Sun Wolf 3 - The Dark Hand Of Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

searing blister of shame at his own credulity, nor his father’s uproarious laughter at his cheated, helpless rage. It had been the end of his conscious dreams of magic.
    Like his father—like most people in the days of Altiokis the Wizard-King’s century and a half of dominance—he had come to believe that magic was only sleight of hand or trickery and that the shadows of power and fire that haunted his own dreams were, in fact, nothing but the lurking seeds of madness. He had become what his father had wanted him to be and had been the best.
    And then the seeds had blossomed. Untaught magefire had broken forth within him like glowing magma from a shell of black volcanic stone, and with it the craving, the yearning to learn and understand.
    A wizard in Vorsal.
    
    
     A week’s ride—five days, if they pushed it. The strategist, the fighter, the commander his men knew and trusted, might turn ways and means over coolly in his mind, but the untaught mage—like the born musician who has never been allowed to lay hands on an instrument, or the natural artist who has only heard of paint—breathed faster at the thought. He’d found one, after all those barren months!
    The reflection of the firelight had changed against the common room’s ceiling, visible to him through the half-open door. The groaning of the wind about the walls waxed shriller as full darkness fell, and the dry restlessness of the air prickled his skin. Through the door and down in the commons he heard Dogbreath’s flexible bass voice ranging the hills and valleys of some tale he was spinning, broken by the braying delight of the Little Thurg’s laugh; closer, he caught the brief scatter of children’s voices as the innkeeper’s wife herded her brood up some backstair to the attics where they slept. Sun Wolf wondered if the inn stores were kept up there, and if those children woke in the night as he had done in his childhood to see the red eyes of rats reflecting the glow of the moon. Then a light creak of floorboards sounded in the gallery outside the door, a tread he identified as Starhawk’s in the same moment that he reached down with his unwounded arm to locate the sword he kept habitually by the bed. A dark form against the ruby-dyed rafters outside, a slip of brightness catching colorless hair; then she was inside. She disliked standing framed in doorways as much as she did sitting with her back to open space.
    The ability to see in pitch darkness had been one of the first things that had come to him with his wizard’s power. He watched her locate her bedroll by touch after closing the door, and spread the blankets soundlessly across the threshold. She unbuckled her swordbelt and laid it on the floor beside her, removed half a dozen daggers and a spiked knuckle-duster from various corners of her person, then folded herself neatly down to a sitting position to pull off her boots.
    “I’m not hurt that bad, dammit.”
    Her grin was fleet and shy even in the dark. “I was afraid of getting stabbed if I startled you awake.”
    “Come over here and I’ll stab you so you’ll never forget it.”
    She laughed softly, collected her weapons, and came to sit on the bed. Only when she reached down to locate its edge could he tell that she was almost totally unable to see in the dense gloom. The shutters might be opened an hour a day at this time of year to air the room, but against his shoulder he could feel through the wall that the outer air was freezing. With his good hand, he guided her face down to his, and they kissed, long and deep, in the darkness.
    She stripped quickly out of her jerkin and buckskin breeches, and awkwardly he turned back the blankets for her to crowd into the narrow space beside him.
    “I was scared for you,” she said after a time, her soft voice husky and hesitant. “I couldn’t let myself think about it then. I can’t ever, really. They’re right when they say falling in love is a bad idea. You get