The Raven (The Secret Chronicles of Lost Magic Book 1) by Aderyn Wood

Author:Aderyn Wood [Wood, Aderyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-11-28T05:00:00+00:00

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Snowflakes danced as slow as lazy winter insects. They created a soft translucent blanket on the forest floor, but didn’t hinder his tracking. Someone had gone before him, perhaps before dawn, but he was gaining on them. Anton tightened his satchel and lengthened his stride. They were traveling in the same direction as he, and he was curious to catch up and see who it was. They had to be a clan member for he’d first noticed the tracks near the tree-dwells.

He walked past an artyroot that looked too good to leave. He dug it out quickly and put it in his satchel. Food was scarce in winter. Every bit of it would count and he’d have to hunt on the way. It was at least three eightnight’s walk to the Snake clan; that was with the whole tribe. Such a journey wasn’t made often. Mostly they visited other clans to witness funeral rites. A large portion of the clan had made the trip last summer, when they’d had a runner inform them that his grandfather had died.

Anton remembered the way the women had wailed, his mother included, and they smacked their heads with their hands to show the distress of grief that he had died. Anton had spent his time hunting the rabbits and hares that populated the Snake’s dry lands. He remembered his grandfather as very old, and not too friendly, and if he was to be honest, he had trouble feeling anything for his passing. But it did distress him to see his mother beating her own head that way.

He remembered the discussion between his father and the Grand Soragan. Yuli and Ugot had been there, too. They’d spoken about their distrust of Iluna. Anton hadn’t said anything, but he’d agreed with them. Of course he had. He’d been told all his life that she was a witch. Why should he have thought any different? His father spoke openly again about the night she was born and the way that Izhur had “defied him”. It seemed to be an incident his father could neither forgive nor forget. The Grand Soragan had nodded his head and spoke of next Agria when he would take her power and if she refused she would burn. “I swear it on Ona’s light.”

But now Anton wondered. His mother had always spoken quiet words of dissent. “She is a good girl,” she’d say. His father dismissed it as a woman’s folly, especially as she had given Iluna mother’s milk as a babe. His brother seemed to despise Iluna most because of that fact. Was he jealous of the attention that their mother had given Iluna? His mother had never had a daughter. They all knew of the little kindnesses she had done for the girl over the years. She’d even brushed all her knots out once.

But Iluna had healed his father. He’d seen it with his own eyes. Izhur and Cypra were very powerful, but even they couldn’t do what this girl could. And she hadn’t even all the training that Yuli had.

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