Free The Lost Enchantress by Patricia Coughlin Page A

lost T’airna talisman . . . our talisman. I’m as sure of that as I am that the sun rose this morning.”
    She drew her hand away, leaving the pendant with Eve.
    “The lost T’airna talisman?” Eve echoed the words slowly, as if they were spoken in a language she’d never heard before, which in a way they were. “How come I never heard anything about a lost family talisman before now?”
    “I suppose because when you were very young, I did my best to abide by your parents’ wishes where magic was concerned. I did,” she insisted when Eve looked askance at her. “That was my very best. Anyway, I always thought there would be plenty of time later, when you were older, to tell you everything. I expected there to be time for so many things, and then . . . and then there wasn’t.”
    Eve nodded, understanding. “How long ago was it lost?”
    “Centuries. It disappeared just after Maura sat for that portrait, stolen by the man she later married, never to be seen again. At least the family suspected it was he who stole it, and he who caused poor Maura’s death only months after they were wed. Neither was ever proven; Phineas Pavane was too slippery, all charm and smiles when it suited him.
    “T’is said he learned of the talisman from Maura, who was a bit of a flibbertigibbet. Who knows how she might have bragged to impress a suitor she fancied? But in truth Maura was a silly little thing with scant power of her own and no interest in learning how to control even that. If Pavane married her thinking she was his key to unlocking the talisman’s power, he would have soon found out differently and had no use for her.”
    “And so he killed her? That’s horrible.”
    “Indeed, for poor Maura and for all of us who followed. With the talisman gone, everything changed. T’airna fortunes dwindled, and their power too.”
    Grand’s expression hardened. Her sharp blue gaze was fixed on a point over Eve’s shoulder, but Eve surmised that whatever she was seeing was an ocean and several lifetimes away.
    “The T’airnas were once the toast of Glengara. They were beloved by their neighbors, and for very good reason; there wasn’t a soul who hadn’t turned to them for help, and help they always got. Whether it was a potion for a sick child or a charm to save a failing crop, they could be counted on in a time of need. And then there were the other matters they tended to, matters on a far grander scale, matters of life and death that their neighbors never thanked them for, because they never knew. They were spared having to know because the T’airnas were among those who kept watch against the darkness.”
    Kept watch against the darkness . . . The words stirred Eve’s imagination, and her curiosity, and sent a shiver dancing along her spine.
    “Our legacy is a proud one of duty and destiny,” Grand told her. “For all of time, enchantresses of the house of T’airna made life better and safer in ways no one else could. And then, in the space of only a generation or two, everything changed, and they found themselves working as paid servants on Pavane’s grand estate or in one of his businesses; there was naught else to do since by then he owned the village whole.”
    “And you think this . . . reversal of fortune was all because of a lost pendant?”
    “Because of a lost talisman ,” Grand corrected indignantly. “Even if Pavane couldn’t access its true power, its loss tipped the scales and he took full advantage. It was only years later, after he’d gathered all the wealth and power a man could want in this world, that it became known he was a necromancer, calling on the darkest of magics to work his will.”
    She held her hand out and waited for Eve to return the pendant to her. “This talisman is our heritage. It holds the wisdom and power of every woman who’s ever possessed it. And it is our future, a link to magic purer and more potent than any in this realm, a link to the divine magic of the