Free The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce

heavier, its owner larger and stronger than Alanna, but the strange gray blade held. It flickered with a ghostly light that caught the hillman's eyes. Alanna broke away and came back, cutting up and under. The hillman was still staring at her sword; he tried to block, but he was sluggish. The crystal sword flicked up and inside his guard, cutting deeply into his neck. This time she was ready for the rush of power from the sword; this time she struck back at it with her mind, tearing at its source. Had she been forced to describe it, she would have said that it felt like a knot in the threads of power that made up the sword's magic. Now her mind cut through the knot, pulling it out of the sword's make-up, hurling it into the night. The last of the would-be raiders had decided to run from the victorious Halef Seif; the evil Alanna had thrown away struck his back, turning him instantly into a pile of ashes.
    "I didn't mean for that to happen," she whispered tiredly, wiping the blade on a fallen man's cloak. The sword's humming was less now, and the ugly triumph she had felt at killing was only a shadow on her memory.
    "It is foolish to let such a one escape, to take reports to his tribe," the headman told her sternly. "And what did happen? You were not fighting with all of you." His sharp eyes took in the crystal sword as she resheathed it. "The sword is evil. It will turn on you."
    She shook her head. "Very little that is real is evil, Halef Seif," she replied. "Magic itself isn't evil, but it can be turned to evil purposes. If you can straighten the magic out somehow—"
    "And what if this sword's magic has been turned to evil for ages beyond count?" she was asked. "What if you are not strong enough to defeat it?"
    Alanna poked her chin forward; her violet eyes glittered dangerously. "I've promised myself I will master this blade, and I will," she said between gritted teeth. "No sword—not even this one—is going to beat me." She whistled and Moonlight trotted down to her, Halef Seif's stallion following. She mounted up, still scowling at the headman. "And that is that!"
    Hiding a smile, the Bazhir mounted his own steed. "As you say—Woman Who Rides Like a Man."
    *
    Alanna had thought that her girl apprentices might protest their inclusion at the tribe's fire, but she had underestimated their awe of her. Once they realized Alanna would let them continue to wear face veils, they agreed. Kara looked frightened, and Kourrem set her jaw stubbornly, but both ranged themselves between Ishak and Alanna the next night, looking at the ground as silence fell. For a few moments nothing was said. Then the talk began again, slowly, as man after man shrugged his acceptance. It was the women who held back that night, and the next, and the next, serving the girls and Alanna with an abruptness that would have been rude if Halef Seif had not been watching. Alanna sighed. How could she get the tribe's women to accept her and her apprentices? She couldn't force them to like the changes she had brought to the Bloody Hawk.
    Lessons continued, with all of them studying the scrolls on ceremonial magic that lay before the tribe's altars. Of the apprentices, Ishak did the best with these spells, which covered everything from cleansing the lamps to consecrating a new temple. Alanna watched her boy pupil's growing cockiness with apprehension. To her, used to the slightest quirks exhibited by the pages and squires she had once taught, it was plain that Ishak was getting dangerously over-confident.
    "Can't you let me move ahead?" he demanded of Alanna one evening as the young shaman and her students relaxed in the common area of her tent. Kourrem was fussing over a loom she had set up, and Kara was helping to thread it; but Alanna could feel both girls listening hard. "I've already learned most of our ceremonial magic; can't you teach me something interesting?"
    Alanna stroked Faithful. The cat sprawled over her lap, listening as intently as the girls.