The Pogrom of Mages: The Healers of Glastamear: Volume One Read Free

from churchmen. As they cursed him, he felt lucky that they had left their bows with their horses and that they had to physically catch up with him to stop him.
    Foolish young man he thought as the fire blast from the leading knight’s fingers scorched his hair and just missed immolating his head. They were either too mad at being led through this dangerous bog, or thought he was too unimportant to be taken alive.
    He didn’t know how to project his thoughts to the mage who had contacted him, but he kept repeating, “they shoot fire from their fingers” over and over in hopes of warning the mage who had thought-talked to him.
    The thought formed, “We are water people; they can’t harm us. You’re close now Elf-Blood.” The mental voice was as calm as a chat at dinnertime, as unworried as a child at play, and also as seductive as the calls from the women in the windows of the House of Joy.
    Michael stumbled into a clearing. The swamp smell was replaced by the smell of the sea and he heard the sound of breakers in the distance. Two-dozen human-like figures stood unconcerned watching the chase. A young woman, she was certainly a young female at least, smiled and moved towards him. She, like all the others in the clearing, was nude, and she had no hair at all. Her pale aqua blue skin glistened in the dawn light, and she had gill slits in her neck.
    The beautiful naiad reached out and touched him gently with her right hand. They all vanished, he could not even see his own hands, but he could still feel her cool fingers resting on his shoulder. She giggled girlishly and used her magic to create the tracks of a great crocodile in the sandy wet soil. She marked the area where he had entered the clearing with the signs of struggle and of a crocodile’s meal.
    Within thirty seconds, three fully armored knights entered the clearing.
    “Good Perry Ascendant! Even his manna is gone. No vanishing spell can conceal manna that strong that completely. We should be able to detect him anywhere within two thousand paces.”
    “He’s dead; curse him to the everlasting fire. See where that huge croc must have got him. It’s surely too quick a death for a heretic, but there’s no help for that. Let’s get the hell out of here and report he died in the swamp.”
    The third knight said as if to convince himself, “He was only an apprentice, he can’t know enough to even do a basic vanishing spell, and nothing conceals manna from Perry’s Eye . It’s sacrilege to think otherwise. He must be dead even if we can’t recover any of his body parts. The high priest will still be pissed; he wanted to put him to the question. His level of manna was extraordinary, and the clergy wanted to understand how that happened before they let him die. ”
    The naiads waited until the manna glow of the knights was more than a thousand paces away before they reappeared, but the young woman kept her hand on Michael’s shoulder to conceal his manna from the departing knight protectors.

Chapter 4
     
    “I’m Arianna, and you sir are no elf,” the beautiful naiad whispered into his left ear.
    “My name is Michael, and I’m just an apprentice healer from Hearthshire Town. I didn’t know the Elfish Clan still existed in Glastamear. Why on earth were you expecting an elf?”
    “Oh, the elves left Glastamear at the start of the old kingdom, two thousand years ago, but they come sometimes from across the great ocean to see how their children fare. At first we thought you an elf coming for a visit because you have elfish manna. The manna of elves is never exhausted by use, just like yours. You could cast a thousand spells in an hour and not run out.”
    A glance at the now visible naiads spread on the ground around the sandy clearing forced an unintended gasp from Michael. They were all coupling, or whatever the correct word was for sex in groups of two to six. They were doing things that had never occurred to Megan or him in combinations of male and