The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,99

the Alathians to come...

A squealing sound scraped across Kiran’s consciousness like a file. A door, opening...he looked up with a sense of awful inevitability. Ruslan had come; he was certain of it. It was always Ruslan, in his nightmares.

For an instant he even saw Ruslan, tall and sardonic, a cold light in his hazel eyes. But as panic sliced through the haze in his head, his vision cleared, and Ruslan’s image vanished. Instead, two men stood watching him, blurred by flickering halos. Muddy gray danced around an older, spectacled man whom Kiran recognized in a vague way, and a blaze of lurid yellow outlined a man he didn’t know, slender and dark-haired, with the brown skin of an Arkennlander, though he wore formally cut Alathian clothes in shades of somber gray.

Alathia; he was in Alathia, yet still in danger. His surroundings wavered and solidified. Ropes crossed his chest, arms, and legs, binding him to a sturdy wooden chair.

The unfamiliar man’s eyes met his, and he jerked against the ropes in uncontrolled reaction. The man didn’t look anything like Ruslan, but his eyes burned with arrogant confidence the same way Ruslan’s always had. He wore no sigils, but Kiran knew without a doubt he was a mage, and a powerful one.

The mage smiled at his flinch. Cold fear speared through the fog blurring Kiran’s thoughts. Ruslan might have smiled so, faced with a victim helpless against his magic.

The mage reached out and ripped Kiran’s shirt open downward from the neck, exposing Ruslan’s akhelsya sigil. Triumph flamed in his eyes.

“Get out,” the mage told the older man. The words bounced and echoed in Kiran’s ears. The older man began a protest. The mage turned, and the other’s face went ashen. He backed out of the room so fast he tripped on the threshold. The door squealed shut.

“What is your name?” the mage asked Kiran, his voice now cold and clear as if it rang form the icy heights of a mountain. Kiran took refuge in the thick, drowning folds of numbness, and didn’t answer.

“I can see we’ll need to get better acquainted,” the mage said. With dreamlike slowness, he pulled a slender dagger from his belt. The sinuous writhing of the silver halos framing the blade entranced Kiran, until red stained them. His scattered thoughts abruptly focused. A thin line of blood streaked the mage’s hand, and the knife now approached Kiran’s arm, just above the ropes that bound it to the chair.

Blood magic! Kiran strained desperately against the ropes. He budged not an inch. The blade sliced his skin in a burning line. The mage’s bloody hand closed tight over the cut, and Kiran cried out, miserably, as a sharp sting of power pierced the numbness enveloping him. Magic raced under his skin, freezing everything in its path. A silent flash seared his vision white.

Slowly, the world faded back into being. Kiran raised his head, cautiously. His inner senses remained numb, but the halos and odd visual effects had vanished, and the confusion of his thoughts had cleared.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” The mage’s voice no longer echoed strangely. “Let’s try again. What is your name?”

Kiran stayed silent. Names had power. Not nearly so much as blood, but enough to be dangerous.

The mage made a slight gesture, and Kiran’s muscles seized, caught in the grip of a tightening vise. He heard his own voice speak in a ragged gasp. “Kiran.”

“Kiran ai Ruslanov, I think you mean.” The mage flicked his fingers. The pressure holding Kiran released. He slumped in the ropes, sick with realization. The mage had worked a binding on him through the blood-to-blood contact. Only a simple snare-binding, too minor of a working to trigger the Alathian detection spells, and yet impossible for Kiran to fight without access to his magic.

“I’m not Ruslan’s. Not anymore,” he said defiantly. The mage leaned forward to trace a finger over Ruslan’s mark.

“True enough. Now you’re mine, though I doubt you’ll prefer it. Ruslan was always such an idealist about apprentices.” The mage gave a contemptuous chuckle.

“You...you know Ruslan?”

“Oh, yes.” The mage showed his teeth in a smile. “Thanks to your erstwhile master, I’ve spent the last twenty years exiled in this godsforsaken backwater of a country instead of enjoying my rightful place in Ninavel. A situation I intend to rectify, now that I have you.”

The mage’s expression softened in a way that lifted the hairs on the back of Kiran’s neck. “You have no idea how delighted I am that you chose to