Free The Elements of Sorcery by Christopher Kellen Page B

but my hand came away clean. Alina stared at me with a bemused expression.
    "Sorry," I said lamely. "I thought there was a bug."
    She shook her head with a little smile, and went back to shaving curls of wood off the leg of the chair.
    What the hell was going on here? The pain had been fierce enough that I would have expected my hand to come away bloody, except there was no trace of injury. "Palis didn't have anything particularly helpful to say," I said, trying to bring her back around. "You were more helpful than he was, I think."
    "He's not a very talkative man," she answered. "And that boy of his…"
    My eyes narrowed with sudden interest. "What about the boy?"
    She straightened, and waved the hand with the knife in a slashing motion. "A bloody coward, that's what he is," she snapped. "Never saw him the night we tried to fight back."
    Oh really? I thought. My hand moved up to stroke along my jawline in thought. "Well, not everyone can be brave," I said.
    "Once it was all over, he came on out of his house, said he'd been hiding under his bed when the howling started," she said, and the hand holding the knife trembled. "There we were, out fighting for our lives, and he was inside…"
    The words started pouring out of her in a rush, and I didn't say a word to interrupt. "The boy's strong enough to pick up a shovel, he's strong enough and old enough to fight for our lives, for my children's lives, but instead he's hiding inside?" The knife slashed through the air, punctuating her words as she spoke. "We should have cut him open and thrown him to the Reaper's dogs. It would have been a mercy. At least we would have killed him first—"
    She choked on the last word and doubled over in grief, her blade slipping from now-nerveless fingers and dropping to the floor, where it struck with a clatter. My eyes had grown steadily wider throughout her tirade… such vehemence . I had never felt so strongly about anything. Ever. Was that what it meant to have children, to lose them?
    A fresh sob ripped its way out of her, the sound so heartbreaking that I very nearly choked up myself. I took a faltering step toward her, but she looked up at me with shining blue eyes that fixed me in place.
    "You promised me that you would do something," she said in a strangled voice. "So what are you going to do?"
    Turn tail and run like the wind? A cynical part of me asked.
    That would be the smart thing to do , I agreed with myself.
    With a wave of my hand, I dismissed the voices within. There had to be something I could do to ease this poor woman's agony. Despite some efforts during my younger years, I had never been particularly good with people, and especially not women. My books and lab supplies were my friends. They didn't grieve, they didn't even notice when I frittered them away in experiments and midnight readings. The fact was, all I had to offer were facts and stories. She knew I wasn't an Arbiter, but she didn't know my true vocation, though it was distinctly possible that she might suspect. My mind groped for something, anything that I could say that might help her.
    "Do you know the origin of the story of the Golden Queen?" I asked her.
    The question was so strange that it interrupted her sobbing for a moment. She gave me a queer look, and I was distinctly aware that I hadn't answered her question.
    "I haven't even thought about it in years," she said at last. "My mother always just told the story."
    With a little sigh, I found a spot on the floor with my back against a wall not far from her, and folded my knees in front of me. "That particular story is actually older than the Old Kingdoms themselves," I said. "It comes from Old Tellar, in fact. It's been told for thousands of years. A beggar comes to each of seven Kings and Queens and pleads for them to hear him, for he brings tidings of great darkness. In turn, six monarchs refuse his pleas, until Alina the Golden Queen agrees to give him an audience. When she does, the beggar transforms