Free A Tapestry of Spells by Lynn Kurland Page B

this into complying?”
    “I’m trying to be discreet.”
    He didn’t seem to find that unusual. He simply struck his knife against his flint until he had a decent spark. He carefully blew on the moss until it surrendered and began to burn. Sarah thought to ask him why it was he didn’t spell the fire into a cheery blaze, but perhaps he preferred discretion as well.
    He continued to feed his fire by degrees until it was warm enough that even she could actually hold her half-frozen hands against it and feel the heat. He did the same, sighing as he did so. His hood was still too far forward to see anything at all of his features, leading her to believe he was either horribly scarred, terribly wrinkled, or simply too ugly to be looked on without comments he perhaps didn’t care to have voiced.
    He rose with a grace that belied his centuries of magic making, then shrugged out of a pack and set it down. He was certainly dressed for travel. He wore not only very useful winter clothing but a bow, a quiver of arrows, and the hilt of a very long, unpleasant-looking sword. Either he planned to hunt or he took pleasure in terrifying his victims before he finished them with his magic. She didn’t mind that, as long as she wasn’t the one in his sights. With any luck, Daniel would find himself there and be repaid for all the frights he’d given her over the years.
    The mage squatted back down, then reached inside his pack and drew out a loaf of bread. He tore it and handed half to her.
    Sarah accepted it with all the enthusiasm of the starving woman she was. The outside was burned to a crisp, but she didn’t care. It was without a doubt the best thing she had ever eaten.
    She’d inhaled most of it before she thought to wonder if it had been poisoned or enspelled or subjected to some other dastardly bit of wizardly mischief. She paused, examined her stomach’s reaction to the new addition, and decided that the bread had only been subjected to too much time in the oven.
    He held out a bottle, which she took without thinking. She drank before she thought better of it, then realized what she was tasting. It was Master Franciscus’s apple ale, something he rarely gave to anyone who didn’t meet his approval. She didn’t suppose the mage had intimidated his way into possession of it. The alemaster was a man possessing not only admirable calm but a quartet of well-used knives continually residing in his boots and his belt. Perhaps gold had been exchanged, along with a sizeable number of compliments.
    She had one last drink on the off chance it might be her last, then handed the bottle back. Her companion set the bottle on her side of the fire, rummaged about in his pack, then handed her a bundle of cloth. She realized almost immediately that what she was holding in her hands was a heavy cloak. She looked at him in surprise.
    “What’s this?”
    “What it looks like.” He rose. “I’ll go scout for a bit. You should sleep.”
    She maintained a neutral expression with effort. Sleep? With him watching over her? Was he daft? The rumors that swirled about the man were terrible and endless—and that was saying quite a bit considering the general character of Shettlestoune’s inhabitants. She wouldn’t have been surprised to listen to him weave any number of dastardly spells over her and laugh whilst he did so.
    Then again, the man had endured her fist under his jaw and offered not even so much as a peep of a spell as retribution.
    “I appreciate the suggestion,” she managed, “but I don’t need to.”
    He stood there for a moment or two, then shrugged, turned, and melted into the shadows of the trees.
    She couldn’t hear him moving, though that said nothing.
    She took her knife out of her belt and drove it into the hard ground before her. No sense in not being prepared. The fire flickered softly against the wooden handle, which was cheering and unsettling at the same time. A complete stranger—and a very dangerous one, at