LITMIR.BIZ

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boy spun around.

      A lady in shimmering violet robes stood limned in the moonlight by the hay byre. She cupped a jewel as cool as a glacier. Her long hair was braided and pinned into a coil the gloss black of a raven against her cameo skin.

      Fionn Areth cried out. His terror redoubled as the crystal in the lady’s hands exploded into blank darkness. Sight became blinded. Ears became deaf. Launched to reflexive flight, the boy dislodged a rock from his perch on the dry wall. He overbalanced, fell, while the blackness expanded. Swallowed and suffocated, he never uttered the scream that struggled to burst from his throat.

      Elaira caught Fionn Areth’s limp body before the child struck the ground. ‘Merciful maker, that was ill done!’ She glared past the dark, tousled head now cradled against her shoulder.

      Unperturbed, Lirenda shielded the Skyron aquamarine inside a fold of her mantle. ‘I’d think you would thank me. If not, then you needn’t have argued my preference for sending him out on valerian.’

      ‘You could have broken his bones, or much worse,’ Elaira snapped. ‘If he takes any harm from your cavalier handling, may Dharkaron Avenger demand due redress in his name.’

      ‘Don’t welter in pity. We have what we came for.’ Dark-lashed topaz eyes examined the child’s slack form with contempt. ‘You’d rather he shouted and roused the herd dogs to alarm? I’d thought we agreed that our task would go better if the household stayed soundly sleeping.’

      ‘The poor boy’s half-frozen,’ Elaira flared back. ‘If we had to draw him outside through a dream summons, you could at least have left him a moment of clear thought to find himself suitable clothing.’

      ‘Loan him your jacket if you fear he’ll take cold.’ In malice, her senior added, ‘You’re sure to catch fleas for the kindness. Though given the uncivilized life on these moors, I suppose you’d have memorized the sigil of remedy for vermin out of necessity.’

      ‘We don’t have your city population of rats,’ Elaira pointed out, her jacket already stripped off. ‘They breed more pests than the herd dogs.’

      Lirenda picked a disdainful course between the broomstraw and briars, skirts raised to keep runs from the silk and her work satchel slung from her shoulder. Her kid boots she could do little to spare; the path through the orchard was a rut of gouged mud, slotted by goats and heaped with dung dropped by the steading’s milch cow. ‘Just don’t lag behind. We need to be finished before Althain’s Warden completes the new seals on that grimward.’

      Elaira ignored the admonishment. ‘Shame on us if Sethvir’s awareness is all that holds our order to common decency. Forgive me,’ she added to the child as she wrapped his sturdy form in the fleece still warmed from her body. On impulse, she retrieved his dropped practice stick and leaned it against the wall where he could find it. ‘The seeress who cast your birth prophecy was most wise. You’ll need to start young to master the skills of a warrior.’

      ‘Stop wasting time!’ Lirenda poised by the canted gate of the orchard. Sulky irritation sharpened her face as the moorland elements played havoc with her costly clothes and fine grooming. ‘I want the seal wards in place before our young decoy sits up and recovers his wits.’

      ‘Should he waken, I’ll manage quite well without help.’ Mud and briars posed Elaira no hindrance as she followed in Lirenda’s footsteps. She dawdled where she could, well aware that her peer’s flighty nerves stemmed from worries of Fellowship vigilance. Asandir and Traithe might be engaged in distant lands across the continent. But the discorporate mage Luhaine would not stay diverted at Althain Tower for one second longer than Sethvir required to emerge from the grimward and reclaim the lapsed gift of his earth sense. Until Fionn Areth yielded willing consent, one Sorcerer’s notice could make ruins of Morriel’s plot.

      Elaira dragged her feet as much as she dared, though she guessed her effort was futile. Lirenda was always meticulous in allowing a wide margin for mischance. The spiteful satisfaction offered small recompense, that for each minute the Koriani senior was delayed, the wind tugged wild wisps from her knotted, jet braid and chapped her pampered complexion.

      Under the blown ink boughs of the orchard, the grasses lay tangled and damp. Frost-withered dock stalks crunched underfoot. The faint, silver foil of moonlight stamped through knotted trees and lapped light upon shade like ethereal wisps of cast floss. The wind smelled of winter in waiting. Each ice-sharp gust razed and rattled through the bare branches. The stars were snagged pinpricks, their beauty no boon on this night. In Elaira’s dark thoughts, cruel rain and black storm should have dogged every step since the demands of her vows forced compliance. Had her voice been her own, she would have screamed for Fionn Areth to waken and flee, and call down the wrath of his family.

      No saving slip of good fortune arose. The stayspell held the boy quiet without mishap, until Lirenda found a clearing where a deadfall had been hewn down for firewood. The hollow where the roots had torn free offered shelter and natural seclusion.

      ‘Lay the child there.’ The disdainful flick of a finger indicated the boy’s head should orient northward. Under the waning moon, Lirenda seemed a carved ivory figure, mantled in ebony silk. She opened the satchel and unveiled a weighty, terminated rock crystal, chosen to channel the spells of transformation. The bared quartz seemed a flame’s heart sculpted in ice, paned in frost-polished facets. Like every major focus held in Koriani service, the stone had been mined on a world far distant from Athera. The etched mapwork of its natural formation had been buffed to a polish to obviate any unwanted features of character. The jewel was conformed as a tool, subservient to the order’s dedicated cause to further the needs of humanity.

      Sick at heart, Elaira settled the boy on a soft patch of grass. ‘He’ll need to be conscious,’ she reminded. Dread lent her a stripping new edge of hostility. ‘That’s if you’re still planning to go through the pretense of asking for his consent.’

      ‘Wards first.’ This was no sheltered sisterhouse tower, where the metallic, formed rings of runes and spell seals laid down permanent defenses. Lirenda shot back a reproachful glance as she knelt beside Fionn Areth. She set the quartz point to one side, then unpacked an assortment of thin copper rods. These she assembled into a pyramid. A wide silver ring stained black with tarnish formed the structure’s apex, its position arrayed above the boy’s forehead. ‘Set the perimeter guard spells,’ she commanded, her lashes half-lidded in concentration as she placed the large crystal point downward in the cradling band of dark silver.

      Elaira accepted the four directional tetrahedrons of cut hematite, then the pairing rods of black tourmaline whose screening virtues would defend against psychic attack. She cupped the burden of each separate mineral and invoked the focus of her personal quartz to recharge their properties of alignment. In a ritual older than written memory, she began the steps to lay out a circle of protection. East, to south, to west, to north, she demarked the points of direction. The tourmaline wands she placed like black arrows beyond the outer perimeter; at the base of each one, the hematite tetrahedrons, heavy to the hand as dark lead. If the properties of the tourmaline became overwhelmed, the next crystal in line would send harmful influence to ground before any breach could disrupt the innermost circle.

      Invocation and seal raised a small spark to stand sentinel at each point of the compass. ‘Anient,’ she intoned, the Paravian invocation for unity. The summoned flecks of light bled round the ring in an active spiral, deosil. South met west, west meshed to north, north arced to east, and east closed the circle back to the point of origin, aligned by the glimmer of the polestar. A soft halo of phosphor glowed faintly pink and joined the four arcs into an unbroken figure.

      ‘Fariennt tyr,’ Elaira invoked over the traced runes of the set seal. ‘So be this construct, as I have defined.’

      ‘Begin.’ Lirenda engaged the energy closure, and the wardspell meshed into completion. She leaned over the rods supporting the large crystal and scribed a symbol into the base. A whispered invocation and a breath keyed the cipher’s activation. The quartz flared a sultry, actinic yellow. As its matrix imprinted and magnified the transmission,

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