Woman Who Loved the Moon by Elizabeth A. Lynn Read Free Book Online Page A

reach through fire to save a friend.” He smiled. “And when we reach shore I will show you another thing.”
    They came into the bay before noon. Leaving Windcatcher to make her own magical way to her anchorage, they waded to shore. They were just south of the house. Rhune shaded his eyes from the bright glare of the daylight. “I’m not used to this,” he muttered.
    Shea strode a few steps up the tight-packed sand of the beach, and then halted. “Here,” he said.
    “Here what?” Rhune said.
    Shea tugged his shirt up over his head. Red scars stood out clearly on his chest. “Take your shirt off.” Puzzled, Rhune took his shirt off. The sun felt delicious on his bare skin. “Now, fight me, Rhune.”
    Rhune stared at the wizard. “You’re mad,” he said. “We’re both weak and tired—and anyhow, you’ll lose.” He whirled and began to walk in the direction of the house.
    A wet hand pulled him down. The surf tumbled him in its froth and washed him up, choking, at Shea’s feet.
    He sprang up, enraged.
    “You will,” said Shea. “Or we shall see what more the ocean can do to you.”
    The threat was totally infuriating. Rhune rushed at the Sealord, but light as the sea breeze Shea moved and was not there. Rhune whirled to face him, hands outstretched to grip.
    Shea smiled. The gray-green eyes gleamed sardonically. “Keep your temper, my friend. You’ll never win that way.”
    “You asked for this,” Rhune growled. He clamped his rage still and moved forward. They circled, feinted, and struck: had Rhune been truly able to grip and hold he would have won ten times over, but each time he came close Shea’s speed spun him just out of reach.
    But Shea was tiring. His reflexes, almost imperceptibly, were slowing. Rhune slowed, too. At last Shea’s block to a kick was just a tiny bit too low and too wide.
    Rhune moved in fast. He punched Shea’s belly, caught the wizard’s right arm as he staggered, and snapped it up high behind his back. Shea’s knees buckled. Still he fought to pull away. Rhune dug his knuckles into the nerves of Shea’s wrist, until the arm muscles leaped in involuntary spasm.
    Then anger, long held in, flooded Rhune’s mind. The man he held down seemed to him to be not a man he knew, but an enemy, someone to break. He ground his knee into the other’s spine and, with his powerful right hand, probed rigid fingers into the pain center of the collarbone. The stranger’s back muscles roiled inside his skin. Rhune marveled at his endurance, wondering that no sound, no plea, came from the stranger’s lips, forced from them by the dreadful pain.
    Something slipped into—or out of—his head. The body beneath his hands was no enemy’s. Rhune stopped breathing. Then, setting his teeth, he lifted his fingers. He looked at the ocean, wondering why it had not risen from its bed and torn him into half a hundred pieces. Very gently, he took the twisted arm and straightened it. He stretched Shea out on the sand, head toward the sea, and carefully, without pressure, stroked the muscles of his shoulders and spine until the deep-down muscle tremors ceased.
    Shea rolled over. His face was very white, but he was smiling.
    “Now that you have beaten me,” he said, “will you take the fleet? I have no wish to become, like Seramir, an aging tyrant, desiring only wealth or possessions, or power over other human lives. Windcatcher alone I reserve as mine; she will take me where I want to go. There are lands and shores our ships have never seen, but I have seen them. It is time for me to visit them again.”
    Rhune swallowed. “I will,” he said.
    “It will be yours, Rhune—to keep, and hold, and lose if you are cruel or careless!”
    “I won’t lose it.”
    Shea stood up. “I believe you,” he said. He stretched his arms to the sun. “Get up, my friend. We have much to do. And you cannot be half as weary now as I am!”
     
    * * *
     
    It took through the end of winter, past spring, past