Free Winged Magic by Mary H. Herbert Page B

dagger-sharp. “The Turics think we did it.”
    “That’s ridiculous!” Fiergan snarled. “They can’t think we’re that stupid. That boy’s the best thing they have.”
    Rafnir looked searchingly at his father-in-law. “Something made them think it was us. “What was it?”
    Athlone clenched his fists as if he were trying to crush his impotent wrath. “Oh, there was something all right. Something only seven of us here can use. Sorcery. The Shar-Yon was killed by the Trymian force.”
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    “Bad news comes in threes,” the clanspeople often said, and the second piece of ill-tidings came at dawn on a frigid wind from the north. The temperatures, which had been falling steadily throughout the night, took a plunge, and the rain gradually slowed to a heavy drizzle and began to freeze. The sunrise came reluctantly, lightening the darkness to a gloomy morning heavily cloaked in cloud and mist that showed no signs of thawing the building ice.
    The clansmen cursed and struggled against the freezing sleet to reinforce their tents, bring the horses into shelters hurriedly erected in the lee of the tents, and gather up any firewood that was not already encrusted in sheets of ice. Ice storms were rare on the northern plains, which made them that much more dangerous, and the clanspeople hated them almost more than the blinding blizzards that often swept the grasslands.
    Across the river there seemed to be a furious swarm of activity in the Turic camp. Tents were coming down, wagons were being loaded, and horses were being saddled in spite of the weather. A constant, heavy guard patrolled the banks, and no one would answer Lord Athlone’s frequent requests to meet with the Shar-Ja or any of his counsellors.
    The chiefs, meanwhile, tried to solve the mystery of the young Shar-Yon’s death. He had been, Athlone reported, burned almost beyond recognition by a blast of the Trymian Force, a power used only by magic-wielders.
    “But that’s impossible,” Rafnir said for the third time. “We were all in our tents. Gaalney and Morad have witnesses to their whereabouts. Father was on watch, and the four of us were asleep.”
    The other chiefs, who had crowded into Athlone’s spacious tent for a quick council, looked at one another in grim confusion. There were only seven known magic-wielders in their midst. Three of them had excellent alibis and the other four, while not necessarily witnessed by other clan members to be in their tents, were too well-known to be conceivable murderers.
    “That leaves two possibilities,” said Athlone. “There is either a clansman with the talent to wield magic whom we have not yet detected, or there is one we do know who is hiding close by.”
    Sayyed glanced up, his eyes unreadable in the dim light. “There is one other possibility, my lord.” He paused and held up his own hands. “Another Turic half-breed with clan blood.”
    “Now how could any untrained Turic use the Trymian force to kill?” Lord Terod wanted to know. Terod, chief of Clan Amnok, had no magic-wielders in his clan and little practical knowledge of magic.
    Lord Sha Tajan of Clan Jehanan, on the other hand, knew sorcery well. “The Trymian force is easy to use, especially during a thunderstorm. It wouldn’t take much skill to blast the unprotected Shar-Yon.”
    “There certainly wasn’t much skill involved,” Athlone growled. He remembered the seared corpse vividly. “Bashan was struck by an uncontrolled blow.”
    “Then, too, there is the question of why,” said Bendinor the Dangari. Like most of his clan, he had a blue-dotted design tattooed along his forehead and down his left cheek. Unconsciously he rubbed at the dots as he deliberated aloud.
    “We have no real motive to dispose of the most capable son the Shar-Ja has; that would be harmful to our own cause. But what if Sayyed is right? What if there is a Turic with enough talent to wield the Trymian force and enough ambition to use it? Why kill