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.
