Free A Wizard's Wings by T. A. Barron Page B

broke through. With relief, I saw our mother, kneeling on the planks near the middle of the stage. Her long hair, as radiant as the sun, fell over the shoulders of her dark blue robe. She was bending low, scrutinizing something intently—so intently she didn’t even look up when I called her name.
    Then I saw what occupied her: A boy, dressed in a tattered tunic, lay on the boards beside her. He was shivering, staring open-eyed. Elen was dabbing a cloth against the side of his face, trying to clean a wound. I caught the smell of lemon balm, a sure sign she was trying to ease his pain. As she lifted her hand to reach for a bowl of herbs, I stiffened. For this boy’s wound was something I had never seen before.
    His ear was gone—sliced off completely. Nothing but a blackened stub of skin remained.
    “Mother!” cried Rhia, shouldering past me.
    She turned our way, her sapphire eyes not so bright as usual. “My children.” Setting down her cloth, she reached out a hand to each of us, drawing us nearer. She leaned over, kissed our foreheads, then gazed at us somberly. “I have wicked tidings for you.”
    “As do we,” I declared, “for you.”
    “How could any be worse than what I have seen, but cannot heal?” She retrieved her cloth, dipped it in the bowl filled with water and herbs, and went back to work. The boy winced at her touch, but didn’t make any sound other than his ragged breathing. Without looking up, she continued, “This dear boy was attacked, for no apparent reason, at a tarn not far from here.”
    “His ear . . . ,” I began.
    “Was cut off.” Elen herself shivered. “A farmer, bringing his cow for a drink, saw it happen, though he arrived too late to help the poor lad.”
    I clenched my fist, convinced that this was the latest example of Stangmar’s cruelty. “How could he have done such a monstrous thing?”
    “Because he is just that: a monster.” Her face twitched in rage. “To prey on an innocent child like this!”
    I sucked in my breath. “It could have been you, Mother.”
    She started, dropping her cloth. “What?”
    Grimly, I nodded. “When he escaped from his prison, he said he was coming after you.”
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you. And he killed two prison guards when they tried to stop him.”
    She stared at me, aghast. “Killed them?”
    “With his bare hands.”
    Suddenly her face relaxed a little. “Then whoever you’re talking about didn’t attack this boy.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The farmer,” she explained, “said it was a warrior, an immense man.”
    “Yes! That’s—”
    “Wait,” she commanded. “Let me finish. He said it was a warrior who had . . .” She stopped, her expression bewildered. “No hands. He had sword blades attached to his shoulders. Sword blades—instead of arms.”
    I shook my head in disbelief. Stangmar wasn’t responsible for this? Who was, then? All at once, I remembered my dream just before the vision of Dagda had appeared. A warrior with swords instead of arms! My thoughts whirled. Rhita Gawr’s plot. Stangmar’s escape. And now this.
    “But why?” Rhia demanded, bending over the boy. “It’s so utterly cruel.”
    Our mother ran a hand through her shimmering hair. “No one knows. The warrior, whoever he was, strode off into the eastward plains. He didn’t try to challenge the farmer, just left the boy in a bloody heap.”
    I scowled, gazing at the stump of the severed ear. “Where is his family?”
    “He has none.” She set down her cloth, brought forth a strip of moss that had been dipped in lemon balm, and placed it in the boy’s mouth. “Chew that, my son, but don’t swallow,” she whispered. Turning back to me, she explained, “He’s an orphan child.”
    The words struck me like a hammer in my chest. Orphan child. All those years in that miserable village, I’d believed myself an orphan. They were years of loneliness and longing, ending in one moment of terror I could never forget. Dinatius attacking .