Lusam: The Dragon Mage Wars Book Three Read Online Free PDF Page B

sure I’ll be just fine,” Neala replied.
    “Hey, lover-boy. As long as your girlfriend doesn’t mind too much, you can take some from me too. Whatever it is you’re taking,” Alexia said.
    “Me too,” Renn said.
    “Thanks, both of you, but don’t you need yours, Renn?” Lusam asked.
    “No. I’ve already told you, lad, I’m not a mage, I’m a paladin. Our power comes from our weapons, not our own magic reserves like yours,” Renn replied, then after a moment he added, “I take it you’ve done this before, Lusam?”
    “Yes, twice. Once on a woman called Lucy, and a second time on the dire wolf in the forest. Both times I used their own magic reserves to help heal them,” Lusam replied. Renn almost choked on his words as he tried to get them out too fast.
    “You stole magic from Aysha?” Renn said incredulously.
    “Not really, I just used it to heal her wounds. I think it was some kind of test. She tried to stop me from tapping into her magic, but when I bypassed her barriers she appeared to us in her true form, and the rest you already know,” Lusam said defensively.
    “You do realise that taking someone else’s magic is supposed to be impossible, don’t you, lad? Then again, I guess you’ve heard me tell you other things that you do are supposed to be impossible too, but somehow you’re always able to achieve them. I’m not even going to ask how you manage to do it, not that I would understand it even if you told me. You really are special, Lusam. No wonder the Empire wants you dead so much,” Renn said, shaking his head slightly.
    “Talking of the Empire, I thought they shared magic with each other? Isn’t that how they manage to maintain such strong magical shields?” Lusam asked confused.
    “You’re correct, but they share magic through their Necromatic rings. Apparently they undergo an initiation ceremony that links their rings directly to their own magical reserves. It also enables any higher ranking agent to draw magic directly from any nearby subordinate agents. Currently our best intelligence tells us that the magic only travels one way, from low rank to high, and not in the opposite direction. No one knows for certain how the rings work, but our best guess is that a conduit to the wearer’s own magic reserves is somehow formed during the ceremony, forcing open a permanent link between their magic reserves and the outside world. With only the ring acting as a way to control the outflow of magic, if you remove the ring, you also remove the ability to stop the flow of magic, and as a consequence they die when their magic reserves run dry. It sounds like what you can do is very different though. You tap directly into the magic reserves of a person without the aid of any pre-made conduit, and as far as I know, that shouldn’t be possible to do,” Renn said.
    “I get the feeling my magic skills may be unique now, but it’s only because the knowledge has been lost over time. Almost everything I know about magic I learned from that Guardian book, and I’m hoping the book we seek now will give me something useful to use against those Empire agents down there. If it doesn’t, we might never leave these mountains,” Lusam said, placing a hand on Renn’s shoulder and draining some of his magical reserves into his own. He felt better almost immediately, and by the time he had taken some of Neala’s and Alexia’s magic too, he felt better than he had in days, and much more prepared for the battle that was to come. They quickly ran through their plans one last time, then sat back and waited for the first light of dawn which would signal the start of their attack.

Chapter Five

    Zedd awoke to the unmistakable magical pulse-of-power that follows the death of a mage, quickly followed by three more, and then a fourth moments later.
    “SHIELDS!” Zedd shouted at the top of his lungs. All around him sleep-dazed men were scrambling for whatever cover they could find. Zedd saw several of his