I’m toying with the idea of, in future posts, linking to a PDF of the whole rough draft and updating as I create it. Lynn Viehl did that on her blog, back when she was still blogging, although as far as I know she had no intention of ever actually publishing the stories she created that way. (I miss Ms. Viehl’s posts. I always enjoyed how she approached blogging and I loved seeing the projects she worked on.)
Though I loved seeing her regular posts and reading her work, I don’t know how comfortable I am with doing the same.
But I do feel comfortable with little snippets. So, here’s a snippet of Zhiv trying to figure out Krysilla’s magic. Same disclaimer applies: this snippet I’m posting may change, or not appear at all, in the final version. I hope you enjoy it.
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He sighed and looked up at the wonder he and those with him had created. Moving closer, just as Krysilla had earlier, he reached up a hand.
And smiled.
Not close enough for the spell to grab him but more than close enough to feel Krysiila’s magic overlaying Hyaji’s furor and terror. She’d strengthened what could have been the weakest part of the wall’s defense into the strongest.
He loved the feel of her magic.
The first time he’d felt it had been when they’d first met, when he was lying sick with fever in a guest room in her house. She had made him a common medicine, had warmed the room through magic, and it was as if he were back home again. Drums at night with the fiddle, flute, and voices blending in the nightly song. Life pulsed through it with a rhythm that could not be denied, not without destroying the one who held whatever talent that was.
Locks, clocks, life, and something else. He shook his head, hand still close enough to feel it. Like a living thing, she had said. She had to treat the magic as if it were alive and she was coaxing it. And when she had used the portal that had brought them to just outside Openwater, she had nearly lost herself to it, as if two heartbeats had become one.
It had taken all the tricks he knew to bring her back again.
But then there was the spell within him. Ever since she had touched it, it had acted differently. Subtle, though. Very subtle. An alteration that was shifting the spell each night, as if a whole new struggle had begun within him, as if it were trying to regulate…he paused and looked up at the magic above him, the branches and layers of the Ornic sun in his mind.
And knew her talent.
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Amy Keeley 