The Silver Glove by Suzy McKee Charnas Read Free Book Online

people on the street, shadow-less and unfocused in mind, lost to some wicked spell!”
    She turned up another row of cards: people with swords, all upside down, and a monster card labeled The Devil. I didn’t like to look at them, but Gran studied them closely, frowning, as she went on.
    â€œHe’s a very busy fellow, our Dr. Brightner. He has a whole network of clinics, and other operations too, designed to bring people to him. Especially discarded people that nobody would miss much, you see. Dirty Rose was just telling me about a certain shelter that’s been started for the homeless here in the city. It’s operated out of a restaurant, of all things; Brightner has a sense of humor, it seems. This is not always a recommendation. At any rate, street people who get fed there come back without their shadows.”
    â€œI thought you said nobody notices,” I said, “because of the spell—the glamour.”
    â€œMost don’t. Rose sees because she’s got a touch of true sight, mad as she may be. And what she sees frightens her, as well it might! This man Brightner is the worst sort of black magician. He’s raiding our ignorant and unsuspecting world for purposes of his own.”
    â€œBut what good is taking people’s shadows?” I said, trying to remember if I’d seen anybody without a shadow lately. Nobody came to mind.
    Gran turned over another card and said angrily, half to herself, I think, “It will turn out to be some sort of slavery, you can count on it. He takes their shadows to serve as fetches when he wants them.”
    â€œWhat’s a ‘fetch’?”
    â€œThe shadows will be sent to fetch him the souls of the original owners, and the poor souls will have to come! What for, exactly, I can’t tell yet, but the signs are clear: it’s nothing good.”
    I was appalled and fascinated at the same time. “I thought only the Devil did that: souls, you know? He’s not —”
    â€œOh, fiddle, of course not,” Gran said irritably. “He’s a thoroughly bad man, and a clever one.”
    â€œThen what does he want—well, souls for?”
    â€œThat’s part of what I must find out,” Gran said. “The sort of folk he’s after—old people, street people—suggests that he’s not interested in their bodies. Which might mean he has other bodies he means to lock their poor captive souls up in.”
    â€œUgh,” I said. “What kind of bodies?”
    Gran grimaced. “Giant lobsters on Ganymede, for all I know. Where’s your imagination?”
    â€œYuck,” I said. “How could anybody do that, even to people he barely knows?”
    Gran made an impatient sound. “I told you, he’s a necromancer. That’s the kind of thing they do .”
    â€œWell, somebody should stop him,” I said.
    â€œWe’d better,” Gran said, moving the cards around. “We must.”
    â€œWe?” I sat back from the rows of colorful cards. “Wait a minute. You found out about all this in Sorcery Hall, right? Aren’t all those wizards there going to do something about it?”
    Gran sighed. “They’re very busy at the moment, lovie, with something else: a war, a wizard war in another place and on a scale that simply dwarfs us and our concerns. Their resources are already stretched very thin. I’m afraid they have no time for a little skirmish here.”
    â€œSkirmish!” I objected. “But this is a terrible problem, you just said so. How can they ignore us because of some dumb war someplace? That’s not fair!”
    â€œNo, but it’s the way things are, so we’d best not sit here wringing our hands. We have our work cut out for us, that’s the truth.” She sighed again. “I wish I were younger. So much for the golden years.”
    I was too scared to protest anymore.
    â€œDon’t gape, child,”