rose inside him, but Arianna’s weight
was dead in his arms and her slack cheek reflected the new
moonlight with a chalky sheen. Her hair trailed over his wrist to
seek communion with the black soil below.
    “Yes,” he said aloud. “I would do anything
to save her.”
    And in that moment he knew it was true.
Garrick would do anything to save Arianna, anything to save their
future, anything to care about something as much as he cared about
her.
    A perfect silence grew in which even
Garrick’s breathing seemed to halt. The wind died. Leaves hung
toward the ground with silver-backed limpness.
    “Anything,” Garrick whispered again.
    So be it .
    A new power filled him.
    His heart pounded with unworldly drumming.
Fluorescent flames danced on his fingertips and burned Arianna’s
blood from his skin. He cradled her head in one hand and rubbed her
temple with the other. Glorious energy flowed, sorcery fed from
somewhere deep inside his being, blue and green and blue again. The
smell of warm honey grew omnipresent as a river of power seeped
into Arianna’s wounds to bring torn tissue together, mend damage,
and give life.
    He felt intertwined with her. He felt deeply together .
    Then it was over.
    The wind whispered. Trees creaked, and tears
dried on his cheeks in the nighttime chill.
    Arianna took a shuddering breath, then
opened her eyes.
    He had never seen anything more
beautiful.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 3

     
    Elman Rigtha, a mage of the Lectodinian order,
sat on his roan and waited for the Koradictine captain to finish
his preparations. The night had grown dark, but the moon was bright
enough to see by.
    Six Koradictines and six Lectodinians
prepared for their mission, whispering to themselves and playing
through spell work as they tightened the binds on their mounts.
Leather saddles squeaked and a sword rasped against its sheath. A
horse gave an impatient nicker. They had been working together for
eight days, yet the oddity of mages from the two orders casting
spells side-by-side had not worn off.
    The Torean House should be scoured quickly,
though, then they would deal with the Koradictines once and