The Wizard Hunters by Martha Wells Read Free Book Online Page A

something no one got used to. The damn thing was passing directly over them, as if drawn to the surely near-invisible shape of the car by her fear. It was too dark for a shadow to fall over them but Tremaine gritted her teeth, feeling it anyway. She started as something clanked on the floorboard. “What the hell?” she whispered. The clanking turned into rhythmic clicks.
    “It’s the sphere.” Gerard sounded quietly aghast. He fumbled for it in the dark.
    The Gardier could detect spells and the sphere, old and fading, was held together with nothing but magic. “Kick it,” she urged him.
    “I’d rather not.”
    Tremaine’s stomach twisted with tension. She had seen too many people get blown up to want to die that way. And certainly not with Gerard in the car, and not with the sphere needed by the Institute. Come on , she told it silently, stop clicking at the airship. You‘re going to get us all killed. And no, I’m not being ironic .
    There was one last reluctant click and the sphere shuddered into silence. Gerard breathed, “That was close.”
    Tremaine twisted around on the seat, looking out the back to see the airship passing over the crown of the hill behind them. It must have moved out of the sphere’s range. She took a deep breath in relief, then realized the airship was going in the wrong direction. She frowned, glancing at Gerard. “It’s not going to Vienne?”
    “Bel Garde.” His voice was grim as he turned to look back. “It’s just over that rise, on the other side of the woods.”
    It was a suburb of Vienne, one of the most beautiful. Remembering the last time she had been out there, Tremaine pictured old houses with wild green summer gardens centered around the ruins of an ancient and picturesque stone keep. “There’s nothing there,” she protested.
    She couldn’t read his expression in the dark, but she saw him shake his head. “An arms depot.”
    “Stupid place for an arms depot.” The first blast echoed over the hills, jarring her teeth. The flash lit up the sky for an instant. “Ex-arms depot,” Tremaine muttered, turning around and putting the car back into gear. “How did they know it was there?”
    She heard his tired sigh. “Their intelligence sources are excellent.”
    Wonderful , she thought sourly. She could have lived without knowing the newspapers were right about the spies.
    Tremaine didn’t see the turn for the Institute’s drive until the last instant and skewed the car into it, almost landing them in the ditch.
    “Sorry.” She winced, noticing Gerard was still gripping the dash.
    “That’s quite all right.” He took a deep breath. “Once you get past the bridge, just turn into the woods to the left. We keep the vehicles under the trees to keep from drawing any airships down on the place.”
    Peering into the dark, Tremaine managed to find an open spot and deposit the car in it without incident. She collected the sphere from the floorboards and trailed after Gerard, following the beam of his electric torch over the uneven ground. She stumbled over the remains of an old brick path and a stone flower bed border, more confirmation that they were on the grounds of the old estate that housed the Institute. They passed out of another copse of trees and emerged to see the outline of a ruined great house against the moonlit velvet background of the sky. It was a forest of towers and sharply pitched roof lines and half-collapsed walls etched against the night.
    The past few hours had been surreal enough already; now Tremaine found her attention roaming, trying to turn this into a scene for a play or a magazine serial. Foolish. The theaters had been closed for months and only a few of the magazines were still in operation. Not that people didn’t still want stories. In the Aid Society, as they had huddled around the kerosene stove in the shelters during their rest breaks, there was always some new volunteer who discovered her identity and begged her to tell him the