Witches of Kregen Read Online Free PDF

so I knew he wished to put this on a politico-formal basis. Well...
    “Khe-Hi,” I said, refusing this opening gambit. I half-inclined my head to the Witch of Loh.“Ling-Li. I trust you are not seriously injured.”
    “A scratch.”
    She did not use majister; I did not think she had as yet earned any right to call me Dray although she had materially assisted us in the matter of the werewolves. I have likened her small face with its piled mass of auburn hair to a superbly carved mask in the ivory of Chem, the smoothest and mellowest of ivories. Her skin clung tightly to her bone structure without hint of a sag; yet she was not gaunt, for her beauty, aided by the startling blue of her eyes and the scarlet of her mouth above a firmly rounded chin, seemed to me to be a trifle more than skin deep and was self-evident. All the same, it also seemed to me a deal of her force was absent, that the sickly pallor of that perfect skin was not all created by the yellow bandage.
    “I trust you will soon be recovered.” I turned back to the Wizard of Loh. “Tell me, Khe-Hi.”
    Now Wizards and Witches of Loh enjoy deserved reputations upon Kregen. Their powers are immense and unknown and simple men believe anything of them. But I have known Wizards and Witches of Loh who were mediocre in their control of the thaumaturgical arts. Of course, they would be more powerful than most sorcerers of other disciplines; most, not all. These Wizards of Loh who are somewhat less than their fellows unashamedly use the reputation of any Wizard of Loh. They trade on the fear their fellows engender. In this wise they make a living.
    Khe-Hi-Bjanching and Ling-Li-Lwingling were both very highly powered mages. Khe-Hi, I fancied, would one day when he reached the prime of life, become perhaps more powerful than almost any other Wizard of Loh. Certainly, he had at the least caught up with Deb-Lu-Quienyin, who was many seasons older, if he had not surpassed him.
    Csitra the Witch of Loh was also extraordinarily powerful, and the kharrna of the child, the uhu Phunik, would grow to match and surpass hers. I wondered — with horror — if Phunik would outgrow the kharrna of his father, Phu-Si-Yantong, who was dead and gone, the bastard.
    As I, a layman, saw the situation, then, here we had a very powerful sorceress aided by her child of lesser mastery of the arts, versus two very powerful mages. There should in theory therefore have been a clear-cut advantage to our side.
    There was not.
    Naturally there was not, given the mazy, chancy mystery of thaumaturgy and its applications to the problems of life.
    When Deb-Lu joined in, then we did have an advantage. But Deb-Lu at the moment was off on business of his own. That business, I shrewdly suspected, knowing Deb-Lu, had to do with the welfare of Vallia and, not least of all, of Delia and myself.
    Khe-Hi motioned slowly with his right hand, for his left was held by Ling-Li’s hand. “I grieve for the dead soldiers...”
    In this I knew Khe-Hi spoke the truth. I do not care to associate with people who have no respect for human life. This too marks me as being an ordinary fellow without certain special qualifications for being an emperor, a ruler of men, a person whose will to the grand design discards lives without thought.
    At my nod, Khe-Hi went on with his explanation.
    “You are aware that Csitra can stab a pulse of great power through the defenses we have arranged, simply by virtue of the old military saw that concentrated force will smash through attenuated defenses.” Khe-Hi looked up at me, and added: “Some of our defenses are not attenuated.”
    What he was saying in this roundabout way was that a great deal of magical art had been put out by the Wizards of Loh in the past to safeguard certain people thought necessary to the well-being of the emperor. I had had to push aside all notions of guilt that I, and Delia, and my family and blade comrades were thus protected. If we went down, Vallia would