There was something unusual about the king. Tilda knew relatively little of men. She was a good girl who heeded her father and paid her respects to Brant each Somnday, and her few stolen kisses with Addan, the particularly handsome stable boy, precluded any great knowledge of the opposite sex.… Read the rest...

Chapter Five Had the blade not sunk so deep, or had the angle been different, or had Rune been even the tiniest bit stronger, the razor-sharp edge of the enchanted sword would have torn the beast open from head to tail. Instead, the sword sank to the hilt, embedded in… Read the rest...

Chapter Four The body of the beast writhed in the moonlight, gleaming wet brown-gray. Sera paced backwards as it twisted. Rune couldn’t fault her fear. But the beast, which tracked them so easily underground, made no indication it sought them now. “Steady,” Rune said, shifting his sword, settling the contours… Read the rest...

Chapter Three Half a mile from the bottom of the well, the tunnel forked. They stood at the intersection for some time before Sera tossed the mage-light down one path. It bounced some distance—carried by magic, Rune sensed, as the damp sand would have stopped it otherwise—before she released it… Read the rest...

Chapter Two Rune didn’t taste the evening meal. He ate while he unpacked and sorted things as they emerged from his bag, the objects finding their way into one of two piles. Most of his clothes landed in the first pile, along with the robes he’d worn for travel. He… Read the rest...

Chapter One The City of Arches was a curious place with an unimaginative name. Countless pillars rose from the cracked earth, lacking any sensical pattern, each supporting one end of a stone arch. The arches crisscrossed and overlapped, some linked and some free-standing, some broken, some hanging free over an… Read the rest...

Firal had never seen snow; not the natural sort, anyway. All mages had to practice creating ice at some point, so clumps of snowflakes and pellets of ice were not so foreign as to be mysterious, but the idea of it falling from the sky was still strange. Other islands… Read the rest...

“You should have come, it was a lot of fun.” Vahn regretted the words almost as soon as they were out of his mouth. His friend’s expression didn’t change, though. He just stayed with his back against the floor, twisting and turning the bottle he held overhead, watching the tiny… Read the rest...

The winter air bit deep, no matter how many layers he wore. Everyone said he’d grow used to it, but as he adjusted the thick scarf wrapped so it just brushed his chin, Rune thought again of how he didn’t want to. Snow was as marvelous as ever; he couldn’t… Read the rest...

I was the first. A miracle and a monster, a mistake that should have been learned from. By all accounts, I should have been the last. Magic is a river. I was a child the first time I heard her say it, still learning to read, more interested in toys… Read the rest...