Wonders of the Invisible World Read Online Free PDF Page A

work and sleep, work and sleep.”
    He mumbled something that sounded like “What else is there?” Then he rolled away from her and began to snore.
    One day when Ansley had gone down to the river to hunt for the details of some spell, Leta made a few furtive passes with her broom at the dust under his worktable. Her eye fell upon a spiral of gold on a page in an open book. She stopped sweeping, studied it. A golden letter, it looked like, surrounded by swirls of gold in a frame of crimson. All that richness, she marveled, for a letter. All that beauty. How could a simple letter, this undistinguished one that also began her name, be so cherished, given such loving attention?
    “One little letter,” she whispered, and her thoughts strayed to earlier times, when Dylan gave her wildflowers and sweets from the market. She sighed. They were always so tired now, and she was growing thinner from so much work. They had more money, it was true. But she had no time to spend it, even on shoes, and Dylan never thought of bringing her home a ribbon or a bit of lace when he went to the village. And here was this letter, doing nothing more than being the first in a line of them, adorned in red and gold for no other reason than that it was itself—
    She touched her eyes, laughed ruefully at herself, thinking, I’m jealous of a letter.
    Someone knocked at the door.
    She opened it, expecting Dylan, or a neighbor, or a tinker—anyone except the man who stood there.
    She felt herself gaping, but could not stop. She could only think crazily of the letter again: how this man too must have come from some place where people as well as words carried such beauty about them. The young man wore a tunic of shimmering links of pure silver over black leather trousers and a pair of fine, supple boots. His cloak was deep blue-black, the color of his eyes. His crisp dark curls shone like blackbirds’ wings. He was young, but something, perhaps the long, jeweled sword he wore, made both Dylan and Ansley seem much younger. His lean, grave face hinted of a world beyond the wood that not even the scholar had seen.
    “I beg your pardon,” he said gently, “for troubling you.” Leta closed her mouth. “I’m looking for a certain palace of which I’ve heard rumors all my life. It is surrounded by a deadly ring of thorns, and many men have lost their lives attempting to break through that ensorceled circle to rescue the sleeping princess within. Have you heard of it?”
    “I—” Leta said, and stuck there, slack-jawed again. “I—I—”
    Behind the man, his followers, rugged and plainly dressed, glanced at one another. That look, less courteous than the young man’s, cleared Leta’s head a bit.
    “I haven’t,” she brought out finally. “But the man I work for is a—is trying to be—a mage; he knows a thousand things I don’t.”
    “Then may I speak with him?”
    “He’s out—” She gestured, saw the broom still in her hand and hid it hastily behind her. “Down by the river, catching toads.”
    “Toads.”
    “For his—his magic.”
    She heard the faint snort. One of the followers pretended to be watching a crow fly; the other breathed, “My lord, perhaps we should ask farther down the road.”
    “We’ll ride to the river,” the young lord said, and turned to mount his horse again. He bowed graciously to Leta from his saddle. “Thank you. We are grateful.”
    Blinking at the light spangling off his harness and jewels, she watched him ride through the trees and toward the water. Then, slowly, she sat down, stunned and witless with wonder, until she heard Ansley’s voice as he walked through the doorway and around her.
    “I found five,” he announced excitedly, putting a muddy bucket on his table. “One of them is pure white!”
    “Did you see—?” Her voice didn’t come. She was sitting on the floor, she realized then, with the broom across her knees. “Did you see the—? Them?”
    “Who?” he asked absently,