Heart's Magic by Gail Dayton Read Free Book Online Page A

She put
magic into her voice to make it carry. "You are not worthy to be
magister of the wizard's guild."
    He threw another fireball.
Elinor hurled her rowan wand to meet it, smothering the fire with
her magic this time as the wood crisped to ash, to keep it from
injuring any of the spectators. She drew the cherry wand and traced
a figure eight in the air.
    The spectators' shouts of
alarm died down, became whispers laid over murmuring as she walked
forward and Cranshaw scrambled away. He bumped against the railing
containing the crowd and changed his angle of retreat, backing
toward the dais.
    He dug a third fireball
from his pocket. Elinor tossed her cherry wand in the air, hurried
forward a few steps and caught it again, pulling it sharply in
toward her. As she hoped, a net of magic woven by her wand
tightened around him.
    "You have proven yourself a
coward and a cheat," she proclaimed, "and very probably
insane."
    The net kept him from
moving his arms and from walking, but it didn't stop him from
cracking the hollow clay fireball with his thumb. Unlike Harry's
firebombs which had to be ignited independently after they were
opened, these bombs had been spelled to ignite automatically when
cracked. Illegal fireballs made for the use of
non-alchemists.
    The fire burst forth,
catching Cranshaw's clothing, hands--everything inside the net with
him.
    "No!" Elinor dropped both
wands, scrabbling in her quiver for the ashwood wand.
    " Extinguo! " burst from half a hundred
voices, Harry's louder than even Gathmann's as they leaped off the
dais and came dashing down the broad central aisle. The fires
burning Cranshaw quenched instantly.
    "My bag!" Elinor called to
Amanusa, who had been put in charge of it for the duration of the
challenge.
    "And mine!" Rosato was
there beside her.
    The magic in the ash wand
sliced through the cherrywood binding, freeing Cranshaw to collapse
on the stone floor. Fortunately, he was unconscious. Elinor knelt,
shoving her hoop-free skirts beneath and behind her so she could
begin tearing his clothing away.
    "Here!" Dodd protested.
"What are you doing?"
    "Saving his life," Rosato
snapped. "Back away."
    "Norwood, keep this area
clear," Harry ordered, pushing his way through the crowd that had
gathered close, leading the way for the two master sorcerers
bearing the wizards' bags.
    Pearl Carteret, the newest
sorceress, had Elinor's bag open and the jar of salve she wanted in
hand, ready to pass over. "You're going to have to make up a vat of
this stuff," she said.
    "Or people will have to
stop trying to burn us," Elinor agreed. She opened the jar as
Rosato finished stripping Cranshaw's clothing away from his
blackened flesh, leaving him a modicum of modesty. The fire had
burned only along his right side, from shoulder to knee, but it had
burned him severely. Elinor dipped a handful of salve from the
jar.
    "I have heard about this--"
Rosato took the jar when Elinor gave it to him. "I had hoped never
to see anyone burned badly enough to watch it at work."
    Elinor began with
Cranshaw's hand, the worst of it, burned almost to a claw. Rosato
moved to begin at his ankle. The two sorcerers huddled together for
a moment, then Amanusa touched Cranshaw's mouth, pushing her finger
just inside. Pearl touched a bloody crack in the wizard's skin with
a piece of tissue paper. Amanusa wiped her finger on the paper and
they set it on the stone floor a little ways off for Harry to burn
with a flick of his finger.
    "I'll monitor his
condition," Amanusa said, sinking into that light trance that meant
she was "riding the blood."
    Elinor would never
understand sorcery. Not how it worked nor why anyone would want to
use it. Good thing she was a wizard. She went back for more
ointment. "Spread it thin," she murmured to Rosato. "It's all there
is till I make more."
    " Si. "
    "His system is suffering a
great deal of shock," Amanusa said from her distance inside
Cranshaw's body.
    "Ah. Yes." Rosato held his
hands in midair, shiny with