Disenchanted by Robert Kroese Read Free Book Online

Her parents were killed when Avaress was overrun by barbarians and the library was destroyed, and she escaped from the capital to Ytrisk with a merchant caravan, offering her services as a bookkeeper in exchange for safe passage out of the capital. Even at the height of the Old Realm, literacy and knowledge of basic mathematics were rare among commoners. Besides, she took up little space and didn’t eat much. She was only ten years old.
    Before she was the Witch of Twyllic, her name was Anna. Anna was essentially a slave to a merchant for two years, but her employer eventually fell afoul of Ytriskian law, and his assets — including Anna — were confiscated. She was put to work as a midwife’s assistant. She had an astonishing memory and had spent most of her childhood devouring the books of the great Library of Avaress; she could recall details from hundreds of the books on subjects from agriculture and anatomy to history and religion. On more than one occasion, she shamed the king’s advisors with her superior knowledge on some obscure matter. But being female, the greatest position she could aspire to in the court was that of head midwife.
    Sometime after she had reached that exalted position, and after eight years of faithful service to the court, she was accused of witchcraft and exiled to the periphery of the kingdom. Witchcraft was one of those obscure crimes that was seen so seldom that court officials worried constantly that they weren’t looking hard enough. If it weren’t for the occasional appearance of someone who clearly fit the definition, no one would even know what a witch looked like.
    The exercise of magic was not technically illegal in Ytrisk; the court occasionally employed diviners and sorcerers for a variety of purposes. It was only dark magic that was met with disapproval. Dark magic was also ill-defined, but in general it seemed to possess at least two of these three characteristics:
1. It didn’t work or had undesirable side effects.
2. It embarrassed someone in power.
3. It was practiced by one’s enemies or a woman.
    Boric, not being a complete idiot, was well aware of the conveniently flexible definition of “dark magic” used by the court, but Anna’s exile had occurred before he was born, and when he ascended to the throne he had bigger things to worry about than the justness of a sentence carried out a quarter of a century earlier. In any case, Boric had figured, the woman should be grateful she was allowed to live. Most witches were executed in a carefully prescribed and logistically complex series of tortures that culminated in the witch being drowned while on fire.
    “I am sorry for your misfortune,” said Boric, “but as you know, the sentence for witchcraft is death. My father showed you considerable mercy in — ”
    “Your father tossed me out like garbage!” spat the witch. “One more word of Toric’s mercy and I’ll pour rabbit stew on your head!”
    “Please,” Boric tried again. “I am sorry for any mistreatment you suffered at the hand of my father.”
    “You were king for thirteen years, Boric. You could have ended my exile at any time.”
    “It is true,” Boric admitted. “However, I was not privy to the details of your case — ”
    “Nor did you make any effort to familiarize yourself with them. In life, you didn’t give me a second thought. But now that you’re dead, you come running to me.”
    “Again, I apologize — ”
    “Cease your wheedling!” the witch spat. “What is it that you expect me to do for you?”
    “I was hoping you could undo my curse. Allow me to die in peace, so that my spirit can rest in the Hall of Avandoor.”
    “Your curse!” hissed the witch. “A curse is something forced upon you, like being exiled in the woods for imagined crimes. What you are experiencing is the downside of a bargain that you entered into with your eyes wide open. What did you think was going to happen when you accepted an enchanted blade from a