From the Ashes by Gareth K Pengelly Read Free Book Online

shown no signs of mercy, only a mounting, dizzying rage, like that of the unstoppable, surging ocean. And, as a spirit, she was undoubtedly impossible to kill.
                  Yet he pressed on.
                  “I must be allowed entry to their realm. For the fate of not just one world, but countless rests upon them.”
                  Nagini laughed, soft, mocking.
                  “What matter to us, the affairs of mortal men, hmm? We existed a billion years before you. We will continue a billion years after you are gone. I have seen it.” Her eyes glimmered, dark, inky pools of forbidden knowledge. “Now leave here. If you force me to ask again, then I shall have to kill you.”
                  Damn this creature; for a spirit of water she was always thirsting for a fight. Stone snarled slightly, the sound reverberating loud and deep in the cave, sending visible ripples through the water in which they stood.
                  “Fine. Then you shall have to kill me. But be warned; I’m less easy a prospect than I was a hundred years ago…”
                  The sultry, siren of death smiled as she opened her hands, long, black talons extending from slender fingers.
     
    ***
     
    The sweet smell of wood-smoke had her smiling as she made her way from the Hall of the Elders and out, walking down the path that bisected the Retreat. The flavours of the wood were subtly spiced, different here to the wood she’d ever smelt elsewhere on her travels. But then again, everything was different here, in the Valley. Everything was more vibrant, more alive, for this was where the Elements made their home.
                  Though, of course, Gwenna was biased; for aside from her brief stay in Tulador and her captivity in Merethia, this valley was all she’d ever known.
                  She walked past houses, shops on either side of the path, knowing every single doorframe, every single window with the familiarity of old friends, nodding with a smile to people she’d known for all twenty years of her life as they went about their business. The Retreat was a small settlement, having not grown much over the years. How long had it been since  Wrynn had founded the place? Gwenna’s parents had been second generation, she knew that at least.
                  The thought still gave her sadness, at times, that she never really got a chance to know those that had conceived her. Her mother, a fair-haired Hills-woman she’d been told, had passed away with the very act of bringing her into the world. Her father, a tall warrior of Plains descent had taken off into the mountains soon after in his grief, leaving her to the care of Wrynn. Never to return. Perhaps it was this loss of roots, this sense of disconnection that had caused the red-haired girl to take so seriously to her studies.
                  For Gwenna,  more so even than the rest of the trainee shamans of the Retreat, Wrynn had been a father-figure as well as a teacher. In her youth, she had hung to his every word, absorbing his wisdom like a sponge. This, combined with her innate talent, is what made her so good. She was the best, unbeatable in challenge. Never coming across a situation she couldn’t handle, despite her years. This is why she had been chosen to lead the mission to Tulador.
                  A shudder went through her at the memory of her capture and subsequent interrogation. A shiver, a start that had caused her to awake, so many times, sweating and wrapped in her sheets of a night. Even now, a year later, she could never truly tell whether it was ecstasy or agony, horror or thrill that coursed through her each time she brought up the violation. Those burning blue eyes, so cold, so sensual, yet filled with such limitless potential for evil, they haunted her, mocked her, appearing behind the lids of her eyes from time to