“Bah,” the farmer’s wife said. “Magic is like water—too much or too little can do harm, but if you take care to tame its flow, it is life-giving. All this chatter about the danger of magic . . . pish. Around these parts, we’ve practiced magic for generations. Stopping magic would be like taking away our breath.”
“King Rangar would never outlaw magic,” the farmer intimated. “He’s wiser than those zealots in the southern kingdoms.”
This time, Bryn couldn’t help but glance back to gauge Rangar’s reaction. He remained stoic as he nodded. “I agree with your thoughts about magic,” he said. “Let us hope more people begin to see the same logic.”
As they rode through the southern Baer villages, Bryn was heartened by the strong protections against berserkir wolves and the lack of “No Magic” signs. They once came across a handful of anti-magic signs at a settlement that bore the look of Zaradona immigrants, but almost all other homes and farms seemed to continue using magic as they always had.
“See?” Bryn said encouragingly to Rangar. “Reason still prevails. We have many allies yet among our people.”
They crossed the border into the Wollin, and the terrain continued to flatten. The Wollin was a long, narrow kingdom that hugged the western Eyrie coast. Woll village houses were made less of stone and timber and more of thatched roofs and clay brick siding.
When the sun began to sink on the horizon, Rangar kept an eye out for places they might pass the night. They entered a village with a tavern, and he dismounted and went inside while Bryn waited with the horses.
“There is no inn for miles,” he reported when he emerged. “But they serve meals here and can put us up for the night in the hayloft.”
“A hayloft for a king?” she said wryly.
His eyes danced with amusement. “As long as I’m not wearing my crown, I’m just a traveler with coins in his pocket.”
Bryn was in no position to complain. She’d spent enough nights sleeping on hard soil that hay sounded positively divine. They went inside, where a woman with the Wollin’s famed red hair brought them pints of ale and plates of roasted duck as she juggled a toddler on her hip.
“What a sweet child,” Bryn said, smiling at the little girl.
“This is my Mara,” the tavern keeper said, beaming as she bounced the girl on her hip. “Already riding her big sister’s pony.”
The woman disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving Bryn and Rangar to their meal. The duck was tough, but Bryn was grateful for anything besides dried venison strips. On the other hand, the ale had a lovely salty touch that Rangar explained was from filtering the brew with oyster shells from the nearby coast.
A crash came from the kitchen, followed by the tavern keeper’s wail, loud enough to wake the dead. “Mara! My Mara!”
Bryn and Rangar were both on their feet in an instant. The rest of the tavern was empty, and they’d seen no sign of the tavern keeper’s husband or other children, so they rushed into the kitchen to see what had happened.
The tavern keeper’s face was pale as snow, her eyes wide. An overturned pot of boiling water rested on the floor. The toddler girl was lying on the ground, unmoving. Red splotches marked the child’s bare face and arms.
“The pot . . .” the tavern keeper gasped. “It slipped. The hot water scalded her. She isn’t breathing!”
Rangar dropped to a knee by the girl and felt her breath against the back of his hand. He looked up at Bryn with a pained expression. “Her body is in shock from the burns.”
Bryn fell to her knees, too, hovering her hands over the toddler. The girl’s skin blistered badly as puss bubbled up. “Is there a healer in this town?” Bryn asked.
“No,” the mother gasped. “Sara has a few hexes, but mostly for gardening . . . She’s visiting her family in Vinmur now anyway . . .”
Bryn clasped Rangar’s hand and said firmly, “I need you to amplify a hex for me.”
He didn’t question her; he only bobbed his head in a nod. Bryn wet her lips. She’d obtained the healing hex with the idea that a queen should have the skill to mend her people's minor scrapes and bruises, but she never imagined she’d be faced with a little girl’slife—especially not so soon after beginning her apprenticeship. The healing hex on its own wasn’t strong enough to reverse the girl’s burns, but if she used Rangar’s amplifier spell, there was a chance it could save the child.
Clasping Rangar’s hand, Bryn traced the minor healing hex shape over the girl’s body. She said carefully, “Cura na agus.”
A tingle of magic gathered from Rangar’s body and poured into her own. She closed her eyes, centering her intention on the girl.
“My sweet Mara . . .” the tavern keeper wailed in the background.
Bryn pushed all else out of her mind except the girl and the spell. She hung onto the incantation’s words in her mind, repeating them silently again and again. Rangar’s hand tightened in hers supportively.
Suddenly, the girl moaned.
The mother gasped, and Bryn finally opened her eyes. The little girl blinked awake. Her arms were still splotched with red, but the worst of the blisters had reversed themselves. The deepest burns were now nothing more than a sunburn.
The little girl’s bottom lip trembled, and in the next breath, she let out an ear-piercing wail. Her mother rushed in and scooped her up, crying tears of relief. “That’s it, my love! You cry. You cry as loud as you need to.”
