Call of Kythshire (Keepers of the Wellsprings Book 1) by Missy Sheldrake Page B

glance, but they quickly look away from each other.
    “Here, I’ll show you a trick with the shield.” Bryse brushes crumbs from his lap and strides to the center of the ring. I set down my roll and reach for my sword, and as my hand closes around the hilt, a sharp pain jolts through it and up my arm. Specks of darkness form at the edge of my vision. The room starts to spin, and my ears are flooded with blood-curdling screams. I throw the sword down in pain and it all goes away. Cort leans to pick it up for me and offers it hilt-first. He looks concerned. He says something and claps me on the back, but my ears are still ringing from the screams and I can’t hear what he’s saying. I grasp the hilt and the pain comes again, up my arm, into my neck, jolting my body. I keep my grip and the room starts spinning, spinning. The darkness closes in on me. The screaming thunders into my skull. I loosen my grip and my sword slips away and all of it stops abruptly. I drop to my knees. My stomach churns, and my lunch revisits me, and then everything goes black.



Chapter Five: Homecoming
    A cool breeze, rich with the scent of ripening wheat, washes over me as I’m cradled on a soft bed of grass. Above me golden fronds wave gently, brushing at the perfect blue sky. The breeze sends flakes of gold leaf glittering across the blue, wafting and dancing and dazzling my eyes. I am washed over with serenity as I watch the way the light plays blue, gold, and white. The colors bring me comfort, and I lie in silence among the grass and the wind. I watch the flecks move and swirl and imagine being carried off with them, way up into the deep blue sky. This place is my peace, it is all that matters to me. Time stretches slowly as the warm sun passes across the sky. I listen to the soft rustling of wheat mixed with the distant song of birds, the tapping of a woodpecker, the hum of a cricket playing like a symphony. Slowly, sky blue transitions to pink and orange and lavender.
    The light wanes and the stars arrive one by one, winking onto the black night sky in a spray of sparkling diamonds. A smiling sliver of the moon shines down over me, washing everything in blue and white and gray. All around me, the golden fronds sparkle with dew. I feel the cool drops kissing my hair and my face and my arms and legs. The moon is high, and the crickets’ song blended with the peeping frogs stills to an eerie quiet. A soft rustling tells me someone approaches, but I’m not afraid. The wheat and the dew, the breeze and the moon will protect me. Rian’s smile eclipses the moon, and he comes closer and closer and presses his lips to mine. I close my eyes, and when I open them again it isn’t Rian, but Prince Eron. I try to move, but my body doesn’t respond. I feel the roots of myself dug deep into the earth. I have lain here for so long that I am one with the wheat and the grass and the soil. The Prince hovers over me and my eyes drift to his bare chest, where blue-black lines swirl and undulate and grow. They crawl up to his neck and across his arms. His hands graze my shoulders and the Mage Mark blackens his fingers and twists them into roots which wind and grow and twine around me. It doesn’t occur to me to fight it. I am safe, just an observer as the prince’s blackened body is swallowed up by the coiling form of a tree trunk, and the roots encase me and burst upwards, stretching knobby fingers, reaching wiry branches to touch the diamonds in the sky.
    My roots are strong and calm, my branches sway among the stars. The sun rises and sets and rises again so many times I lose track of the days and the nights. The crickets’ song comforts me; the woodpecker taps a soft rhythm. In the quiet of a cool autumn night, I’m visited by a tiny creature dressed in white gossamer and down. Her rainbow wings cast prisms of light over the bark of my tree and I am reminded of the dancing flecks of gold leaf and the wafting fronds of wheat against a crisp blue