Free Message Bearer (The Auran Chronicles Book 1) by M. S. Dobing Page B

Only
with mastery of the Weave will the lock on the boy’s mind be removed.’
    ‘So he is trained? Here?’
Brun said, an eyebrow raised.
    ‘Well, obviously he must
not be integrated. He is not of the blood. He cannot mix with the other
acolytes. No, we will appoint him a trainer more appropriate to his status.
‘And when he is at the required level, we will extract the information we need.’
    ‘What about protection?
The sheol seem to be drawn to him. Marek’s forces seem drawn to him. Is
it wise to allow him to be so far from our core?’
    ‘I would not worry about
that,’ Silas said, suddenly joining the conversation. ‘The sheol attention was
simply the aura the boy was projecting. We all could see it. The sheol were
drawn to him, there is nothing more to it than that.’
    ‘Are you saying he needs
no protection at all, Silas?’ The Magister said, her tone dripping in
disbelief.
    Silas raised both hands. ‘Of
course not. I am merely stating that we should not get carried away here. I
will assign some of my forces to keep an eye on him, and his trainer,
assuming it is whom I think you will be using for this task.’
    The Magister nodded
slowly. ‘Agreed.’
    ‘And the boy, when this
is done, will he remain? Without a Family to take him in?’ Lore Keeper Brun
said.
    ‘He should not. There is
no position for him.’
    ‘No,’ Brun said. ‘But an
exception has been made before.’
    ‘Caleb made himself
useful. It made sense to keep him.’
    ‘Caleb won’t be around
forever.’
    The Magister waved a
hand. ‘I won’t make a decision now. If he learns well, makes himself useful,
then perhaps we may find a way. But if not, if the only purpose he serves is to
be the carrier of a message from one of our dead kin, then he will be purged.
The Magistry has no need for any further controversies and I will not waste a
moment mourning his passing.’

Chapter
10
     
    Just over a week after she’d emerged from
the mortuary to a scene of carnage, Sylph found herself trudging through a
dense wood. Her head hung low and she clutched one arm with the other as she
walked, one foot in front of the other, the mud sucking and pulling on her
feet, her muscles burning with every step.
    Luchar and the team had
left a blood bath behind them. Eight casualties had lain strewn across the car
park. More of the authorities had turned up as she’d studied the massacre,
arriving in a blaze of sirens and blue lights. She had fled the scene,
vanishing into the shadows before she was detected.
    For days she’d remained,
hiding in the day, hunting at night. She should’ve gone back straight away, to
deliver the memories to Marek, but something was different in the air. A disturbance
in the Weave had occurred, drawing feral sheol from miles around. Against her
better instincts, she had remained.
    Drawn by the same
disturbance that lured the sheol she’d found herself staring at the enemy, a
warrior of the Brotherhood trying to fight his way back to sanctuary. She’d
been careless and attacked without thought, and now she carried the result of that
recklessness with the fractured arm she now cradled against her chest.
    From the park she had fled,
only stopping when her lungs burned and her muscles screamed. Darkness was her
guardian, and under its watchful gaze she had travelled many miles on foot,
keeping to the shadows, a speedy phantom that blurred past those denizens of
the town that called that time of night their home.
    Now free from town she marched
across an open field towards an isolated house she’d spotted on the horizon.
The comforting cloak of night was receding now, and already a veil of pink was
creeping across the sky. Birds tweeted as she walked, sensing the arrival of a
new day.
    No doubt Luchar and the
rest of them were back at Haven by now. They hadn’t waited for her, not that
she had expected them to. The longer they were above ground the greater the
risk, the greater the chances of detection by the