Trio of Sorcery Read Free Page B

other Guardians she’d spoken to so far had told her was pretty typical. Mostly they all remembered very intense light, the sense that they were being offered enormous power if they only used it to keep ordinary folks safe, and someone or something waiting for an answer. And then the next day…well, there it was. Where there had been a little warm glow of magic inside, there was now this—atomic reactor. And there was the certain knowledge that ifit was ever used selfishly it would be abruptly taken away. There were no second chances when you were a Guardian. And Di suspected that if you said no, you wouldn’t ever remember getting the offer.
    Memaw had recognized what had happened to her. The moment that Di came down to breakfast that first morning, Memaw had given her a strange look…and from then on treated her not like a teenager, but like an adult who simply didn’t have as much experience as she did.
    She had shown Di some passages in some of those old grimoires, about how to call the Guardians if you were in trouble. There was even something like it in a Dione Fortune book, although Fortune didn’t call them “Guardians,” and her ritual was dorky and awkward, if sincere, and nothing like the ones the witches used. By that point, of course, Di had known that the ritual itself didn’t matter, it was that you knew Guardians existed, and that if you got into occult trouble that you hadn’t caused, and you called on them, they’d come.
    â€œBut what if what happens is your fault, Memaw?”
    â€œDepends. But everything has consequences, my girl, and those consequences fall harder on those who meddle with magic. Just bear in mind, when you get the Call, you must answer.”
    Within a week of accepting the power and the job, she had gotten the Call.
    That memory was as clear as the one of being offered Guardianship was vague.
    The funny thing was she had half expected to be jolted awake in the middle of the night, or to see some ethereal creepy-crawly come smashing through her bedroom window. What happened was much calmer than that. In the middle of the day, a strange woman had come up to the door and knocked. When Memaw answered, the woman had said hesitantly, “They say someone here can help me—”
    Then she had seen Di, standing behind Memaw, and nodded. And Di had known.
    â€œI can,” she said steadily, and stepped forward. And Memaw, who otherwise would have had all manner of questions, simply moved aside.
    It had been a matter of a family curse, which Di had never felt was a particularly fair situation, and in this case, where the woman was someone’s illegitimate child, the daughter of a man she didn’t know, it was particularly unfair. This first time—other Guardians told her the first time was always easy and clear-cut—the solution was simple and straightforward. She offered herself as the woman’s Champion, was accepted, and fought a mage-duel with the revenant that kept the curse going. It fell and dissipated, and that was that. Well, not quite that simple; it had been one heck of a fight and had required everything she could muster. But she had never had a moment of doubt that, as long as she kept her head, she was going to win.
    As “just” a witch, she would never have had the strength to fight off a revenant like that. It probably would have taken an entire coven to take the thing down, and maybenot even then. Most of the time, if a family curse was involved, all a coven could do was shield one individual from the effects of the curse; the next appropriate family member would then find the full curse descending on him or her. And it was heartbreaking, utterly heartbreaking, to see someone who was the last in a line have to decide whether or not to risk having a child. Not children, because it would be difficult to protect two people from a powerful, generational curse with the resources of a single coven;