Hidden Warrior by Lynn Flewelling Read Free Book Online Page B

to travel. You’d better keep to your room until he leaves. I wouldn’t put it past Orun to have sent us a spy.”
    “Nor would I,” said Iya, looking in at the door. “Before you go into hiding, though, would you come upstairs? I’ve something to show you. Privately,” she added, as Ki started after him.
    Tobin threw his friend an apologetic look as he followed her out.
    “What is it?” he asked as soon as they were in the corridor.
    “There are things we must speak of while there is still time.” She paused. “Bring the doll, please.”
    Tobin did as she asked and they continued upstairs. Arkoniel met them in the workroom and to Tobin’s surprise, he was not alone. Lhel sat at the long table just behind him. Everyone looked very serious, but he was glad to see her, all the same.
    “You have call Brother?” asked Lhel, and he guessed that she already knew the answer.
    “No,” Tobin admitted.
    “Call now.”
    Tobin hesitated, then spoke the words in a nervous rush.
    Brother appeared in the corner farthest from the door. He was thin and ragged, but Tobin could feel the cold power of his presence from across the room.
    “Well, what do you think?” asked Iya.
    Lhel squinted hard at Brother, then shrugged. “I tell you the binding stronger now. So he stronger, too.”
    “I wonder if Ki is still able to see him?” murmured Arkoniel.
    “I won’t have him around Ki.” Tobin turned angrily on the ghost. “I won’t call you at all, ever, unless you promise never to hurt him again! I don’t care what Lhel says!” He shook the doll at Brother. “Promise, or you can stay away and starve.”
    Tobin saw a flicker of hatred in the ghost’s black eyes, but it was directed at the wizards, not at him.
    “No one saw him in Tobin’s sickroom,” Iya was saying, as if she hadn’t noticed his outburst.
    “Those have the eye see him more now,” said Lhel. “And he make others see when he wants.”
    Tobin looked at Brother again, noting how the lamplight seemed to touch him the same way it did the rest of them; it never had before. “He looks more—real, somehow.”
    “Be harder to put you apart, comes the time, but must be so.”
    For a moment curiosity overcame his anger. “Come here,” he told the ghost. Tobin reached to touch him; but as always, his hand found only colder air. Brother grinned at him. He looked more like an animal baring its teeth.
    “Go away!” Tobin ordered, and was relieved when the spiteful ghost obeyed. “Can I go now?”
    “A moment more, if you please,” said Arkoniel. “You remember how I promised to teach you to guard your thoughts? It’s time we had that lesson.”
    “But it’s not magic. You said so, remember?”
    “Why do you fear magic so, Tobin?” asked Iya. “It’s protected you all these years. And wonderful things can be done with it! You’ve seen that for yourself. With a wave of my hand, I can make fire where there is no wood, or food in the wilderness. Why do you fear it?”
    Because magic meant surprises and fear, sorrow and danger, Tobin thought. But he couldn’t tell them that; he didn’t want them to know what power they had over him. So he just shrugged.
    “Many magics, keesa,” Lhel said softly, and he caught a flicker of the secret symbols on her cheeks. “You wise to be respecting. Some magic good, some evil. But we do no evil with you, keesa. Make you safe.”
    “And this isn’t real magic, just a protection against it,” Arkoniel assured him. “All you have to do is imagine something very clearly, make a picture in your head. Can you imagine the sea for me?”
    Tobin thought of the harbor at Ero at dawn, with the great trading ships riding at anchor and the small fishing boats bobbing around them like skimmer beetles.
    He felt the briefest cool touch on his brow, but no one had moved.
    Iya chuckled. “That was very good.”
    “I tell you,” Lhel said.
    Tobin opened his eyes. “That’s all?”
    “That’s a beginning, and a very