The Gauntlet by Karen Chance Read Free Book Online Page B

spilled any of the
precious liquid. “I didn’t even know. She was dressed in rags, her
hair was dirty, her face was haggard--she must have been in
disguise and was picked up in a raid.”
    “But do not magical objects gave off a
residue your people can feel?”
    “Yes, but the ward isn’t like a charm—it
holds no magic itself when not active. And non-magical items can
occasionally be missed in searches.”
    “But if it’s so powerful, why didn’t the
witch use it herself?”
    “She was gagged,” Gillian said, thinking of
the disgusting scrap of cloth she’d pulled from the eldest’s mouth.
“And by the time I freed her, she was too weak to fight. Goddess
knows how long she was in there.”
    “So in return for your help, she saddles you
with the very thing most likely to get you killed,” he said in
disgust.
    “She wanted to save her people, and she
needed someone strong enough to use the ward!”
    “Then I suggest you do so. There are four
guards in the chamber below and at least five in the corridor
outside—and that is assuming no one is hiding under a silence
shield. Above us is the roof of the keep, guarded by four more men
who can be called down if needed. And then there’s the two below
the window, who are doubtless hoping we’ll poke our heads out again
and get them blown off!”
    “ Fifteen men ?” Gillian repeated,
appalled. That was three times as many as she’d expected,
especially with an escape in progress. What were they all doing
here?
    “Fifteen war mages.” He smiled grimly. “There
is a price to be paid for breaking into the most secure part of the
prison.”
    “But…but how do we to get past so many?”
    “We don’t. I can take three, possibly four
with your help. No more. We need a diversion to draw the rest away
to have any chance at all.”
    Gillian licked her lips, staring at the blank
space on her arm where the third spiral of the triskelion should
have been. The ward looked oddly lopsided without it, the pattern
disjointed and incomplete. Like the connection it was meant to
make.
    “I…don’t think I can,” she confessed.
    “I beg your pardon?” the vampire asked
politely.
    “This isn’t a complete ward,” she explained.
“The triskelion should have three arms, one for each of the three
great elements. And this has but two. The other hasn’t manifested,
and until it does, the ward won’t function.”
    The vampire jumped off the table and grabbed
her arm. “You’re sure it had three, when you saw it on the old
woman’s wrist?”
    “Her title was Eldest and yes! They all
do.”
    “Then where is the other one?” he demanded
suspiciously.
    “Well, I don’t have it hidden in my shift!”
she said, snatching her arm back. It throbbed with every beat of
her heart, a pounding, staccato rhythm that was getting faster by
the minute. But she couldn’t afford to panic. Not here, not now.
She had to figure this out, and there was an answer—she knew it.
Magic had rules and it followed them strictly. She just had to find
the ones that applied here.
    The vampire must have thought the same,
because he straightened his shoulders and took a breath. “How is
the sigil usually passed from person to person?”
    “There’s a ritual,” she said, trying to
concentrate. “The last time it happened in my coven, I was a child.
My mother wouldn’t allow me to attend—she thought it too
gruesome—”
    “Gruesome?”
    Gillian hugged her arms around herself. “The
new Mother has to run a gauntlet, to prove her fitness to lead. She
must summon each of the three elements to her aid, and each time
she calls one successfully, that element becomes active on the
sigil.”
    “What is shocking about that?”
    “If she fails, she dies,” Gillian said
simply, her chin lifting. Her tone challenged him to denigrate the
covens’ traditions as the Circle constantly did. Barbaric, they
called them, and backward and crude. But it was for instances like
this one that the ritual had