Spellbound: Book 2 of the Spellwright Trilogy. Blake Charlton

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      Dedication

      To my mother, Louise Bryden Buck, M.D.,

       for patient love and lessons in healing

      Epigraph

      As for the poem, one dragon, however hot, does not make a summer, or a host; and a man might well exchange for one good dragon what he would not sell for a wilderness. And dragons, real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale, are actually rare.

      —J. R. R. TOLKIEN,

       “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”

      He is at once a stratum of the earth and a streamer in the air, no painted dragon but a figure of real oneiric power, one that can easily survive the prejudices which arise at the very mention of the word “dragon.”

      —SEAMUS HEANEY

       Introduction to his translation of Beowulf

      Contents

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Map

      Chapter One

      Francesca did not realize she had used an indefinite pronoun…

      Chapter Two

      Suddenly conscious, Shannon dropped the text he had been holding.

      Chapter Three

      High up in Avel’s sanctuary, Nicodemus crouched in a dark…

      Chapter Four

      With Deirdre in her arms, Francesca charged up the eastern…

      Chapter Five

      Shannon ran to the window and thrust his hand into…

      Chapter Six

      Francesca’s hands tingled. Whatever cloth Deirdre ripped must have loosed…

      Chapter Seven

      The warkite was written on an eight-foot-long strip of white…

      Chapter Eight

      As Francesca fell from the lofting kite, her eyes met…

      Chapter Nine

      Shannon-the-text touched his fingertips to those of Shannon-who-still-lived. Golden light…

      Chapter Ten

      When the lofting kite rose to a height above the…

      Chapter Eleven

      An unseen wartext blasted the ghost’s right arm into a…

      Chapter Twelve

      When Cyrus and Francesca were flying above the Auburn Mountains,…

      Chapter Thirteen

      Squinting in the sunlight, Nicodemus examined his school of five…

      Chapter Fourteen

      When consciousness returned, Deirdre found her eyes filled with tears.

      Chapter Fifteen

      Francesca opened her eyes as something hard dug into her…

      Chapter Sixteen

      Cyrus had just removed the spells from Francesca’s robes when…

      Chapter Seventeen

      The secluded Hall of Ambassadors stood three stories up on…

      Chapter Eighteen

      Francesca followed Cyrus down several hallways to a narrow room…

      Chapter Nineteen

      Suddenly, Francesca was light-headed.

      Chapter Twenty

      Anxiously, the ghost reexamined the contents of Francesca DeVega’s bedroom:…

      Chapter Twenty-One

      In a dream, Francesca had diagnosed an inflamed appendix in…

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      Cyrus landed his rig in the South Market. Most days…

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Deirdre pulled her shawl around her shoulders. She was standing…

      Chapter Twenty-Four

      Cyrus followed Francesca through the labyrinthine alleys until they left…

      Chapter Twenty-Five

      Once they were back on the street, Cyrus walked close…

      Chapter Twenty-Six

      One monster jumped forward to land an overhand hatchet strike…

      Chapter Twenty-Seven

      At first Cyrus struggled against the spellbindings, but he was…

      Chapter Twenty-Eight

      Cyrus scanned the sky above the line of watchmen. “There…

      Chapter Twenty-Nine

      Cyrus looked down at his robes. Only a thin network…

      Chapter Thirty

      The bluemoon hung as a bright shard among the skeins…

      Chapter Thirty-One

      “What under the holy sky do you mean we’re being…

      Chapter Thirty-Two

      The wind picked up as Nicodemus took his students over…

      Chapter Thirty-Three

      Shortly after dawn, the rain clouds rolled away from Avel…

      Chapter Thirty-Four

      Deirdre chewed her lip while looking at the loose pages…

      Chapter Thirty-Five

      “I СКАЧАТЬ