Alstera, the Fae Mark'd Wizard, Deliberately Seeks Trouble in *Sing a Graveyard Song*

 Why would anyone deliberately seek trouble?

Alstera does, for she still contends with her punishment by the Wizard Enclave.

Sing a Graveyard Song, book 3 of Fae Mark'd Wizard, follows her machinations to rid herself of her penance.

Here's a first glimpse from Sing a Graveyard Song.

from the Prologue:

Alstera dreamed of water, a night swirling with water. Motes, elusive as a will o’wisp, danced above the waves, their sparks gleaming on the liquid darkness. Waves washed over and into each other, building and ebbing, surging and dissipating, a ceaseless rhythm. Like a mote, her dream self floated above the waters, but she was dark, the waters below her darker on this moon-dark night, lit only by the sparkling lights.

The swirling lake washed in and out, in and out, but as she drifted above the waves, she realized a steady flow drew her with it. The current rushed and swirled, billowed and sucked, thundering with power as it gathered speed. The waters flooded over a cliff, taking her with them. Spray splashed up to soak her. The cascade plunged down and down and down, deep as an abyss. Then the waters struck bottom and exploded up to capture her. Sucked under the dark liquid, she tumbled over and over. Her senses drowning, the blood in her veins surged with the waters’ power. Her blood, her breath, her flesh, her bones, everything sucked into the elemental energy, and in this dream only her magic held self and soul together.

She plunged down another cliff. Inchoate creatures bowled in the waters with her. As powerless as she, they whorled, tossed and rolled, tumbled and twisted, shaping and losing shape, reaching and retreating, stretching and spiraling. Boulders loomed and receded as the waters rushed her along. Teeming energy gathered like a great wave, seeking an outlet.

Then the waters cascaded out of the mountains and surged into the lowlands. They broke the riverbanks and flooded outward. The wild power lost force, its thunder muted, its puissance seeped into the sleeping soil.

A dying wave cast the dreaming Alstera against an ancient oak. Its ridged bark offered a clinging hold as another wave washed over her. As it receded, the wave’s suction threatened to tow her back into the flood. Leafy branches dipped, became arms that held her against the trunk. She blinked. The bark she clung to reshaped into a face. An elemental with angled eyes and brows. He smiled, his eyes sparkling like the motes. Then the water seeped away. The bark re-arranged itself. When she blinked again, the oak was just an oak.

Still clutching the tree, she sat up and looked about. Hills rolled behind the great oak, lapping one behind the other, land waves that had stopped the flood’s force. Writhing runnelets snaked back to the flood. As the dark waters receded, the land glistened like polished silver, bright as a full moon on this moon-dead night. Motes exploded out of the water. They danced above the flood, circling and whirling together, the gold of their light glimmering on the waves.

Gasping for air, Alstera sagged against her rescuing tree. Waters lapped near her feet, and a waft of air rustled the winter-dried leaves above her head. A great wave surged out of the ebbing flood. The formless mass burst toward her. Between one breath and the next, it roared over her. The wave forced water into every orifice and penetrated her pores. Then it receded. Her dream-self gasped for life-giving air as the tree dribbled old leaves on her and the waters trickled away from her swamped body. When she looked down, she saw that the waters had stained her bloody.

She snapped awake. Her heartbeat drummed. The night looked black and flame-colored, like her dream-body. For several throbbing seconds, she couldn’t figure out where she was, who she was, what she was. Then her senses righted. She saw a man crouched beside a small fire. He dipped a stick against a charred log until fire licked over it then beat the flame out against a rock.

As she sat up, Raul turned and flashed his facile grin. “Not like you to wake before your watch, Alstera.”

“Bad dream,” she husked. She got to her feet, stumbling over the trailing end of her cloak. He rose lithely and steadied her.

“Looks like a real bad dream. Your eyes—.”

She looked down, willing the nightmare away. “Go to sleep, Raul. I have the watch.”

He peered at her, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. In the months they had traveled together, he had learned not to question what she refused to share. All he said was “I won’t refuse that offer.” He wrapped his coat tightly then rolled into the blankets she had cast aside.

Alstera knelt beside the fire, knowing Raul would soon be snoring gently. Like a cat, nothing interfered with his sleep. She waited, trying to calm her jangling senses. The dream of overwhelming power troubled her. Not since Vaermonde had she sensed sorcery. The elemental that morphed out of the tree to save her from the flood only deepened her foreboding.

Why had an earth elemental blessed her dream? Elementals linked with wielders like Raul, Rhoghieri that shaped the elements, or like the Fae. Creatures of pure energy, the elementals did link with wizards. She was exiled and power-shackled, least among any ranking of wizards. If the dream were a message from her grandmother, the elemental would be water or air. So it was presage, and either she dreamed everything, or a wild one had sensed the chaotic sorcery pouring loose and had reached into her dream.

Alstera waited for Raul’s sleep to deepen before she evoked power. The tattooed bindings of the Wizard Enclave, shackling her wrists, prevented free use of four strands of her magic. Only water came freely. As she drew power to read the night’s loosed energy, the bindings heated. When she drew power too deeply, too fast for the trickle that seeped through the Enclave’s remaining four chains, the magicked tattoos seared with real fire. She had to learn to ignore the heat.

The sorcery was elusive, a threat that remained distant. The dream was as sticky with sorcery as Medreaux’s sleep-snare, the spell that had nearly killed Cherai, the comtesse Muiree. Yet her minor spell revealed nothing.

Needing information, she fetched the hand-sized book from her pouch. The cleric sorcerer had filled the journal with spells and drawings. Alstera felt a duty to read it before she destroyed it, but just touching the leather cover left a slimy taint on her hands. Hunkered beside the fire, she palmed the journal and evoked the magic she had carefully hoarded for days. The magic searched for any connection of old evil to new, hoping the cleric had recorded something. Then she flattened her hands. The book fell open. Quickly she skimmed glimmering fingertips down the page.

Medreaux had written of Cherai’s dead father, of his countless visits to the tomb to test diverse spells. In his quest to re-animate the corpse, he had discovered fragments of an incantation and its necessary potions. He failed, he wrote, because too much time had passed, because he had no access to the life born with a babe, but he noted the animal’s blood and new-killed flesh needed to strengthen the awakened corpse.

True evil, scribbled and crossed out then re-written, as if he had tried and given up then tried again, only to abandon that plan for the sleep-snare that had nearly killed Comtesse Cherai. Tonight’s nightmare reeked of a similar evil.

She set aside the journal, leaving it open to the page, and lifted her tattooed wrists to the light. The remaining bindings gleamed like shackles. Last autumn she had freed herself from the first binding. Now, after a long winter, came a second chance to pay penance for her crimes against wizardry’s five tenets. What should she do?

First choice was nothing. She was selfish enough to admit that. Fighting Medreaux had scared her. He worked a killing evil that could have destroyed her. Unable to protect herself with her bound power, she would have died, Cherai would have died, if Alstera hadn’t had the twin elements of surprise and desperation. She surprised Medreaux by countering his untutored sorcery with the forbidden blood magic. Only with that primitive power, forbidden by the Wizard Enclave, had she slipped her magic free of the bindings. In using blood magic, however, she committed a new crime that might shackle her forever.

So, first choice was to do nothing.

Her second choice was to seek out this sorcerer, foul his plans, and earn herself a second penance. The second choice would be as dangerous as helping Cherai. And it would free more of her magic. Did I think casting off these bindings would be easy?

Mordant humor twisted her mouth. She had to risk her life to win back her life. She had broken the five tenets of wizardry. She had to atone for each one of those. Stopping a sorcerer’s evil paid her first penance and released one binding sigil. Now, spilling out of the mountains, came her second opportunity.

She had no choice. A wizard dogged her trail, too far back to scent clearly but never shaken, like the dirt ground into the velvet of her once-fine gown. Whoever tracked her for Grandmère Letheina might accuse her of this evil.

To the mountains she had to go. Picking up Raul’s stick, she drew a rough map of the land—the Bowl of Selindrac which they had left behind at winter’s birth, the flat plains and rivers they had crossed for weeks, the still snowy mountains that loomed south and east, and the westward forests. She tore the damning page from Medreaux’s slowly dwindling journal, spindled it around the stick, and lit it with an arc of power. With that magicked flame, she traced over the map. The charred paper dropped south, making little humps of mountains over her tracings.

No, she thought, although her dream had prophesied mountains. Farther and farther from home. To double-check, she touched the tip of the stick to the dirt. It scored a path south. She dropped it. Like a sword it pointed the new direction.

South, into the mountains. And for Raul, she must devise a convincing reason to turn off their current direction and pursue this one. A reason that made no mention of the evil she aimed them toward.

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