Kinshield's Redemption (Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

away at her, but until they fixed what she’d done to Feanna and the others, he wanted her alive.
    “Well, you’re not climbing up there either,” he said. “I’ll just have to do my best.”
    He lifted his mystical vision up into the air. Because the hidden eye wasn’t physically attached to his head like normal eyes were, its vision wasn’t limited to the physical scope of his body. Below, he saw Daia’s haze, clear blue with its unique orange tendril snaking out from its middle, and Cirang’s cloudy white one. He pushed the hidden eye towards the mountain and studied the spot where the glimmering water started to flow out from the rocks. On closer inspection, he saw it was an area about two feet in diameter where several trickles converged into a stream. He didn’t have enough putty to cover the entire area, so he would need to be precise about where to put globs of it.
    He returned to his normal vision. “This isn’t going to be easy. I wish one o’you could use your hidden eye to guide me.” Everyone had a hidden eye, but few ever learned to use it.
    “With my help,” Daia said, “could you do both? Use your hidden eye to help you place the putty?”
    He’d never developed the ability to do two magical tasks at once. Even doing something as simple as riding his horse while using his hidden eye had been more trouble than it was worth. “It would be like standing on a shifting board while juggling knives. I don’t think I can.”
    “It’s worth a try. You might surprise yourself, Gavin.”
    He grinned. “You’re starting to sound like Edan.” He turned towards the tree-line where the horses were waiting, chose a pine cone, and pulled it with his will. It flew through the air, and he caught it one-handed. “Let me try with this afore we mix the mortar.” He felt nervous, unsure whether he could concentrate on both tasks simultaneously. I can do this. I’m a mage now.
    First, he pushed the pine cone from his palm into the air. It shot forward about a dozen feet before landing on the rocks with a soft crunch. “Oops. Too strong.” He’d pushed and pulled objects, but never had he tried balancing a push and a pull at the same time. This was harder than he expected. After a half hour of trial and error, he learned to hold it steady in the air. He practiced moving it up and down by gently pushing or pulling from below.
    His head pounded from the exertion, but once he let the pine cone drop, his healing magic started lessening the pain. “That gave me a headache. Guess I’m not used to concentrating that hard.”
    “Ravenkind used to get terrible headaches when he did certain kinds of magic,” Cirang said. “If he had good-quality gems, it wasn’t as bad, but if he didn’t, the headaches would send him to his bed for hours afterwards. You took that book from my secret cellar, remember? The one about spiritual consequences of practicing the dark magics? Have you read any of it?”
    “No,” Daia said, “we were too busy trying to keep you from murdering people.”
    Cirang’s face fell. “It’s a worthy treatise. I haven’t read the entire book, but what I’ve read suggests that magic is divided into two kinds: hard and soft. Soft magic is fueled by light life force, whereas hard magic is fueled by dark life force.”
    Gavin raised his eyebrows. “Magic has khozhi?”
    “Is that the same property as in people’s hazes?” Daia asked.
    Gavin nodded. The Elyle hadn’t mentioned that the first time he’d visited the midrealm and learned about the khozhi. They’d only said sentient beings had it. No, that wasn’t quite true. They’d also said that emotions were kho or zhi. He wondered what else was governed by this balance of hard and soft.
    After a moment’s rest, he started again. He had an idea. By envisioning his haze having two long arms to brace it, he found he could move it about more easily. Confidently, he shut his eyes and opened his hidden eye. The cone stayed right where