Free Soul Magic by Karen Whiddon

own. 
    Sarina, her expression carefully blank, laughed as well.  “Take what I offer, Geoffrey,” she mocked.  “Or I will think such passion is dangerous to you.”
    Though his color remained high, Geoffrey did not respond.  Instead, he kept watch on Alanna, glowering.
    Sarina continued to chuckle, shaking her head.  Alanna could tell from the way the corners of her mouth turned down that Geoffrey’s actions had bothered her, though she would hide this from the human man.
    Alanna tucked the cross into her girdle.  Her longing to find her son had once caused her to override caution this day.  Such lack of prudence could get her killed and then who would help Caradoc?  She would be more careful in the future. “What now?”
    Darrick’s expression turned grim.  “We will search the keep.  It may be that my mother – or some other prisoner – was left behind when they fled.”
    But a search of the deserted castle turned up nothing.  Not even a starving cat skulked on the grounds.  The place had been utterly abandoned.
    “I don’t understand this.”  Geoffrey’s words were puzzled.  “Not even a chicken or a hog, no dogs or cats or even kitchen pots.  Nothing remains to show this place was ever lived in.”
    “Yet we know full well that it was.”
    “And recently.”
    Again Alanna glanced at her cousin.  Sarina lifted one shoulder in a shrug.  Alanna knew what she meant.  She could try and tell these humans about the darkness of the spell, but with the narrow-mindedness of Geoffrey’s religion, to do so might prove foolish.  Already he mistrusted her.  `Twas enough that she had told the man magic lingered here. 
    In the distance a hawk shrieked. 
    “A bird!”  Bart pointed at the gray sky.  In the distance a black speck soared.   “A Hawk, and hunting. Not all is dead here.”
    Inhaling, Alanna sent out a tentative search for the bird.  An instant later, she recoiled.  But she had her answer.  “The hawk is how he watches us,” she said.
    “Who?”  Darrick glanced around them, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
    “The one who haunts this place thru magic.  `Tis his black touch I feel upon the air.”
    “Witchcraft,” Geoffrey hissed, again making the sign of the cross.
    Both Darrick and Alanna ignored him.
    Darrick withdrew his sword.  “Where does he hide?” 
    “I know not.”  She sighed.  “Where might Morfran have gone?”
    “He has few family members left.” Re-sheathing his sword, Darrick smiled grimly.  “And even fewer friends.  Yet he must have gone to visit--”
    The attack came suddenly, without fanfare or fuss.
    One moment Alanna listened to Darrick speak, the next her breath was sucked from her lungs.  Blackness, like the cloud that hung over Morfran’s keep, crowded the edges of her vision.  Darrick, his men, even the horses became blurry, unfocused.  She felt the weight of a huge, invisible fist trying to crush her into the ground. 
    She heard only the rasp of her breath as she tried to take air into her lungs. 
    Magic, stronger magic than she had ever in her lifetime seen or felt.  But the force that crushed her now was no magic of Rune, for the homeland of the Fae was a place of light and laughter and joy.  This magic carried with it the scent of blood and death and decay and had originated in some other, darker and deadlier place. 
    She swayed, her sense of balance non-existent.  She felt, rather than saw, hands about her waist as she was lifted from her horse’s back and set gently on the ground.
    Once there, she could not stand.  Sinking to her knees, she struggled to fight against the black force, to keep her consciousness from totally receding.  She would die, if the one who called forth this spell had his way.
    Still weak from her earlier magical usage, she struggled to fight.  Ethereal tendrils clawed at her throat, choking her.  Then, through the roar of the magic’s strength she heard someone calling her