Witch Silver Read Online Free PDF Page B

Prince Casimir and Prince Kalman when they’d visited Ashgar. Vassili shuddered at the thought. Indeed he’d been so disturbed by it that he’d almost decided to return to his father’s estate at Trollsberg. Then there had been the disastrous Firestar affair when the whole world of magic had been put at risk. Not for the first time, he wondered if the Lords of the North had ever suspected anything …
    Lord Jezail looked at him suspiciously. “Very quiet all of a sudden, aren’t you,” he snapped.
    “Milord …” Count Vassili’s heels clicked together as he bowed low, his blue eyes lifting to meet the hard, black stare of his master. Cold eyes, devoid of feeling; they were the shade of blue that one sometimes glimpses in the depths of ice: the eyes of a wolf.
    Lord Jezail held his gaze and calmed himself. Vassili was generally so agreeable that he tended to forget that he was of the Onegin, the wolf people, who lived in the very north of Ashgar near the Russian border. Vassili came from quite a distinguished family of magicians and although his parents had sent him to Stara Zargana as an apprentice, his magic had, somehow, never seemed to amount to much …
    This seeming lack of talent was actually deliberate on Vassili’s part as he had been quick to realize that Lord Jezail disliked competition of any sort. And it suited him to stay and browse through the vast library of magic books that, until his arrival, had lain untouched for centuries in the library of the citadel.
    His master tapped the arm of his chair with restless fingers,his mind still on the talisman. “Merial must have hidden it well,” he muttered discontentedly. “I really thought the witches would have found it by now.”
    Vassili sighed, for although his master spent the odd ten minutes studying the crystal, the tedious job of monitoring the witches had fallen mostly to him and he was heartily sick of it. “The trouble is, milord, that the witches aren’t really all that bright,” he pointed out. “They’re looking in the most ridiculous places. The Wind Witches are searching the trees and bushes, the Earth Witches the rabbit holes and the Snow Witches are having to merge with birds and animals to do their work! Quite frankly, if they go on at this rate, it’ll take them
years
to find it.”
    “Years?” Jezail looked startled.
    Vassili smiled ruefully. “Well, maybe not years,” he admitted, “but the truth is, milord, that at the moment they’re just wasting their time!”
    Lord Jezail sat back in his huge, carved chair pondering Vassili’s words and, eyeing his aide speculatively, looked suddenly thoughtful. It was a look that Vassili knew well and his expression became wary.
    Lord Jezail’s eyes gleamed. “All this is taking too long,” he said, gesturing towards the crystal. “I’m too old to search for it myself and I’ve no intention of waiting for years until the witches find it. There’s only one thing for it, Vassili!
You
will have to go and look for me!”
    Vassili bowed and tried not to look surprised. The relief was enormous. To go to Scotland
on his own
! It was by no means the nightmare scenario he’d envisaged. Nevertheless, it was polite to protest and his voice was concerned as urged his master to accompany him.
    “The change would do you good, milord,” he pointed out, “and you could always stay with the MacArthurs or the Lordsof the North?” He said this, knowing perfectly well that while his master might agree to staying with the MacArthurs, he would never go anywhere near Morven.
    Lord Jezail looked at him arrogantly. “I’ve no wish to stay with either the Lords of the North or the MacArthurs,” he said sharply. “You will go on your own and bring me back the talisman.”
    “It won’t be easy, milord,” Vassili protested somewhat anxiously . “After all, the witches have had no luck so far and quite frankly, I might not do much better. Er … don’t you have
any
idea where your daughter