Free Sorceress of Faith by Robin D. Owens Page A

face.
    Marian
mirrored him, watching. Finally, he returned to his original position.
    “Now
you move and I will follow,” he said.
    This
was the strangest activity Marian had ever done with a teacher. Tentatively she
set her hands together as if in prayer. He did the same. A little bolder, she
tilted her head, grinned. He did the same. So they continued, Marian leading,
until he said, “Fini.”
    When
her eyes met his, he said, “Now we move together, but neither of us leads.”
    That
sounded very strange. So she watched him and when he moved his hands a little
she followed, but leaned to one side, and he did so, too. It was…balance. More
than that, it was a connection, knowing how they should move together, and in
her mind she began to hear a stream of musical notes weaving into a melody. A
couple of minutes later, they brought their hands together, palm to palm, and a
huge flare of energy burst from her, dazzling her with its lightning
brightness, its orchestral chord thundering in her ears, her mind.
    She
spun free. Suddenly she was looking down on her body, hand-to-hand with
Bossgond, in a round tower room. Then she was in the room above them, where she
saw the star pentagram that had brought her. She rose above the tower to see a
large island, the green coast of an unfamiliar land, then drifted even higher
until she saw how the world curved.
    Free.
    Terrified.
There was nothing to hold her here—no bond with this planet, this land. She
still couldn’t feel any link to Earth or Andrew, and wherever that corridor was
that she’d entered Lladrana from, it didn’t seem to be a physical place she
could find.
    Marian
floated, unable to control her magic that had pushed her from her body. The
Power was so strong she was unable to move her spirit-self even a smidgeon.
    A
slight breeze could blow her away.

6
    B ossgond’s strong
hands squeezed hers. “Come back!” His resonant voice trembled through her
wavery self and she plummeted into her body. She clung to his hands, stared at
his homely face with her physical eyes. Her body trembled.
    “You
have returned,” Bossgond said. “Good.” He separated his fingers from hers one
by one and stood up stiffly. “I will get you hareco—a drink to help you
settle.”
    Leaning
back on the huge, firm pillow that braced her, Marian hoped it wasn’t some
pitiful herbal tea. Good black tea would be nice, or—
    She
smelled it. Coffee! And she murmured a prayer of thanks. Bossgond handed her a
mug and she inhaled the fragrance. Hot, dark coffee. She drank greedily, while
he sipped from a matching mug. The pottery had a big yellow bird emblazoned on
it, but she was too shaken to ask about the icon.
    “Your
first lesson will be in grounding.” He frowned, and the small black streak in
his golden hair seemed to darken, or perhaps the rest glowed.
    Marian
pressed her lips together. She understood what he said well enough, and she
wasn’t that much of a kindergartner that she didn’t know what “grounding”
was—making sure you were solid in your body before doing magic.
    Keeping
her voice even, she set aside her mug and said, “This will be hard. I do not
have a link—” she hooked her two index fingers together “—to Amee. My link to
Exotique Terre is broken.” Her chin wobbled at the thought. She grabbed her mug
and sipped again—something she could understand, coffee.
    Bossgond
patted her shoulder awkwardly and took his place again. “From my observations,
it seems as if Exotique Terre has little magic,” Bossgond said, as she drained
the last, lovely gulp from her mug.
    Exotique
Terre was what he’d called the globe of Earth the night before. Marian didn’t
know what to say, so she shrugged.
    “A
Power like yours would not have been so stifled, so bound until it struggled to
get free, here on Amee.” The old man’s tone was laced with disapproval of her
previous world. “You are far beyond the age of the standard Apprentice.” He
snorted. “But