The Brush of Black Wings by Grace Draven Read Free Book Online Page B

curved blades she’d seen Kurmans
wear at the hip—designed to fight from horseback with rapid draw
and slashing strokes. Unlike the temple luminescence, the light
flitting across the blade crackled and shot jagged bolts down the
temper line toward the tip.
    “ Megiddo Anastas,” she said in her
dream, uttering the name she found scrawled across parchment
retrieved from a lich’s lair.
    A small voice, the faintest echo of hers,
cried out in the dream. “Wake up! Wake up!”
    The dream held fast, and the man she addressed
as Megiddo lifted his head and met her gaze with a haughty one of
his own. Her breathing quickened in both dread and fascination. He
was as she remember, yet different. The same princely features but
the eyes not quite so mad or inhuman and as deep a blue as the
coldest sea.
    His slow smile sent that warning voice inside
her into paroxyms. “This isn’t a dream! WAKE UP!” Martise ignored
it, entranced as she had never been before by any
sorcery.
    Megiddo’s smile widened, as if he heard the
same voice and noted her disregard of its desperate command. “You
know my name, kashaptu,” he said in a dialect of old Glimming.
“Come forth and know me better.” He held out a hand, beckoning
her.
    She rose from the bed, silent and unresisting,
even as that inner voice screamed in her head. The floor lay icy
under her bare feet, invisible drafts swirling up her legs so that
she shivered. Her thin leine offered no protection against the
cold. Still, she obeyed the command implicit in the sarrum’s gesture, bound to him by the invisible shackles of dark
sorcery.
    Silhara slept behind her, unnaturally still
and unaware of the bewitchment taking place in his bedchamber.
Martise tried to call to him, but the words remained locked in her
throat, silenced by the same spellwork that propelled her to dress
quietly and creep out of the room on slippered feet.
    Two visions played before her eyes – Neith’s
hallways blanketed in a darkness so thick, she could scoop it with
a spoon, and the temple in the forest, unbroken and occupied by an
armored demon whose lips moved in a soundless chant and whose gaze
trapped her in unwilling obedience.
    She was a puppet tugged and pulled, her
physical body subject to the player’s hand. Her spirit recoiled and
fought against the compulsion that sent her downstairs, through the
great hall and vestibule and into the loggia frosted in new fallen
snow and iced by moonlight.
    A soft growl sounded nearby. Cael followed
her, staying just out of reach. His muzzle wrinkled into a snarl,
revealing teeth sharp and strong enough to shred flesh and snap
bone. His red eyes watched her, unblinking.
    Stay away, Cael, she wanted to say, but
like her attempt to call out Silhara’s name, the words stuck in her
throat. The magefinder didn’t attack her, but his fur bristled
stiff off his back and neck. He tracked her as she raced for the
wood and the irresistible command of a demon king.
    Her vision of him, standing calm and watchful
within the unbroken temple wavered and finally disappeared,
replaced by the reality of broken stone and a man no longer clad in
armor but in a cloak of tortured souls. He offered a pale, graceful
hand, and even though her mind didn’t translate all his words, her
spirit clearly understood him. “Join me, witch of the wild grove.
Set me free.”
    Silhara’s wards, a duller red than Cael’s
eyes, pulsed a warning. To cross their barrier was to die, and
still Martise stepped closer to the boundary. The warning voice
clanging inside her head incessantly shrieked and begged her to
stop. Her terror, the catalyst that always brought forth her Gift,
didn’t work this time, and the magic that had saved her more than
once from both death and abduction refused to manifest.
    She felt its presence, a solid weight of power
that, for whatever reason, coiled in a tight knot inside her and
did nothing, even as her hand touched the mage-wards, split their
fatal threads, and