Free The Stricken Field by Dave Duncan Page A

"Are you implying that I do? It was about three hundred years ago."
2
    Thaile lay on her bed, fully dressed but unable to find the energy to do anything at all. She would not have believed that a mere two days without food would make her so weak. Visions of melons and cutlets floated in her head. Mangoes and perch and rice cakes and breadfruit and ... Where had she ever tasted breadfruit?
    If Mistress Mearn marched in now and waved an egg at her, she would crawl on hands and knees all the way to the Defile to get it.
    No she wouldn't!
    Leeb! My goodman, Leeb! Whoever or whatever you are, Leeb, I want you. I want to come back to you.
    I will never give up.
    She drifted in and out of a drowsiness that was not sleep. Never give up.
    An explosion of terror jarred her awake. Someone was coming. The Feeling was unbearable, the worst agony she had ever sensed. It grew stronger and nearer. Footsteps thudded like drumbeats before they reached the porch-a heavy man, running hard, his tread uneven and staggering as if he had run a very long way. She soon realized that it was Mist, his normal aura warped off-key and distorted almost beyond recognition by the strength of his fear.
    As she struggled upright on the bed, he tripped on the steps and crashed down on the porch. The whole cottage rocked. She scrambled to her feet and reeled unsteadily to the wall, through the doorway, and across the outer room.
    She found him curled up as he must have landed, breathing hoarsely. Appalled, she knelt and laid a hand on his sweat-soaked hair.
    "Mist? What's wrong?" She could hardly think through the torrent of dread he was projecting. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh.
    He shuddered violently, breath croaking and rattling. "Tell me!" she cried. "Speak, Mist!"
    He raised a face the color of old snow. His eyes were round and his lips blue. He drooled like a dog.
    "The Defile! You can't imagine! Oh, Gods!"
    She recoiled as he grabbed at her arm, crushing it with his big fingers.
    "The Defile ... whatever you do ... don't let them ... Stay away from there!"
    "Mist, you're hurting me!"
    A board creaked; a shadow fell across them both. "That is all the extra trouble we needed!" another voice snapped. A heavyset young man stood there, glaring down angrily at the unheeding novice. Either his emotions were masked or Mist's distress was drowning them out.
    "Who are you?" Thaile shouted. She tried to rise, but Mist still held her arm. She staggered, swaying with sudden dizziness, and had to steady herself with a hand on the floor.
    Piercing gold eyes flashed fury at her. "Never mind! We're leaving. I am sorry this young idiot disturbed you. Someone has been very careless."
    Her arm was held no longer; both men vanished simultaneously. The door behind her slammed in the wind. She tried to reach it and her limbs would not obey her. She sprawled on the planks. By the time her head stopped spinning and her heart calmed down to something like its normal pace, she had almost convinced herself that she was hallucinating. Just faintness caused by hunger, that was all!
    Ignoring the bruises on her arm, the footprints on the grass, and the muddy marks on the stoop, she went back indoors.
3
    The library complex stood on a high cliff overlooking the Morning Sea. The Scriptorium was one of the largest buildings, and the whole north wall was glass. Sorcerers could read and write perfectly well in complete darkness, of course, but that effort would have added to the occult noise they made in their labors, which was distracting enough already. The work hall was shielded. It would have been more pleasant had each of the many desks had its own shielding. Jain did not know why nobody had ever thought of that. Perhaps everybody did at some time or another and was scared to suggest the idea in case people thought they could not concentrate properly, which was why he didn't.
    He was having great difficulty concentrating that morning. He was supposed to be restoring some genealogical