Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that she really must have found a use for me. Well, whatever it was, I knew I wasn’t going to like it.
    “Rest now,” said Morgan, leaning over and stroking my hair. “Our paths will cross again. Perhaps then you will be more…cooperative.” She leaned over even farther and gave me the very slightest kiss on the cheek. I would have shuddered if I had been able to. Even more frightening, however, was the fact that then she stood up, stepped away from me, and started toward the hospital.
    Carla! Gianni!
    With a colossal effort, I managed to raise my head enough to see Morgan, standing before the front door of the hospital, arms upraised, her black hair and white samite gown rippling a little in the wind that was all that remained of the earlier storm. She was chanting something in Welsh. Not exactly an invisibility spell, but a spell to keep her from being noticed. Morgan had only recently started exploring the modern human world, but clearly she had seen enough to know that a strikingly beautiful woman striding down the hospital wearing a white gown and carrying a long sword would draw a little unwelcome attention.
    Morgan finished the spell and then started to struggle with the hospital door, which I had jammed earlier. Unfortunately, it did not take her long to undo my spell, and then she swept through the door and was gone.
    I had to get up, but I could not make my muscles work. Even sitting up proved impossible.
    The one thought that comforted me was that Morgan had used enough magic beating me to be pretty worn out herself—but how much magic would she need to hurt someone who got in her way? And what would happen when she found her long-lost sister?
    I tried again to sit up. My muscles twitched a bit but still felt like over-cooked spaghetti. I tried to reach out psychically, but my mind moved in slow motion, and I did not get even the slightest echo of a connection with anyone. Even if I had managed some faint contact, that would not have helped Carla or Gianni.
    Wait! Was that a whiff of the intensely fresh air from Annwn that I felt against my cheek, or was it just my foggy wits playing tricks on me? No, it was real, because suddenly Nurse Florence was bending over me, her eyes betraying her anxiety over my condition. Behind her I could make out Stan Schoenbaum and Dan Stevens, my two oldest friends, even though Dan and I had gone through a four-year-long period of hostility, now forgotten. Then I saw Carlos Reyes, Shahriyar Sassani, and Gordy Hayes, three newer, but still very close, friends. Collectively, they were my warriors, for lack of a better way of putting it. Each one had met the challenge of Gwynn ap Nudd, the king of the Welsh faeries, and in consequence each one wielded a magic sword, and each was tied to me by a tynged (binding spell) set up by Nurse Florence and willingly accepted by them.
    Well, Morgan, let’s see you beat all five of them! Let’s see you out-cast Nurse Florence!
    I don’t know why, given how grave our situation was at this moment, but my mind wandered into thinking about how the group didn’t exactly look like the well-oiled fighting machine it was. The guys looked like the high school students they were. Sure, four of them were long-time athletes, with Stan a much more recent recruit. They were all more or less well-muscled. Well, to be honest, Shar was the “more,” practically a body builder, and Stan was the “less,” though he had been working out enough to not look quite like the mathlete he had always been. Otherwise, they looked more like the cast of a commercial to get more girls to attend Santa Brígida High School than like elite fighters. None of them were exactly “pretty boys,” but Dan did have that kind of smile that could melt a female heart, Carlos was reputed to be the reason so many girls came to water polo games, Shar just needed to flex a couple of times to get girls ready to walk barefoot over broken glass for him, and Gordy seemed to be with a