SummerDanse Read Online Free PDF Page B

before. Hadn’t he said something to that effect? Maybe he hadn’t been ignoring the horses and me; maybe he’d been asleep or meditating, recovering from spending so much power.
    Finally, there had been the shock and indignity of being put into a cage. I hadn’t even thought to meditate. I might not have candles, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t go through the routine.
    Clear my thoughts. Breathe deeply. Find my calm center. Open my inner senses.
    Closing my eyes again, I took a calming breath and, concentrating hard, I drew on my power.
    A searing pain shot into my head, as if knives were stabbing my brain. Lights flashed riotously, and a roar filled my ears. Pressing my hands against my skull, hoping pressure might relieve even a little of the pain, I collapsed back into a heap on the floor of my cage.
    At least this night I slept. Pushed past the point of exhaustion, my mind finally lost itself in oblivion. At least for a few hours.

    I awoke to the sound of the stable door opening. Anazian pushed a loaf of bread and a full skin of water through the bars of the cage. I wolfed down the loaf, wishing there were more, then drank my fill of water.
    In the meantime, my captor fed the horses, and while they ate, he let me out.
    “Help me load supplies,” he said. “We need to be on the road within the hour.”
    For the next little while, I helped him. The cage took up about half the space in the wagon. We now filled the rest of it with stacks of crates and bundles.
    “Where are we going?” I asked, surprising both of us. I hadn’t meant to voice my thoughts aloud.
    Anazian didn’t answer. Instead, he tied the end of a rope to one of the iron loops bolted to the wagon and handed the rope to me. “Hold this taut.” He didn’t speak as together we tied the pile down securely.
    “We will go outside now, and you will do your business there. I will not tolerate another mess. Do you understand?”
    I nodded, hoping I looked more submissive than I felt. As if it had been my fault!
    Outside, the air was fresh and cool. A blue sky overhead promised a pleasant day—for someone with the freedom to enjoy it, I thought bitterly.
    I did what I’d been allowed out for, and a few moments later was back in the hateful cage.
    Anazian opened a huge door along one side of the stable and hitched up the horses. He disappeared again. Maybe fifteen minutes later he reappeared, dressed in traveling clothes with sturdy boots.
    He led the horses out, stopped them once we were clear of the door so that he could close and lock it, and then we were under way.
    It felt good to be outside despite everything. Anazian walked alongside the horses, which I thought a little odd, but the path we followed was rough, and the horses couldn’t have gone faster than Anazian walked anyway. As the wheels rolled over the uneven ground, I pitched from side to side. I felt every bump and dip. Before long, my back and neck ached from the abuse.
    I staved off thoughts of Grey and whether he was still alive by concentrating as much as I could on my surroundings. The trees were not particularly tall, but their trunks were vast and black. The path cut between them, but they gave up the space grudgingly, and their branches intertwined overhead, their dark green leaves obscuring most of the light. Hatred flowed off them—and one didn’t have to use maejic to feel it—and I wondered how much of the dimness was caused by that.
    Almost by reflex, I found myself fingering the wooden collar again. It was quickly becoming a habit. Did this wood come from one of these trees? And what about the bars of the cage? And why was everything so silent? I could scarcely imagine it was possible for a forest to be entirely devoid of animal life, but I’d not yet heard the song of a bird or the skittering of rodents or even the tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker. All was stillness and silence, except for the noise we intruders made.
    We went over an especially big bump, and I bit my