Free The Makers of Light by Lynna Merrill Page B

crouched and beckoned. He growled again, but then slowly came, and suddenly Merley's shoulders shook as she wrapped her arms around his warm furry body.
    She did not cry while her newly-conjured fire melted his chain, her thoughts and control such that a spark never burned him. She did not even cry when, free, he snuffed and then licked her face. A friend. She had none in the towers enclosed in tainted stone, and few of them elsewhere.
    "Run!" She did cry when she had led the limping wolf through dark corridors, whispers, and gloom; when the Sun glared in her eyes and suddenly he shoved himself before her, shielding her, snarling at Henna and the others waiting in the courtyard. "Run, Dreadful, my sweet, you are not safe here!"
    He would not. He stood by her like no one but her brother ever had. He stood by her, even though those against them had the strength and the power. But Donald was a future High Lord, while Dreadful was but a wildlands beast. The Bers had done little more than fine House Waltraud last year, when Donald had rushed into the Head Temple and punched Keagan in the jaw. Poor Donald, he had thought that something like this would stop the Head Adept Catechist, the man who had more fire than anyone except perhaps Merley herself, from burning her. They had let Donald go. They would destroy Dreadful.
    So, she did the only thing that was right, even though it would break her new, precious friendship. She set some of her own fire to the wolf, a little fire but enough to hurt him. "Go away!" she screamed while her tears distorted his face and those of the Bers. "Go away, I don't want you here!"
    He turned to look at her, and he must have read something in her eyes. Or, perhaps he did not read her eyes at all, but in some other, wolfish way, he understood; knew more about her than she wished him to.
    "Go away, Dreadful," she whispered, and he limped past the confused Bers, a silver beauty despite the blood and dirt on his coat. He was gone before someone would reach out to catch him. For some reason, they seemed afraid of him.
    "Be safe, my friend."
    "Your friend? "
    Time to clench her jaw and wipe the tears away, time to still the shaking of her hands and stare ahead with barely controlled contempt and defiance.
    "Are you going to befriend a Lost One next time, you presumptuous little good-for-nothing? When Adept Brighid learns ..."
    " I am not a good-for-nothing, as you very well know, Ber Generalist. "
    She should not have said it, perhaps; she had decided to make a new effort to live amongst the Bers, after the witch Esyld had literally chased her back here. Or, rather, she had decided to live here for a time, waiting to gather more knowledge, to become better prepared to investigate Bessove and those who flew in the sky with wagons.
    But learn from whom? Merley blinked away new, angry tears. There was nothing the likes of Henna could teach her any more, and even the adepts could not teach her about raw fire. At the Head Temple fiasco twenty-six days ago it had been Merley the Novice, not Henna, nor anyone else, that Keagan had requested for his assistant. Oh, yes, requested. Forced, rather, even though before that it had been him who had insisted that Mierber's nobility should not know about her.
    They had thought her dead, all of them. She had seen it in Donald's eyes, even in the eyes of the High Lord of Qynnsent, the enemy. Then, the Bers had shot her so that she could not show Donald that she loved him still, and now Henna was glaring at her because she had let a wolf live. She had no right to love, they had said. It was one of the very first things a Ber novice learned. Or, rather, she had to love everyone the same. Curse them! May the Lost Ones take them all! They had no right to tell her how to live! They had no right to take away lives and loves! They had no right!
    "—a purpose." Henna's angry voice was saying something, something about Dreadful, her wolf. Something justifying killing him, mutilating