LITMIR.BIZ

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icy stone step any longer.

      The grandame regarded the brimming bucket askance, then grudgingly widened the door and admitted her. Elaira followed her shuffling step over worn runners of carpet, then up a servant’s back stair. The attic landing led into a tiny room with a salt-streaked dormer window. The blankets on the truckle bed were moth-eaten, but clean. Beyond a washstand appointed with a battered tin cup and pitcher, the board floor was bare. Impressed by the size of the dust batts caught in the unswept corners, Elaira sincerely hoped the last occupant had earned her keep carding and spinning.

      ‘Candles cost extra,’ the landlady informed. ‘Water’s drawn from the crank well in the yard. Fetch and haul what you need for yourself.’

      ‘Thank you.’ Elaira stepped over the scuffed wooden threshold, cloak tucked against the drafts that sang through the gapped panes, and rippled the cobwebs over her head. Her breath scribed white plumes in the gray filtered light, and the basin wore armor-clad ice. She deposited her bucket of seawater and kelp, then latched the plank door after the landlady’s departure. Still badly shaken, she scarcely cared that the garret room was unheated. Far worse, to try a course of questionable practice in the precinct of a Koriani sisterhouse.

      ‘Dharkaron avert!’ She was no small bit frightened by her plan to enact reckless upset to Selidie’s expectations.

      Elaira squared her shoulders, firmed quaking nerves, and raked the wet kelp from the bucket. She piled the mass by the frozen basin. Next, she unhooked the tin cup from the washstand and scooped it full of raw seawater. The tarred bucket remained under half-full, its handspan depth just sufficient. Elaira dug through her pack, fingers shaking. She removed the silk-wrapped weight of the scrying sphere. The dread burn of its active sigils of command cast a bone-chilling ache, even through layered cloth.

      In naked trepidation, on a pent breath of terror, she eased the veiled quartz into the saltwater bath in the bucket.

      Sparks flew from first contact. A whine of released power threw off a hot wind as the sigils of binding tore asunder. Elaira jerked back a singed hand, while the water spat and roiled to the blast of unwound coils of energy. Crouched on her heels, her blistered hand cradled, she held on to hope that the quartz sphere could withstand the liberating force as the sigils dissolved without cracking.

      ‘Be free,’ she whispered in earnest encouragement. ‘Let the spells of coercion be lifted.’

      If the sphere had been loaned to help track Rathain’s prince, she would employ her own skills, leaving no loophole for unasked assistance through the seals of a preset binding. There would be no fertile ground for slipped steps, no avenue left for blind snares. The Prime’s bitter bargain to guard Arithon’s life would not be won upon hidden traps or sly trickery. By nightfall this day, Elaira avowed she would cast off all resource upon which to hang the obligation of her order’s oath of debt. If the hour ever came when for wisdom and compassion she must claim her given option to betray her heart’s love, she would use her own power by free choice. Though she die in the effort, she would shoulder a future that relied on naught else but the course of her cognizant will.

      The steps she must tread held no recorded precedent. Each minute brought dreadful uncertainty. The quartz she had cast to its fate in the pail offered no safe reassurance. While it thrashed and rattled and shook through its passage to a cleared state of neutrality, Elaira sweated and hoped. The striking eruption of violence appalled her, as the virtue of salt water stripped out the yoked power of uncounted active sigils. Every instinct shrilled with alarm. The process appeared to be lasting too long. She had been a six-year-old child when the order’s seniors in Morvain had inducted her for her talents. All her Koriani arts had been learned by rote, her specialized experience aligned for an herbalist’s practice.

      Closed in the barren solitude of a two-penny attic chamber, the quartz sphere her need had put to the test delivered a stark lesson in humility. Elaira pressed shaken hands to her heart. ‘Ath’s mercy, forgive!’ She realized how little she understood the coiling depths of the powers she engaged day to day, without thought, sheltered beneath the insular traditions fostered by the sisterhood.

      Elaira endured, helpless and afraid as she measured the shocking scope of her ignorance. Compassionate care proved inadequate; her knowledge of healing fell woefully short. She had no advanced skills to ease the crystal through its rough passage. The efficacy of her talent fed through runes and seals, harnessed by the time-tested rituals that aligned cause to effect and bridged the veil in chained constructs that magnified will into raised power.

      ‘Bide whole!’ she entreated the traumatized sphere. ‘Please. Don’t let my folly lead to lasting harm.’

      As though speech keyed response, the tempest in the bucket subsided. The churned water smoothed and settled to rest, with the crystal’s clear structure unfractured. Elaira crouched on her heels, her limpid relief spiked through by renewed trepidation. The release just effected would not escape notice. Any flux of shed energy deflected the lane current, and the dispersal of worked sigils always released a distinct signature. The peer sister assigned to keep routine watch would recognize that imprint. She might wait until sundown and list the incident amid her routine report. Or she might be a scryer gifted with foresight and sound the alarm at the prompt of sharp-eyed experience.

      Elaira wiped dampened palms on her sleeves, then unstuck the wisped hair from her temples. Time was her enemy. If she paused for one moment to nurse her faint nerves, a Koriani senior might break down her door under outraged instruction to stop her. For the willful step of blanking the scrying sphere posed but the first stage of necessity. Her next course of action was going to spark fury, if not an incensed cry for arraignment.

      She shoved back to her feet. A questing sense of Arithon’s awareness ranged in chills over her skin. She distanced his concern, too terrified to dwell on the chance of obstructive ramifications. Worst case, she might face the supreme punishment for oathbreaking, if Prime Selidie’s promise of unfettered choice did not allow her to claim full initiative. Elaira braced against the washstand, too wrung with dread to question the price she might pay for unbending self-honesty. The tin cup with its fateful cargo of seawater all but slipped from her nerveless grasp. She forced her wrist steady. One by one, she stamped down the gathering fears that threatened to shred her resolve. Her love for Prince Arithon was caught in the breach. She dared do no less than employ concrete safeguards.

      Elaira unhooked the silver chain at her neck and drew off the strung quartz that served as her personal spell crystal. Talisman for her power, carrier of the seals and sigils which held the focal point for her talent, the sliver of stone had been her companion since the hour she passed her novice initiation. Today, the flaring warmth of the stone’s presence engendered no surge of confidence. Set against the Prime Matriarch’s insidious designs, its familiar quiet radiance masked pitfalls and dangers. Elaira could not evade the harsh truth. The crystal itself belonged to the order. It would be reclaimed and cleared at her death, then reissued to another enchantress. The fact its possession was a borrowed resource could pose an unseen liability. Elaira poised the tin cup. Shaking, she prepared to reject the temptation that its everyday usage might serve to trap Arithon under Koriani obligation.

      She would clear the quartz, living, and unbind its attunements, and bear the gamut of unknown consequences.

      Poised over salt water, the crystal looked innocent, a flashy bauble that sheared light into rainbow refractions.

      In reality, its function sustained an intricate balance of forces. A personal spell quartz bonded with its wearer. The complexity of its matrix evolved with use, often aligned with prerogatory directives imprinted by the will of the Prime’s Senior Circle. Elaira fought ebbing courage. Twenty-eight years ago, Morriel Prime had selected her for longevity. The crystal held haplessly dangling had bindings laid into its fields that sustained and renewed living tissue. To clear out the quartz would disrupt patterned energies, with the recoiling effects of unsanctioned release rewritten in her hapless flesh.

      All her experience with healing and craft lent no guidance to predict the near future. She had no grace for soul-searching thought, and no safe chance to seek deeper knowledge. The cleansing properties

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