Thrall by Barbara Ann Wright

Author:Barbara Ann Wright [Wright, Barbara Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781626394544
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2015-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

*

Laret waited until the house had settled down. Aesa, Maeve, and their excitable though hospitable host Otama had finally fallen asleep before Laret crept outside, the wooden chip in her palm. Aesa had gaped when she’d touched it with her bare hand, but Laret hadn’t sensed any malevolence, and she wondered why Runa hadn’t felt the same.

She took a candle and settled between Otama’s house and the one next door in a shadowy little alley. What was she supposed to do with just a piece of a magical staff? She’d hoped to convince Runa to show it to her, but Aesa had sneaked off and gone running out, and Laret had thought it best to follow her.

Luckily, Runa had seemed very interested to speak with a curse breaker, asking all kinds of questions about what magic Laret had broken. She didn’t mention the fini, and Laret marveled at how she could dance all around a topic without speaking of it directly. She’d cast many glances Gilka’s way and spoken as if she’d do anything for her thrain. Laret wondered if she hoped to use the magic to make all of Gilka’s enemies as docile as the fini, easier to plunder.

And why was Laret involved in any of it? Her guilt had continued to eat at her the more she and Maeve spoke, and Aesa’s shoulders had hitched ever higher. She’d kept herself from speaking to Aesa, though, so guilt wouldn’t make her lash out again. She’d kept waiting for Aesa to give them some sign of anger. Finally, Aesa had obliged, yelling her childish hatred while Laret pinned her to the ground.

And guilt for that heaved inside her, too, like a knife in the gut, leading her to this fish-smelling town in the middle of the night, staring at a hunk of wood. With a sigh, she let her spirit slip free and felt along the chip, looking for magic.

It pulsed like a beating heart. Laret threw it away, barely closing her teeth on a yelp. It bounced off the adjoining house with a little thwack before falling to the dirt, just a chunk of wood once more.

“What are you?” she muttered as she bent to touch it. She’d felt power, deep and old. She’d once touched a stone said to be a remnant of the houri, the old folk, and it’d had a lingering echo of old power, but nothing like this, so immediate yet still so aged.

Around her, the town stayed dark. The weight of the power had been so immense, she thought that even non-witches might have felt it, but that wasn’t the way magic worked. She shivered and sat against the wall again. Even if another witch had felt it, they wouldn’t know where it had come from. She brushed the chip with her spirit, and it pulsed again, but she kept hold of it. Ancient magic coursed through it, vital and alive. The witches in Aesa’s mysterious new land were using houri magic, which meant they’d either found it, stolen it, or…

“They couldn’t be.

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