Sorceress Read Online Free PDF Page B

burnished hair and eyes that gleamed the deep aqua of the sea. Riding through the clouds upon a horse as pale as moonlight, she whispered a soft chant that flowed through his brain and eased the pain that tore through his muscles.
    Young and beautiful, vital and rare, she seemed unaware of him as the horse galloped past, gray stockings cutting through the filmy clouds and striking something rock-hard and flinty, causing sparks to appear and stars to shine for but a second before fading in her wake.
    Did he know her? Why did he feel they had met before? As she disappeared the clouds roiled and blackened, turning purple and silver until there was only darkness, a gathering gloom in which no stars shined. In the darkness, the agony tore through him once again.
    And something else skulked in the obsidian depths.
    An evil presence lurked in the shadows, a malevolent being that was silent and hidden, but ever nearer, getting closer to the woman who sped by.
    Gavyn tried to cry out a warning, to tell her that she was being followed, nay, stalked, but his voice would not speak and his legs were dead to him, unmoving. He could not so much as lift a finger. Never in his life had he been weak or impotent, but lying still as death, he was useless. To himself. To her . And the evil one knew it. He feared nothing, this entity without shape that brought a sweeping coldness with him. His presence, his halo of imminent terror, clawed at Gavyn’s heart and froze his soul.
    Not a man easily frightened, not a man who feared death, not a man who would back down from a challenge, Gavyn knew terror and desperation for the first time in his life.
    And he could do nothing.
    Nothing.
     
Bryanna and Alabaster had traveled far this day, riding through fields where the grass was dry and yellow.
    “ ’Tis a good girl you are,” she said to the horse.
    For the past few nights they had taken refuge in inns along the way. Though many an innkeeper’s eyebrows raised as she’d approached alone and asked for a room, she’d always found lodging, a bowl of warm water to wash with, and a meal of beans, meat, and dry bread. No one had asked why she was unescorted, a woman whose clothes and manner spoke of nobility, nor had any thief stolen into her room at night, attempting to rob her.
    The first night, as she wrapped herself in the inn’s rough blanket and fell into an exhausted sleep, she had heard the sound of musical notes, a backdrop for Isa’s voice as clear as the rain pounding upon the roof. Isa told her she would meet a lone minstrel traveling in the opposite direction. She was to veer right over a bridge after the meeting.
    Of course she’d thought the dream was nothing more than a silly enchantment. But at midday, when the heavens threatened to open with more cold rain, she came upon a musician riding upon a donkey, his long hornpipe slung across his back. At the next crossroads, she turned right and soon crossed a short bridge spanning a rushing creek.
    The next night, Isa came to her dreams again, and this time her instructions were less clear, but she mentioned a hawk and the turn of his wing.
    Rot and rubbish, Bryanna thought the following morning. After a breakfast of tasteless porridge, she collected Alabaster from the stable and again rode north. Although there was no rain peppering the ground, the wind was fierce, keening down from the mountains and whistling through the canyons. The countryside was more rugged than she’d seen, the towns and castles spaced far apart. As the day wore on not only was she hungry, but lonely as well, and as she spied a hawk in the cloudy sky, she silently cursed Isa and the visions.
    Yet as she guided Alabaster into the woods, she kept her eye on the hawk soaring overhead, his speckled breast hardly discernible. With no other guide, she followed the hawk, which flew above a little-used path that cut deeper into the gathering gloom of the forest.
    Little more than a deer trail, it seemed a ridiculous