The Sorcerer's Widow by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Author:Lawrence Watt-Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: fantasy, sword and sorcery, magic, ethshar, wizard
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dorna dropped to the ground; an instant later, so did Kel.

He had been standing with his back to the Northern device, so he had had no warning, and had not ducked until he saw the flash, but then he had flung himself down vigorously enough that a blade of grass had gone up his nose, and he could smell the dirt beneath. He snorted out the grass and pushed himself up enough to free his hands, then quickly patted first his head and then his shoulders to see if he felt blood anywhere. He seemed unhurt.

“Are you all right?” he called, staying low.

Dorna’s response included suggestions that made Kel blush even more than her undressed state had; he was fairly sure at least one was physically impossible. When she had calmed down a little, she shouted, “Apparently it wasn’t the green dress.”

“I guess not,” Kel replied miserably. “Are you hurt?”

“No. My hair’s shorter on one side, though.”

Kel lifted his head further and peered through the grass, but he could not see the others—the contour of the land hid them both. With a glance over his shoulder in the direction of the Northern talisman, he got slowly to his feet, ready to drop again at the first hint of another red flash.

No flash came. He stood, and stared out over the meadow.

The talisman was still there, and the horn-thing was pointed at him—or at Dorna, or Ezak; they were close enough together it could have been any of them.

He turned around to see Dorna struggling to pull her dress back on while staying below the thing’s line of sight. As her head emerged from the collar he could see that the red flash had indeed cut away a hank of hair on the left side.

It had cut the top off Ezak’s right ear. Why would it be different? Why would it strike to one side at all, instead of right down the middle? It shouldn’t just be poor aim; this wasn’t a person, it was magic.

Maybe it wasn’t aiming for her head at all. Maybe, Kel thought, it hadn’t been aiming at Ezak at all. Ezak had been behind Dorna. And it obviously hadn’t been aiming at him—he was standing right here in plain sight, and it wasn’t throwing anything at him.

It hadn’t been aiming for the green dress, either, but Kel thought back to what he had seen a moment before. Dorna had been standing there in her shift, with her sorcerous weapon in her right hand, and the canvas bag slung on her left shoulder…

The magical blade had struck her on her left, as she dropped. Her head must have already been halfway to the ground when her long hair was chopped off.

“It was aiming at the bag,” Kel said, pointing.

“What?” Dorna looked up from tying her belt.

“It hit the hair on the left as you went down,” Kel said. “It was aiming for the bag.”

She looked down at the bag where it lay on the trampled grass to her left, then at a hank of black hair that lay beside the bag.

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