Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,34
guess," Kelsa cut in. "They're trying to stop the quest! How terrible. How romantic. I bet that'll suck her in. How stupid do you think I am?"
"I think you're quite bright, for a human," Raven said cautiously. "That's one of the reasons I picked you. And I really haven't lied - "
"What about - "
"I just haven't told you the whole truth," he went on. "Once you blew open that nexus at TuTimbaba my enemies knew I'd found someone. They'll have assumed we'd go on to Glacier National Park and do an ice calling there, but there are plenty of glaciers down the ley, and I thought - "
"So this isn't even the next nexus? You lied about that too?"
"I thought that if they wasted their time setting up a trap for you in Glacier, maybe we could get far enough to keep ahead of them for a while. In this world they have to use their physical forms, as I do, and only a few of them can fly."
He sounded so serious that doubts began to rise in Kelsa. If he wasn't lying...
"Setting a trap for me? What does that mean?"
"Nothing fatal," he said hastily. "At least, not yet. The same rules that bind me also bind them. Just as I can only guide and coach you, they aren't allowed to simply kill you or attack you and take the pouch away. And all of us are forbidden to work magic that violates the physical laws of this world. If nothing else it would weaken the leys too much, and they're weak enough already."
"Go back to the part where your enemies are setting a trap for me," Kelsa told him. "Why would they want to stop me? And if they can't kill or attack me, why should I worry about them?"
"I said they couldn't attack you. Themselves. There are plenty of ways they can interfere with the quest. And with any luck they're still lurking around the glaciers setting them up, and just beginning to wonder why we haven't arrived there yet."
"But if that's where the nexus is..."
Raven made a helpless, groping gesture. "A nexus isn't a fixed point, it's a process. A place in the ley where power is pushed forward and amplified. Some places lend themselves to power more willingly than others - we're on the outskirts of the ley here, not in the center. But almost any point the ley touches is, or can become, a nexus. It depends a lot on you. I was thinking we could go past Glacier and then veer back to the deeper parts of the ley, maybe ride up to Crowsnest Pass. If you can pull the power from there, drag it past any lag points by calling it to you, that will work fine. And it will catch the doubters flat-footed, because they'd never believe you could pull power that far! I wouldn't have believed it till I felt what you did in that cave. Before that" - he offered her a tentative version of the charming smile - "we were all underestimating you. Now they're not, and that makes them far more dangerous. Whatever else you think I'm lying about, you'd better believe that. Do you?"
"I'll think about it."
Kelsa picked up the remains of her lunch and walked away. For once, he had enough sense not to follow her.
***
Kelsa spent the rest of the day thinking about what Raven had said, and what she concluded was ... she didn't need him.
Oh, if she chose to go on she'd need him to tell her where the ley was. She wasn't even sure those convenient enemies existed. When she'd asked Raven why anyone would want to keep her from healing the leys, he hadn't answered. And even if these so-called enemies did exist, he'd admitted that they couldn't attack her.
Any point the ley touches can become a nexus. If she performed the healing magic here, using this glorious lake, and it worked ... If she felt the same thing she had in the cave, or a tidal wave swept over the town she'd passed through at the lake head the moment she spoke, then she'd know he was telling the truth about her working some sort of magic.
She had only his word for what it did. For all she knew, she could be summoning the tree plague instead of immunizing these forests against it.
Yet ... In most of those old myths, despite his lies and trickery, Raven had been one