Ragnarock by Stephen Kenson Read Free Book Online Page B

thrown over the railing on which she leaned as she looked down at the darkened floor below.
    "Val—" Talon began, but she cut him off.
    "How do you handle it, Talon?"
    "What?" Talon was taken aback by the question.
    "The magic. How do you handle it?"
    "You mean doing magic or being a mage?"
    "Both." she said.
    Talon shrugged. "I dunno. I just do. I learned to deal with it a long time ago, and I learned to use magic from a very good teacher. After that, I learned stuff in college and on the streets."
    "Did you always want it?" Val asked.
    Talon took a couple steps closer and stood next to her at the railing.
    "No." he said. "I mean, every kid at one time or another wants to be Awakened, I guess, to find out they have the Talent. But when mine first showed up, I thought I was going crazy. I was just a kid at the time, fifteen, sixteen. I'd spent most of my life in a Catholic-run orphanage and my head was full of weird ideas about what magic was. When I started seeing things, feeling things, I figured I was losing it, or maybe even that there was something really wrong with me."
    "But you figured out how to deal with it." Val said, not looking at him. "You're a mage now."
    "With some time, and a lot of help."
    "I never figured out how to handle it." she said quietly.
    "You . . . you have the Talent?" Talon asked, stunned. He'd never gotten any hint of magical ability from Val.
    She shook her head. "Had, not have. I did have it, though, once." She took a shuddering breath and let it out slowly, leaning more heavily against the railing. "You were raised Catholic. Well, I can tell you, that's nothing compared to where I grew up. Ever heard of Westphalia?"
    Talon nodded. "Theocracy, isn't it? In the German Alliance?"
    "Right in one." Val said glumly. "Though most of the traditional religions managed to deal with the Awakening sooner or later, the church in Westphalia became a refuge for all the true die-hards who were convinced that the Awakened were the spawn of Satan, that magic was evil. They broke off from the rest of Germany to protect themselves from the corruption they saw in the rest of the world. Total religious fanatics. I grew up there."
    Talon kept his mouth shut and just let Val talk.
    "When I was about fifteen, I started seeing things. Little things at first, then more and more. I could tell what people were feeling, just by looking at them, and I didn't always like what I saw. If I'd just kept my mouth shut . . . but I couldn't. I didn't know what was happening to me. I didn't know any better. I told my father and he took me to the parish priest, who told him that I had the devil in me, that I was possessed. They performed exorcisms, and prayed, and carried on, but they couldn't make the visions stop. I could sense how much they feared me, even my own family.
    "I just couldn't take it. So I left. I ran away. I managed to get out of Westphalia and into the German Alliance. I went to the Rhine-Ruhr Megaplex and met up with some people there. Ever been?"
    Talon shook his head. Val smiled slightly and looked down again at the dance floor, lost in memory.
    "It's quite a place, one of the biggest cities there is. Makes Boston look like a town. You can get just about anything you want, provided you've got the cred and you can protect yourself from the other predators who might try to take it away from you.
    "I wasn't so lucky." she said. "I ended up in some bad scenes. You know: chips, hustling, doing whatever you've got to do to stay alive." Her slim fingers caressed the chrome-lipped jack behind her ear. "I don't remember a lot of it. Sometimes I had trouble telling what was real and what was just a sim I was jacking. I probably would have died if somebody hadn't helped me out, kind of like how Jase helped you, Talon.
    "Her name was Estelle, and she was amazing. She was a witch. A lot of people went to her for advice, for card-readings, herbal remedies, drek like that. She saw that I had a touch of the Talent. She helped