The Witch's Daughter Read Free Page A

Reinheiser had met the challenge with equal vigor, demanding that Thalasi get out and return the corporeal body to its rightful owner. This time, though, Reinheiser issued no challenges or demands.
    Are we to endure the agony of our battle again?
Reinheiser asked calmly.
    The will of Thalasi relented, and the body slumped back to the stone chair.
It felt so good
, he lamented.
    The power
, added Reinheiser.
Never have I felt such power!
    But how?
Thalasi wondered.
    Defense
, answered Reinheiser.
The critical moment, it would seem, incited emotions too powerful for the discord of our wills. The critical moment brought us harmony
.
    Harmony
, Thalasi mused.
Yes, and how wonderful it was
. A moment later he sent the word back to Reinheiser once again, this time as a question.
Harmony?
    Reinheiser did not understand, though he sensed from Thalasi’s growing excitement that an idea had suddenly occurred to his counterpart.
    Harmony
, Thalasi thought again, more insistently.
Music
.
    What do you mean?
    Thalasi wasn’t sure if he was grasping at straws, if in his desperation false hopes were floating through his mind.
Music, harmony
.
    Still Reinheiser did not understand.
    There is a place in the loft of the central tower
, Thalasi explained.
A place where emotion overrides conscious thought. Help me, I beg you, to get our broken body there
.
    Reinheiser shut his thoughts off from Thalasi for a long moment, considering the possibilities of his counterpart’s vague hints. Was this just another one of Morgan Thalasi’s devious tricks? Was there a weapon up in this loft, a magic unknown to him, Reinheiser, that Thalasi could use to drive his will from his own body, to fully possess the mortal form they both now inhabited?
    Help me!
Thalasi pleaded.
We must attain harmony; I must feel that surge of power again
.
    The lure was simply too great, and the alternative too grim, for Reinheiser to decline. Slowly, painfully, the body rose from the throne and stumbled to the door.
    Dozens of yellow talon eyes fixed upon the crawling progress of the Black Warlock, wondering how one so obviously feeble could exude such unspeakable power. But if they needed any reminders to keep them in line as the dual being that was the new Black Warlock inched his pitiful way across the stone floor of Talas-dun, all they had to do was glance through the open doors of the Throne Room.
    To the gory puddle that had once been Grok.

Chapter 2

The Dance of Rhiannon
    F AR FROM THE gloom of Kored-dul, winter’s last sunset sparkled across the sylvan boughs of magical Avalon. The forest teemed with life, shaking off the sleepy mantle of the snowy months in a burst of joyful vitality. Songbirds heralded the end of the day, and the animals of the night stirred in their quiet dens.
    A chill wind blew down from the Crystal Mountains, a reminder of the season past, but its bite was not so sharp. Spring had come early to the wood this year.
    Near the eastern borders of the great forest, in a wide field protected from the north winds by walls of towering evergreens, a young woman watched the darkening sky breathlessly for the first starlight. And when it twinkled into view, she smiled in contentment and broke into her carefree dance, the dance of Rhiannon.
    “Be knowing that me eyes are better for seeing such a sight,” said Bellerian, the venerable Ranger Lord. He stood off to the side of the field, under the boughs of a wide pine.
    The wizard Ardaz, gray-haired and with a bristling beard, sniffled and wiped the wetness from his eyes, drawing an exchange of smiles between Bellerian and the third personin the group, a woman of beauty beyond the realm of mortals. “Me brother’s a sentimental sort,” Brielle explained to the Ranger Lord.
    “Twenty!” Ardaz cried. “Just a day, I know it was just a day ago that I held the little babe in my arms. Look at her now! A woman! I do dare say!”
    “Twenty years might not seem as much to the likes o’ a wizard and