Wintertide #01 - Wintertide by Linnea Sinclair

Author:Linnea Sinclair [Sinclair, Linnea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Fiction, General, Magic
ISBN: 9781932815078
Google: eCqCPQAACAAJ
Amazon: 1932815074
Publisher: Medallion Press
Published: 2004-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

"Ciro, why didn’t Ixari summon the Healers together when all this started happening, two hundred years ago? Surely, their combined magics could have halted this ‘war?’"

"What, the more the merrier, Khamsin?" Ciro shook his head. "No, child. That’s not the way it all works. A hundred Healers casting the wrong spell are not more powerful than one Healer casting the wrong spell. It’s still the wrong spell."

She regarded him patiently. Ciro rarely answered any question with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

"Any more than a locked door can be better opened by one hundred of the wrong keys," he continued, pulling out another obscure example. "A handful of wrong keys is still a handful of wrong keys. But the right key, ah, that’s the one! And only one. Do you understand?"

She stared out the window again for a long time before answering. In an odd way, she did. She heard echoes of Tanta Bron in Ciro’s words. "Yes. But, is there only one proper key?"

"In this matter, yes. But it’s one thing to be the proper key to the door. It’s another to have the power to understand the knowledge that lies behind it. Then again..." and he shrugged. "I only know what the runes have foretold. That a girl child would be born in the midst of a storm. And that the signs upon her birth would confirm that she was a chosen one."

He looked at her, his gaze suddenly sharp and penetrating. "But then, I’m sure you’ve heard this before."

She took a sip of wine. Its warmth coated the slight frisson of fear that went through her at his words.

She was raised with Tanta Bron’s stories. With her warnings. But that was Tanta Bron, who was always telling her to be careful about this or that.

And the dreaded Assignation. That never happened, did it? She was visited by much terror this past year, but not by the Sorcerer.

Yet here was Ciro, a stranger, albeit a Wizard, saying the same words that Tanta Bron had. The child born in the midst of the storm. The child he would want.

"You know who I am?" she asked timidly.

He nodded. "I know what I’ve sensed in you from the first time we met. You’ve been marked by powers much greater than mine. The hand of Ixari lays surely upon your shoulders. But the strength of the Khal is there as well."

"Tanta Bron insisted I place Tarkir’s stone as primary in all my circles."

"Wise woman. She protected you well. Well enough that even I couldn’t discern who you are, Khamsin.

Only that you walk a path that only a chosen one could walk."

She asked one of the questions Tanta Bron never answered. "Why, Ciro? Why me? Is it because I’m a halfling, because my father was a Hill Raider?"

"Your father wasn’t a Hill Raider."

Khamsin turned, shocked. "But the raid! My mother was raped during the raid!"

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