Spellbound: Book 2 of the Spellwright Trilogy. Blake Charlton

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      Chapter One

      Francesca did not realize she had used an indefinite pronoun until it began to kill her patient.

      Someone, no one knew who, had brought the young woman into the infirmary with an unknown curse written around her lungs. Francesca had cast several golden sentences into her patient’s chest, hoping to disspell the malicious text. Had it gone well, she would have pulled the curse out of the woman’s mouth.

      But the curse’s style had been robust, and one of Francesca’s mistakenly ambiguous pronouns had pushed the curse from the girl’s lungs to her heart. There, the spiteful text had bound the once-beating organ into silence.

      Now plummeting toward death, the girl bleated a final cry.

      Francesca looked around the solarium and saw only white walls and a window looking out onto the city of Avel. Voices of other medical spellwrights sounded from down the hallway; they were also working to save patients wounded by the recent lycanthrope attack on the city walls. Both the infirmary and the neighboring sanctuary were in crisis, and so Francesca was alone.

      To her horror, Francesca’s first reaction was relief that no one had seen her mistake.

      She turned to her patient. The girl’s wide green eyes had dilated to blackness. Her distended neck veins betrayed no pulse.

      Francesca’s fingers tingled. This couldn’t be happening. She never made mistakes, never used indefinite pronouns.

      The patient had been able to whisper her name when the curse was still on her lungs. Now Francesca addressed the young woman: “Deirdre, stay with me.”

      No response.

      Francesca could not see the curse; it was written in a language she did not know. But the golden countercurse she had cast now visualized the malicious text that spellbound the young woman’s heart.

      Invasive action was needed.

      Spellwrights created magical runes in their muscles; presently, Francesca used those in her left forearm to write a few silvery sentences that glowed on her skin. With her right hand, she pulled the spell free. It folded into a short, precise blade.

      Francesca moved with confidence. She was a remarkably tall woman, lithe, clothed in a wizard’s black robe and cleric’s red stole. Both her long hair and wide eyes were very dark brown, making her pale features more striking. An illiterate would think she had maybe thirty years. A spellwright would know she had twice as many.

      With her left hand, Francesca tore off her patient’s blouse. Deirdre’s smooth olive complexion, small chin, and raven hair indicated her youth. Yet there was something mature in the creases around her eyes.

      Just then the floor shook and the wooden rafters chirped—a small earthquake possibly, or the blast from another lycanthropic attack. Somewhere in the infirmary or the adjacent sanctuary a man wailed.

      Francesca laid her left hand on Deirdre’s shoulder. As a physician, she shuddered—cold, and full of doubt. Then she leapt into the safety of action.

      After a few steady cuts, she lifted Deirdre’s small breast upward to expose the lattice of bone and muscle. The next cut ran between the fifth and sixth ribs, starting at the sternum and traveling around to the spine. The blood that flowed was bright red. Encouraging. Darker, slower blood would have confirmed death.

      Francesca pried the ribs apart and extemporized a spell to hold them open.

      The distant wailing grew more urgent.

      “Deirdre, СКАЧАТЬ