Partnership by E.J. Russell

Author:E.J. Russell [Russell, E.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reality Optional Press

Zal

After staring at my casting for a good half-hour, I gathered the stones again. Tradition dictated that nobody got a second chance with divination, not with the same question. Once the stones had fallen, you had to interpret the results and choose a path.

Bugger that. I warmed the stones in my palm, but before I could begin the ritual, a faint shout echoed through the trees from the direction of the camp. Not just one shout—a chorus of raucous hoots and catcalls.

Torian.

Shite, I was a fool—I’d protected the camp against wild animals, but I hadn’t thought to ward it against people. Yet people were Torian’s greatest threat.

I tossed the stones onto the mat without a glance and leaped to my feet. I grabbed my staff but left my pack where it lay and took off, crashing through the trees and letting my downhill momentum propel me into the camp clearing.

A handful of Earth-born young men were gathered near the fire. All of them looked to be in that unfortunate stage between their manhood trials at fourteen and citizenship initiation at nineteen. I recognized the biggest one—Farren, was that his name?—as the apprentice from Corvel-on-Byrne who’d run Netta’s errands and fetched Torian’s kit.

Farren faced Torian across the fire, his hands, rot him, fumbling at his trouser buttons.

And Torian—Torian had shed their cloak and jerkin, nothing but the thin linen shirt covering their moon-pale skin. Their head was bowed, tilted slightly to look up at Farren from beneath the sweep of their lashes. Everything about Torian oozed promise, and their attitude was having a predictable effect on the young men. All of them sported cock-stands under their breeks, and a few, like Farren, had already taken their flesh in hand.

The effect on me was not the same. Heat—not desire but fury—rose from my belly to my chest to the top of my head, my braids whipping around me as though I stood in the center of a cyclone.

“Stand down!” I bellowed, my roar startling an owl from its perch in a nearby tree and sending it winging into the night sky.

Most of the men flinched, the ones with their peckers out hurrying to shove them out of sight. Farren, though, hadn’t budged, seemingly mesmerized. Torian didn’t so much as glance at me. They kept their attention on Farren.

Spellbound. That’s what Farren was, and if that wasn’t magic, I was blind in both eyes, not one.

I swept my staff in a circle overhead, the Sun Stone glowing brighter than the fire’s embers. The men cried out, stumbling back outside the circle of my rage.

“You.” I thrust the end of my staff toward Farren. “I said stand down. You—”

“Zal! On your left!”

At Torian’s cry, I whirled to my blind side to face a reedy youth hefting a rock the size of his head. “Oh no, boyo. When you threaten a Sun mage, you need a much bigger weapon.” One wave of my staff sent the rock spinning away with the boy stumbling after.

Although Torian had dropped their seductive pose when they warned me of the attack, Farren hadn’t moved.

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