Free Soul's Reckoning (Broken Well Trilogy) by Sam Bowring

waist.
    ‘There you are,’ she said. She held onto his belt and swung herself around in front of him, while he stood planted as firm as a tree trunk. He marvelled at the sight of her, as he so often did .   .   . her blond hair shining in a shaft of sunlight, her orange-flecked blue eyes as bright as jewels. They were the same eyes as those of his first wife, Mirrow, mother of his child – for Charla had been grown from a part of Mirrow’s soul reborn, though she did not remember her previous life.
    ‘Have you forgotten, my Lord of the Wood,’ she said, ‘that you requested your warriors assemble in the clearing at midday?’
    ‘Nay,’ said Corlas, and glanced at the sky. ‘Ah. Vyasinth summoned me. Evidently I have lost track of time.’
    ‘They are waiting.’ She leaned back further, increasing the pressure on his belt, and he chortled.
    ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You may let go – I am no stubborn steer to be hauled about. I will come of my own accord.’
    She released him with a grin, and together they went through the trees. Charla was energetic as usual, light on her feet, and hurled her spear ahead of them, into an approaching knothole. She was a warrior, that was for sure – something she did not have in common with Mirrow. Or maybe it was just that Mirrow had never needed to pick up arms.
    ‘Did the Lady have any important news?’ she asked.
    ‘It seems our .   .   .’ He bit his tongue, and cast her a sidelong glance. She plucked her spear from where it wavered, and inspected the tip. Our sons , he had been going to say. It was curious to think that, although his boys were actually older than her, in a way she was their mother. He knew they were not in agreement on that point, however, and had no wish to visit the argument again.
    ‘What is it?’ she asked.
    ‘Naught to worry about,’ he said quickly.
    Charla hefted the spear and flung it again. It missed the next knothole she’d been aiming at, sinking instead into the bark of the tree. She gave a small grimace.
    ‘They are not my sons,’ she said. ‘I never grew them in my belly, or suckled them at my breast, or even met them.’ She looked up at him with a hard expression.
    ‘No,’ he said.
    ‘I’m my own person,’ she told him sternly, just as Mirrow would have done, and he smiled.
    ‘What is that look for?’ she demanded.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Likely,’ she said in a tone implying it was anything but.
    ‘At any rate,’ said Corlas, ‘from what the Lady has shown me, it seems Losara is on the march.’
    The look in her eyes turned to interest. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Aye. And now he travels north .   .   . towards us.’
    •
    In the clearing outside his hut, Corlas walked along rows of Sprite warriors. They did not exactly stand to attention, like the more regimented soldiers of Kainordas, but that kind of conformity was not really the Sprite way. Perhaps he should have worried about it – without discipline, how could any commander hope to succeed? But he had learned that just because a warrior conversed with his neighbour, it did not mean he would not leap to obey orders once they were given.
    Of the some five hundred Sprites who lived in the wood, he had selected an elite, mainly from the younger ones who had grown up never knowing any different way of life. Those chosen were strong in Old Magic, the lost magic, yet even with such power at their fingertips, there was little hope of tackling the enemy armies head-on. They were going to have to choose their moment well if they were to bring his son back to the wood, once he was remade. Quite how this would happen remained a worrying question, but the Lady Vyasinth did not seem overly concerned. She had a degree of faith in fate, it seemed, that Corlas was not sure he shared – awakened to his Sprite past he may be, but he still preferred plans. And yet she might be proven right, for Losara was now drawing closer to the wood, and where Losara went surely Bel would follow.