Shadows by E. C. Blake

Author:E. C. Blake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

A Blow to the Heart

ANOTHER WEEK WENT BY. Mara’s training continued. She saw nothing of Chell or Keltan. The Mistress of Magic seemed daily more impressed with her process. “It shocks me that your Mask rejected you,” Shelra said one day. “No one of your ability has ever before failed her Masking.”

“Are there others with my ability?” Mara asked. She thought she knew the answer, from what the Autarch had said, but she wondered how the Mistress of Magic would reply.

Shelra hesitated. “I . . . don’t think I should comment on that,” and her hand went halfway to her green Mask before she caught herself. “Now,” she said briskly, “that last water-freezing was a trifle sloppy; still some liquid around the edges. This time, see if you can . . .”

They plunged back into the training, but Mara wondered what Shelra had not been able to comment on. Do I really have a greater measure of the Gift than anyone in Aygrima? she wondered. Even the Autarch?

She lived in dread, day to day, that somehow Shelra would detect the other part of her Gift, the part that let her draw magic from others just like the Autarch and all those monsters of the past, the most recent being The Lady of Pain and Fire; but that ability seemed to be undetectable through testing or even close proximity. As far as she could tell, Shelra knew only that she could see, and use to great effect, all colors of magic. She did not know that Mara, whenever the Mask was removed, could also feel the magic inside the Mistress of Magic, an enormous amount of magic compared to anyone else she had sensed, and that Mara ached to tap into that magic, to see if the far greater control she now had over regular magic might allow her to draw the magic out of Shelra more delicately than she had done in the mining camp, to use it to greater effect, to minimize the pain of that unfiltered power pouring into her and maximize the pleasure it had also given her, shamefully but undeniably.

So far, she hadn’t given in. But every day it was a struggle not to. If I do, she thought, she will surely feel it, and know the full extent of my Gift . . . and then what will they do with me?

She thought she knew. The Autarch can find always find use for a powerful Gifted girl, she thought. But one that shares his powers so closely, one with the same powers, potentially, as The Lady of Pain and Fire, the sorceress he forced out of Aygrima in his youth? He wouldn’t “find use” for me; he’d kill me. Probably on the spot.

Her feeling of walking a tightrope increased the day she talked to the Child Guard.

It was rare to see any of the Child Guard away from the Autarch, but one afternoon, when Mara had been freed from training an hour early because Shelra

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