Free Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) by Holly Lisle Page B

god shrugged and tipped his hands palm up. “I can’t affect the emeshest, dear girl, any more than I can affect the Delmuirie barrier. If I knew what to do, I wouldn’t need you. Now, would I?” He smiled brightly. “I’d tell you if I could, of course.”
    “My daughter is in there.” Faia imagined ripping the diminutive god into tiny, bloody shreds; she liked the image.
    Witte remained unconcerned, though. “Think of her as incentive.”
    Her anger grew cold—and made her strong. She would find a way to free Kirtha, and when she had succeeded, she would find a way to obliterate a god. She didn’t care that no one had ever done it before. She would do it—she would make the vile Hrogner pay. She stared at the barrier of light, and at Kirtha, frozen in midstep on the other side—still looking as if she would spurt forward at any instant and race on to find her father.
    She’s alive in there, Faia thought. And if there’s a way into the emeshest, there must be a way out. I can find it—if anyone in Arhel can find it, I can.
    She clenched her jaws tight and squinted into the light.
    I have to.
    She reached out, and tentatively touched the wall of light. It shimmered and pulsed beneath her fingertip, and she felt a jolt of pure, wild energy sing through her veins. She pulled her hand back and pondered the wall again. It seemed alive, that glistening barrier—alive and waiting. Deep in her belly, she felt terror at what she faced; she kept that terror in check, though, and let the energy of her fear spur her thoughts. The only thing she needed to fear was failure; and because her daughter was in there, she could not fail. She could not. She lowered herself to the ground and crossed her legs, then pressed both her palms against her belly and concentrated on feeling her breath moving in and out.
    Use the fear, she told herself. Let it fuel the magic.
    Faia studied the pulsing wall of light with senses both physical and magical. She felt out its perimeters. It soared as far above the surface of the earth as it burrowed beneath it; it sat like a fat sphere buried to its middle in the mountainside. Not all of it was visible energy, she realized—from the promontory, the light had flowed like a blanket over the surface of the ancient ruins, though the actual reach of Delmuirie’s magic covered much more territory.
    She could find neither a ley line power source, nor a link with earth or sun. The energy seemed truly to come from the heart of the emeshest—from the center, where Delmuirie sat like a fat, stupid spider in its web.
    She could not break the emeshest’s ties with its source of power, then. She dared not physically enter it, or she would certainty end up in the same situation as her daughter and her friends—from the inside, she wouldn’t be able to help.
    Yet what could she hope to do from the outside?
    She struggled to ground the energy she controlled—the impossible amounts of power the emeshest generated had disturbed her when she and Witte had arrived in the city. Physical proximity to the wall of light made the effects much worse. She tightened the focus of her concentration, until the world around her ceased to intrude on her thoughts, and only the magic and the emeshest existed for her.
    Inside and outside. That was her answer; she needed to be both inside and outside Delmuirie’s wall.
    Hard discipline had taught her to pare away all of herself that was physical, and to break her spirit free—long practice gave her the strength to do what she needed to do in spite of her fear for her daughter, in spite of the distraction of the pulsing emeshest, in spite of her fury at the meddlesome, evil god that sat on the rock above her, swinging his leg. Slowly and cautiously, she separated her conscious self from her body. She floated above her flesh, so that for a moment she could see herself sitting on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed. She turned away from her flesh-self, and as she did, she