Free The Fractured Sky by Thomas M. Reid

said, more forcefully. “Hear me! I have come to take you from this prison! Let me help you!”
    Kashada whirled, staggered like a drunken thing, and glared at her would-be rescuer. “Shadows!” she screamed at him. “There are no shadows!” She swayed where she stood and began to sob, clenching her eyes shut in misery.
    Her mind is lost, Myshik thought, projecting to Tekthyrios. She has no reason left. She screams of there being no shadows.
    Of course! Tekthyrios said. How clever. Myshik, you must create a shadow for her. You can restore her mind if you can show her a shadow. Do it!
    The half-dragon scowled, looking around the sphere. He had not noticed it before, but with light glowing from the entire inner surface, no shadows were cast anywhere. He could see no way to shield any area from the light.
    Kashada howled, a forlorn wailing that reminded Myshik of the jackals in the great desert of Anauroch, singing to the moon at night. She kept her eyes closed, uninterested in attacking him further.
    A thought struck Myshik. Working quickly, he removed his cloak and draped it upon the lowest point of the sphere, essentially the floor. He reached into an inner pocket and pulled out an oblong bundle. Unwrapping it, the half-dragon produced a glowing, prism-shaped white crystal twice as thick as his thumb and as long as his hand. He knelt down upon his cloak and held the crystal over it. He placed his other hand between the glow of the crystal and the dark cloth of the cloak. A faint shadow formed there.
    “Kashada,” Myshik called. “Look, a shadow.”
    The crone’s eyes flew open, and she ceased her wailing. She stared at Myshik for a moment, cocking her head from side to side like some predatory bird. Then she spied the light in his hands, and the patch of darkness he had created. She shrieked in delight and rushed forward. Myshik flinched, expecting her to strike at him again, but instead she knelt down, cooing softly.
    “Darker,” she demanded, still staring at the shadow. “It must be darker. Make it darker!” she finished with a scream.
    Myshik frowned, uncertain. Then inspiration struck. He rose to his feet again and loomed over the crystal, blocking as much of the sphere’s light as he could with his body.
    The shadow of his hand upon the cloak deepened.
    “Yes!” Kashada shouted in triumph. Her voice had changed. It was stronger, less shrill. “You’ve done it!” Then the woman lunged forward and dived at the hand-shaped area of darkness.
    Before Myshik’s eyes, she melted into the shadow and vanished.
    ???
    Tauran rested upon his favorite protrusion of stone, high above the Lifespring. He sat a pace away from the edge, leaning back against a towering pinnacle of rock pointed skyward like a poniard. A tumbling waterfall roared next to him, emerging from a cleft in the cliff face and plunging over the side of the protrusion, out of sight.
    “We should be inside!” Micus said, shouting to be heard. The other angel sat next to Tauran, huddled against the spire of rock, trying to avoid of the worst of the wind. “Why in the Hells are we out here in this?”
    Tauran ignored his friend and crawled toward the end of the protrusion. The howling, lashing storms whipped the spray from the churning torrent, peppering him with a fine, cool mist. The dampness made the stone beneath his hands and feet slick. The wind tore at his tunic as if it wanted to rip him from the precipice and carry him away. Ignoring the gale, Tauran reached the edge and peered over.
    It was a long drop.
    The spire behind him rose as the tallest, most impossibly thin peak in a high, sharp ridge of jagged, jutting stone. The ridge formed a deep basin surrounding the Lifespring on three sides. Most days, the waters shimmered in golden sunlight, a tranquil pool of divine healing magic. That day, they churned and frothed in a blue-gray maelstrom covered in whitecaps.
    Tauran could barely see the distant shore, where the water spilled over a