Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) by Holly Lisle Page A

long.”
    When Faia met Witte back in the garden, she and Kirtha were already sweltering in the winter garb of the hill-folk—heavy boots, leather breeches, thick wool tunics, laced jerkins and sturdy hill-folk
erdas
, which were ugly square overwraps of waxed felt. Mother and daughter wore wide-brimmed leather hats, and Faia wore her waist kit-pack, and lugged her heavy supply pack over one shoulder. She carried a brass-tipped staff, while Kirtha had a simple wood walking stick. Faia almost felt silly wearing winter gear in the summer—but even in the lowlands the temperature had dropped with the absence of the sun, and in the mountains, bitter false winter would have already arrived, not to be banished until the sun crept out from behind the Tide Mother.
    “I look like Mama, don’t I, Witte?” Kirtha asked.
    “Yes,” the little man agreed, looking from child to mother and back to child again. He looked up at Faia in disbelief. “By my blessed bones, woman, what are you doing with all of that? We’re going to make a quick jaunt into the First Folk city. I’m sure your friends will be happy to entertain you for the few days you’ll be there.”
    “Anyone who travels to the mountains and doesn’t anticipate trouble will be sure to find it,” Faia told him. “I know the mountains. I grew up in them.”
    “Well, I can certainly see taking a few precautions… but you have a
sling
in your belt.”
    “And spiked wolfshot in my waist pack.”
    “You could melt any bedamned wolves we met with a flick of your fingers.”
    Faia sniffed. “That is not the Lady’s way. With wolves, I prefer wolfshot. Magic has its uses—but so do the skills of hand and eye.”
    Witte laughed and wrapped a fur-lined silk cloak around him. “How silly.” He held out a hand. “If you have magic, you don’t need anything else. Hold tight, and picture the place in your thoughts,” he said.
    Faia swung Kirtha onto her hip, grabbed her pack, then took his hand with her free one. She pictured the ruins, the domed whitestone worn by untold years of wind and rain and snow. Her stomach twisted, she smelled the sudden tang of bitter smoke, and that was all. One instant, she was standing beneath the stars in her garden, with the black Tide Mother over her head; the next, wind screamed around her and whipped snow into her eyes and down the loose neck of her erda. The white walls of the First Folk city towered over her head, and the curiously built, carved stone domes of the First Folk nestled below her. The three of them had appeared in the center of the circle of arches and pillars, on the high promontory above the main part of the city. It was very near the place where Faia and Medwind and Nokar had landed when they flew into the city more than two years ago.
    But everything about the place was different.

Chapter 6

    FAIA felt her heart begin to race as she stood on the narrow, rocky plateau and looked down into the lower ruins. Her skin and her nerves tingled with the charge of powerful, surging energy from somewhere nearby, and her heart raced. She could barely make out the forked shape of the library and the clusters of a few of the larger side-buildings through the darkness and the gusting snow. She was surprised she could even see those, so hideous was the weather; but below, the terrain gleamed with its own faintly golden glow.
    The light was not from a campfire. It did not flicker at all. Nor was it mage-light, which was always palest white, with a cold sheen. It was a warm light, like the glow cast by a hearthfire, comforting to look at and oddly cheerful.
    She studied that light and in the back of her mind, recent memories fell into place and she realized what she saw. She gasped, staring at the brilliant light. Horrified, she reached out tentatively with a thread of magic, and touched the light—then pulled back, her worst suspicions confirmed.
    The golden light was the pillar of magic that had encased Delmuirie, now grown