"Briggs, Patricia - Sianim 3 - When Demons Walk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Briggs Patricia)

Others had died when the magic grew too strong for them to control.

She fought to ignore the euphoria spawned by the rapidly mounting tide of magic. When she felt it


push at the edge of her control, she took the flute from her lips.

Her body was numb from the forces she held, and it took more effort than it should have to raise her
arms and begin a spell of warding. She watched her hands move, almost able to see the glow of the
magic she wrought. She was so caught up in her weaving that when it began to unravel, Sham didn’t
immediately understand the cause.

The Old Man had come to his feet and moved close enough to touch her neck with one of his
scarred and twisted hands.

“By your leave, my dear,” said the old sorcerer softly as he drew the magic she had gathered.

For a moment she was startled by his action.

All apprentices were bound to their masters. It was necessary to mitigate the risk that the fledgling
mages would lose control of the power they called and burn anything around them to cinders.

The bonds of apprenticeship had not been severed when she passed to journeyman as was the usual
practice, since only the master can break such a bond, and the Old Man had been unable to summon
magic since his crippling. Sham had never considered the possibility that he could work magic already
gathered.

“Take as you will,” she said, letting her hands fall to her side.

As the power she had drawn together gathered in the Master’s hands, the old mage smiled. For a
moment she saw him as she had the first time: power tempered with wisdom and kindness.

She watched with a keen appreciation the deft touch of the King’s Sorcerer as he wove a warding
spell similar to her own but infinitely more complex without resorting to any obvious motion to aid his
work. The continued slashes failed to break his formidable concentration. When he finished his spell, the
cottage vibrated from the force of his attacker’s frustrated, keening wail. It tested the warding twice
before Sham could no longer sense its magic.

The Old Man collapsed on the floor. Sham knelt almost as swiftly as he had fallen, running gentle
hands over him. She found no wounds that could be bound, only a multitude of small, thin lines from
which the old man’s lifeblood drained to the floor. Her motions grew more frantic as she realized the
inevitability of his death was spattered on the walls, on the floor, on her.

There was no magic she knew that could heal him. The runes of healing she drew on his chest would
promote his body’s own processes, but she knew that he would be dead long before his body could
even begin to mend. She tried anyway. The effort of working magic so soon after she’d played the flute
caused her hands to shake as she drew runes that blurred irritatingly in her vision as she cried.

“Enough, Shamera, enough.” The Old Man’s voice was very weak.