The Mirror of Fate Read Online Free PDF

key. Carved of polished antler, with a single sapphire on its crown. Its powers . . . oh, I can’t remember—like so much else my father told me. I was so young then! It mattered a great deal to him, that’s mainly what I remember.” Her fingers entwined with my own. “Though I do recall his saying once that, as great as its powers were, they still couldn’t rival a healing hand.”
    At that instant, we heard a wailing cry from somewhere downstream. The cry grew swiftly louder—and more familiar. A few seconds later, the ballymag came swimming straight toward us, his six arms splashing furiously. He swam up the channel, flopped onto the bank, and leaped into my arms, shivering and panting.
    Eyes ablaze with fear, he blurted, “Troubledous terror! Mangledous murder! It’s getcoming closergulp.”
    Before I could ask what he was talking about, an enormous head lifted out of a grove of hawthorns downstream. Gwynnia! Her stiff ear snapped a few branches, sending up a cloud of leaves, as she straightened her long, scaly neck. She stepped from the trees, wings folded tight against her massive back, and leaned toward us. The orange light of her eyes flashed on the water.
    “The frightdragon!” squealed the ballymag, burrowing his head under my arm. “We’re doomedkilled, every deadlastous one of us.”
    “Nonsense,” I replied. “That dragon is our friend.”
    “She won’t harm you,” added Hallia.
    Hearing her friend’s voice, Gwynnia thumped her tail vigorously on the ground. One of her strokes, however, struck a hawthorn, uprooting it. The tree toppled with a crash into the stream, spraying mud and branches across the bank. At that, the ballymag shrieked—and fainted. He lay in my lap, as limp as a drenched tunic. Even his tails, once so tightly coiled, hung loose against his back. Gwynnia’s head, now nearly above us, cocked to one side in puzzlement.
    I stroked the ballymag’s smooth skin. “This little fellow just isn’t cut out for adventures. I think I ought to send him back to where he came from.”
    “The Haunted Marsh?” asked Hallia. “That’s the last place you should send him.”
    “It’s where he came from.”
    “Then he was wise to escape! That’s an evil place, a dreadful place, with deathtraps at every turn. My people—like every other people, except for the marsh ghouls—avoid it however we can.”
    “Look, he clearly needs to be near water. And away from dragons. How he came to be here, I can’t say. But surely the best thing to do is send him back to his home.”
    Hallia, shaking her head, touched the ballymag’s wet back. “It’s foolish, I tell you. And, besides, that wretched swamp is all the way on the other side of the island.”
    Hearing the doubt in her voice, I stiffened. “You don’t think I can do it?”
    “Well . . . no. I don’t.”
    I frowned at her, my cheeks burning.
    “Leaping is one of the most hazardous skills of wizardry. You’ve told me so yourself.”
    My fist slammed the bank, spraying mud on my tunic. “So you think I can’t.”
    “What if you send him to the wrong place by mistake?”
    “I won’t make any mistakes!” Noticing my shadow, which seemed to be shaking its head again, I bit my lip. “And if by chance I do, then at least he’ll wake up someplace where there’s no dragon staring down at him.”
    Carefully, I lay the unconscious ballymag down in the reeds at the water’s edge. Then, grasping my staff, I stood. I planted my feet firmly, turned my back to Hallia, and began to concentrate. Almost instantly, I felt the powers building within me, pushing to the surface like lava in an erupting volcano. Finally, I intoned the intricate chant, calling forth the high magic of Leaping.
    Voyage near, venture far—
Lo! The leaping place and time.
Find the center of a star
In the dreaming Muirthemnar;
Or the echo of a rhyme
Ringing rightly as a chime.
Ever honor, never mar—
Lo! The leaping place and time.
    A flash of white light