City of Sorcery Read Online Free PDF Page B

planet tilted strongly on its axis by the presence of the high himals of the Hellers, the Wall Around the World, amounting to a “third pole.” A planet inhabitable only in a relatively small part of one continent, and elsewhere a frozen wasteland with no signs of life.
“You’re beginning to see what I mean,” Cholayna said grimly. “And you’re trained in what the Darkovans call laran .”
“I was a fool ever to let you know that!” Magda knew it was her own fault for retaining even this fragile bond. When she had outgrown the ties of the Guild-house, she should have done what Andrew Carr had done before her, and allowed the Terrans, perhaps even the Renunciates, to think her dead.
In the Forbidden Tower, she had found a home, a world of others like herself, who belonged nowhere else in worlds that demanded they define themselves in narrow categories. Callista, Keeper, exiled from her Tower because she could give up neither her human love nor the exercise of the powerful laran for which she had nearly given her life. Andrew Carr, Terran, who had discovered his own powers and found a new world and a new life. Damon, exiled from a Tower, the only man who had had the courage to demand what no man had been allowed in centuries: he had become Keeper of the Tower they called Forbidden, and fought for the right to establish his Tower in the open. There were others who had come to it, outcasts from the regular Towers, or those who despite talent would never have been admitted to a Tower; and now, among them, herself and Jaelle.
And she had been foolish enough to let Cholayna know something - anything , of this…
“You want me to psi-probe her, Cholayna? Why can’t you get a technician out from Alpha? You could send a message and have one here in a tenday.”
“No, Magda. If she stays like this, she could drop into catatonia and we’d never know. Besides, if there is something out there, we have to know it. Now . We can’t send another plane up until we know what happened to that one.”
“There’s nothing out there,” Magda said, with more harshness than she intended. “Satellite pictures don’t lie.”
“That’s what I’ve always said.” Cholayna stared at the lighted panels on her desktop; when Magda said nothing, she got up and came around the desk and grabbed Magda’s shoulders. “Damn it, something happened to her! I can understand the plane going down. I’ve never tried to fly over the Hellers myself, but I’ve talked to some who have. What scares me is how she got back here, and the condition she’s in. If it could happen to Lexie, it could happen to anyone. Not a single person in Mapping and Exploring, or anywhere else outside the Trade City, is safe until we know what took her and her plane - and how, and why - they - sent her back. You’ve got to help us, Magda.”
Magda walked away from Cholayna, and stared out at the lights of the Spaceport below. Up here, she could see the whole of Terran HQ, and across the city to the Old Town. The contrast was definite, the glaring lights of the Terran Trade City, the dim scattered lights of the Old Town, already all but dark at this hour. Somewhere in that darkness lay the Guild-house and her friends, while out beyond the pass that was just a blacker darkness against the night sky lay the estate of Armida, a little more than a day’s ride north, where was her new world. If only she could consult with one of them, with their Keeper Damon, with Andrew, who like herself had fought the battle between his Terran self and his Darkovan world. But they were there , and she was here , and it was her own unique predicament and her own unanswerable problem.
“I’m the last person Lexie would want mucking around in her mind, believe me.”
Cholayna said, and there was no possible answer, “She wouldn’t want to stay like this forever, either. She’s down in Medic, in Isolation. We haven’t wanted anyone else to know what happened.”
Some day, Magda thought,