On Preorder for September 30!
Meet the protagonist Desora in chapter 1 of The Wyrded Forest,
book 1 of Spells of Earth, part of the Fae Mark'd World series.
~ 1 ~ Wolfsbane ~
As wizard, possessed of the magic that powered
wrought spells, Desora would have ignored the dream. Reduced to elemental
power, she dared not ignore it.
On waking, Desora set about her normal day for
Midsummer. Preserved fruit to store in her root cellar, smoked meat to remove
from the rock stack, balms and salves to make from dried herbs, those tasks
consumed the morning and well into the afternoon. She didn’t rush. The best
time to collect wolfsbane was the light of the Horn Moon, the sliver of silver
that rode high in the starry night. To dream of wolfsbane at gathering time,
that also appeared to be a sign. Tasks done, she began preparing for the
journey. The closest patch of wolfsbane that she’d found grew thickly at the
forested base of the Claws of Weorth, the abrupt uplift of the steep northern
mountains.
Early afternoon, Desora readied her scrip and her
pack before going to work in the pottager area of her garden. The beans wanted
to run themselves up and over to the wattle fence that surrounded her hut and
its gardens. She had to tease them out of their tangle and onto a trellis, slow
work in the heat of the day. Hidden behind the plants, she heard someone shake
the twig gate of her fence. She peeked through the leaves.
Visitors came rarely this far into the forest
between the Lowlands and the Wilding. The only person who deliberately sought
Desora’s company was Granny Riding, healer for the village of Mulgrum. Her
visitors numbered less than a hand over a year. Her hut was far off the main
trail that ventured into the Wilding, and only foresters and hunters dared
there. They treated her with respect, for she had the undeserved name of healer
and used it.
Six years ago, Granny Riding had led her to this
hut. It served her well with the isolation she craved. To have a visitor, come
so rarely, was a sign as significant as the dream of wolfsbane with the Horn
Moon rising in the sky.
“Ho the hut!” a man shouted.
Desora straightened from behind the bushy beans
and picked up her trug, partly filled with the day’s harvest. She hadn’t heard
his approach. She did not know when the birds, her usual sentinels, had fallen
quiet. She stepped onto the path along the row of trellised beans. “Greetings,
good sir.”
The young man flashed a grin. He was healthy and
handsome. Dark hair fell across his brow and curled at his shoulders. His eyes
were bright and clear as the sky overhead. She recognized him as a forester.
Woodwork had built his muscles and trimmed his frame. No doubt the women panted
after him. With his shock of brown hair and sparkling eyes, Desora found him
impressive but not alluring.
“Lady Desora, greetings.” He shook her gate. “Well
met.”
She came onto the path between her gardens. “You
are from Mulgrum.”
“I am, indeed.”
She wondered at his purpose here. “Has Granny
Riding a need?” for the granny was wise woman, healer and dame of magic, not
great enough for wizardry but more than enough to heal most ills that came to
remote villages and farms. Desora kept the wise woman supplied with curatives
and wound-heal.
A frown crossed his face at her mention of the
healer, but it left as quickly as it had come. “Not a need she mentioned.”
That frown—did he not like Granny Riding? Desora would
visit her on a market day, to stock her needs while Granny’s apprentice ran her
errands into the village. Most of Mulgrum had likely forgotten her existence.
“My apologies,” she said now. “I do not remember
your name.”
“Merketh.” He gave another hard shake to her twig
gate, action she found troubling.
For she’d warded the wattle fence and its gate,
warded against magical creatures with the Earth power that was left to her
after her magic had burnt out. Six years renewing her wards at every moon
change had given them the strength of stone against the magical. Gobbers had
tested it, a rock troll once, but not an ogre. And now a wyre tried to cross
her wards … and failed.
For all his mundane appearance, he must be
magical.
“The Merketh that I have heard of is a woodcutter
on the Bermarck side of Mulgrum.”
“You know me,” and he flashed that grin of good
humor.
“I have heard of you,” she said slowly, watching
her words with caution. “You are far from your work,” for the Wilding that
backed her hut was on the opposite side of the valley from the border with
Bermarck, a sept of Faeron. The magical could not work near that border, for
Fae sentinels would come to discover any power that neared their border.
Magical, for he could not cross her wards. Magical
now but not before, for he had worked a border of Faeron. Magical and no longer
mundane meant changed.
Transformed.
She knew now the reason that she’d dreamed of
wolfsbane.
Threat
When had he received the Bite that transformed him
from man to wyre? The three Lady Moons and the three Dragon Moons were the only
time she knew that wyre could change the mundane. Wyvern Moon was ten days past.
Maiden Moon was more than twice as many days ahead.
How long would Merketh have attempted to disguise
what he was?
Where was the rest of his pack?
Merketh placed both hands on the gate. He leaned
his weight backwards. The gate ungiving, he leaned his weight into it. “Lady,
will you grant me entrance?”
“My wards guard against the magical.”
His charming smile died. He leaned farther over
the gate. “Desora, Desora, Desora.”
How long would he remain, unable to cross her
wards, unable to tempt her to him or to release the magical barrier? “You
cannot enchant me with that name, Merketh. Desora is not my true name. When
were you changed?”
He growled. Had it been a Moon-Turn, he would have
changed, ripped her to shreds, and feasted on her blood. “You should fear me,”
he snarled. “Fear what I now am.”
“I do, for the man you were is lost in the wyre
you are.”
“I am better now. Stronger.”
“Controlled by the Moons,” she retorted.
“Not so,” he countered.
She didn’t understand what he meant. Instead, she
knelt and reached to the vegetables in the garden trug. She palmed the onions
and potatoes intended for tomorrow’s stew, splaying her fingers to touch the
carrots. Then she drew the Earth out of them. “Merketh, Merketh, Merketh,” she
chanted, using his attempted spell on him. The true-name spell should work on a
man born as a mundane villager. “Go away, far from here, miles and miles from
here. Run until the wind rasps in your throat, and drink from the river flowing
out of Bermarck.”
The power burst out of the vegetables, withering
them under her hands as the enchantment drank their life force. Desora flung
the power into her wards. It surged along the wattle fence to the twig gate and
into Merketh’s hands, still gripping the gate.
The enchantment shuddered into him. She saw it
wrack his body. When his eyes unfocused, she knew the spell gripped him.
He released the gate and fell back. Without
looking at her, he turned and walked away. In three strides his pace increased.
At the edge of the clearing that fronted her hut, he began running.
He would not stop until he reached the river.
Desora no longer wielded magic, but elemental Earth ran strongly, and she’d had
six years to practice with that power.
Defense
She stared after Merketh, long after he’d
disappeared into the forest.
Here this isolated valley of the Northern Reaches,
stopped by the Claws of Weorth, was long and narrow. The lower vale had a
string of lakes down its center, but the upper water courses were shallow and easily
forded. Running at a steady pace for a couple of hours—which a hale wyre could
maintain for twice as long as a hale man—Merketh would leave this forest and
cross the valley to reach the Faer River out of Bermarck. The enchantment would
hold him there until sunset.
And then what?
Desora did not want to fight him. Fighting meant
killing. No longer wizard, only a wielder of elemental power, she could kill
wyre as wizardry could not. She hadn’t killed, though, since she’d left Iscleft
Citadel.
Were she not to kill him, he would seek to kill
her.
A mundane might give up the battle, having lost,
having faced the humiliation of an enchantment that controlled him.
A wyre would not.
Her use of enchantment would motivate him even
more. He’d expected a wizard, and wizards had not magic against the wyre. He encountered
a wielder of elemental power.
Would he bring his pack into this battle between
them?
Two, three wyre she might successfully fight. Not
a pack of thirteen.
What was a pack doing this far into Elsmere? How
had the pack gotten past the narrow passage guarded by Iscleft Citadel?
She worried over those questions as she added a
longer knife to the sheath on the belt slung about her hips, then she traded her
garden clogs for sturdy walking boots. Reaching the patch of wolfsbane would
take the same time as Merketh’s run to the river. She would harvest the entire
patch as soon as the Horn Moon cleared the horizon. Leaves and flowers, but not
the roots.
With wyre come to the valley, every household of
Mulgrum would need wolfsbane and a warding charm.
Order the novella.
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