Winged Magic Read Free Page A

above the arch.
    The best touch of all, to Kelene’s mind, was the restoration of the two stone lions that had once guarded the gateway. Crouched in perpetual attention, the beasts stood to either side of the road and fixed their red-jewelled eyes on travellers who approached the city.
    Gaalney looked at both lions and shook his head. “They’re magnificent.” The horses walked together through the gateway, and the young man waved a hand at the stone arch. “Is this any indication of your progress in the city?”
    Kelene reached out to run her fingers along the cold, smooth stone. The old wards in the gates were still intact — they had saved her life once — and she felt their ancient potency tingle on the tips of her fingers. She drew strength from their presence, a power that had endured for generations, and she drove her own frustrations and worries back into the dark recesses of her mind from where the wind had shaken them loose. Smiling now, she rode Demira out from the shadow of the stone into the sunlight and pointed to the city walls that still lay in tumbled ruins.
    “Well, no,” she acknowledged. “That is more like the rest of the city. We’ve had some problems the past few years. Clanspeople have lost the art of working stone.”
    She did not elaborate further, allowing Gaalney to see for himself. The outlying areas of the city along the walls were as yet untouched. The buildings lay in crumbled heaps where the attackers and the elements had left them. In this part of Moy Tura only the main road was cleared and repaired. The rest of the wind-haunted ruins remained as they had since the Purge.
    Gaalney was quiet as they rode. His eyes tracked back and forth over the devastation and slowly filled with wonder. “How can you live here?” he questioned. “All this would depress me too much.”
    His choice of words startled Kelene, and she freely admitted, “It depresses me, too, sometimes.”
    “Then why do you stay here? Why don’t you come home?” Gaalney asked, voicing a question Kelene was certain a number of people had wondered.
    Before she would form a sensible reply — if there was one — Gaalney’s face transformed into a picture of delight. They had been riding along one of the major roads that led to the inner heart of the city where the primary public buildings had once stood. One such edifice sat to the left of the road in grand, shining eminence among the destroyed bones of its neighbours.
    It was a temple, built three hundred years before to the glory of the holy quartet of gods worshiped by the clans. The Korg, before he died, had restored the temple as his gift to Kelene and Rafnir. With the last of his strength, before his worn and aged body had faded, he used his knowledge and magic to return the large temple to its previous magnificence. Now, shining in the sun, the white marble building sat as a fitting monument to the Korg and his wish to protect and restore his city. When he died, Kelene and Rafnir buried him at the foot of the large altar that graced the central sanctuary.
    “And I thought all you had fixed was the gate,” Gaalney laughed, obviously impressed.
    Kelene, observing her cousin’s delight, looked at the temple anew for the first time in a long while. She had been so used to working on other ruined buildings, she had momentarily forgotten how lovely this one was. She nodded and thought of her friend, the Korg. Two years after his death she still missed him deeply. “That is the Temple of the Gods,” she explained. “The Korg hoped they would bless our efforts here in the city if we restored their sacred temple.”
    “And have they?”
    “More or less,” Kelene replied dryly. “Come on, Rafnir should be back at our house by now.”
    Gaalney made no reply but followed Kelene and Demira along the road, past a stone wall and several piles of rubble, to the wide central square of the city. The huge open space in the very heart of Moy Tura had once been a