Touched By Magic (The King's Wolf Saga) Read online

  Copyright Information

  TOUCHED BY MAGIC by DORANNA DURGIN

  Copyright © 2011 by Doranna Durgin

  Published by Blue Hound Visions

  Original Copyright © 1996; first published by Baen Books

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously—and any resemblance to actual persons, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  License Notes:

  This efiction is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This efiction may not be re-sold or given to others. If you would like to share, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this efiction and it was not purchased for your use, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for helping the e-reading community to grow!

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  Author Note:

  This edition of TOUCHED BY MAGIC has had some scrub and polish—but it hasn't been changed. If you read and loved the first edition, then you're not likely to notice anything different with this one. If you're new to the book, then have a good read! It was such a delight to come back and spend time in Reandn's world (and to go on to the sequel, Wolf Justice)—I hope you have as much fun as I did!

  Without readers like you, I wouldn't be able to write these books. I appreciate your letters, emails, blog comments, and FaceBook posts more than I can ever express, and I love your reviews. It's amazing to be a part of such a large circle of friends through a mutual love of books!

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  Original Dedication

  To Ann: Thank goodness for Free Fridays!

  To Judith: First Reader Extraordinaire!

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  King's Wolf Saga Book II: Wolf Justice

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  TOUCHED BY MAGIC

  The Ending

  Rethia sat at the edge of the meadow and arranged her morning harvest. Herbs and wild flowers, lichens and mosses—they all jumbled together in her basket despite her best efforts. The sorting was a game, and the hot midday sun brought out earthy scents as she organized the plants, making neat rows of color and shape in a never-ending process that pleased her six—but almost seven!—year-old's penchant for play.

  The meadow was old pasture land gone poor, now thick with sturdy wild flowers and patches of briar. The woods crowded close around it, offering refuge from the sun. Finally tiring of the game, Rethia stretched out on her stomach, lay her head down on her arms, and peered into the slat basket to admire the wilted results. The shade of a leafy maple dappled her tunic, screening her just enough to keep the day's heat away.

  Of course she fell asleep.

  She woke to wild hoof beats.

  Frightened, she pressed herself against the ground. The earth shook beneath her and the noise filled her ears, and though she should have crawled to safety amongst the trees, she only quivered in front of her basket, her fright tinged with a trace of outrage. This was her meadow, her sanctuary and playground. It was her safe place, where no bulls were kept nor horses pastured. Still the beasts ran, circling the meadow, whipping through the wiry, long-stemmed flowers and trampling the briars without heed. The dust they raised floated in the sunlight. When Rethia gathered the courage to peer through the thick fall of her light hair, she could make out only flashing legs and leaping bodies—and all the while, the unmistakable tingle of magic coursed through her body.

  Imperceptibly at first, the pounding diminished and the tickling magic intensified. The creatures were leaving—and they weren't just running away.

  They bounded into the air without landing. Disappeared. Vanished in a flash of not-being.

  And when there was only one set of hoofbeats left, solid and deliberate and walking toward her, Rethia trembled with the knowledge that she witnessed great magic in a world that was drifting free of such things and forgot to be afraid of the beast itself.

  The hooves stopped in front of her basket, strong round hooves with heavy-boned, clean-lined legs rising from them. Not a horse. She knew that even before she looked up to see the horn. The unicorn dropped a brown-glazed muzzle into her basket, its lips twitching as it lipped and explored the pungent herbs. It wrinkled its nose and snorted mightily, leaving the plants in complete disarray, half of them blown entirely out of the basket.

  "Hey!" Rethia forgot her fear. She pulled herself upright and looked straight into the face of the unicorn, her deep blue gaze unflinching. It was a heavy-boned face, with ridges etched in darkest walnut instead of gleaming highlights, and with odd, icy eyes that abruptly reminded her that unicorns were not Tame. Wild magic, free always, of what man might intend or wish for it.

  When the beast did not react to her impudence, she lifted a small trembling hand to touch the thick, tangled mane and forelock, so long they brushed her face even as the animal raised its head. It looked around the trampled, abandoned meadow, blew out a huff of air. When it looked back down at her, its icy gaze warmed, catching the blue of her eyes, staining them with the reflection of its walnut features. It dropped its head to again accept her touch.

  She had no idea it would be a trade.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Touched By Mystery

  Chapter 1

  Reandn crouched at the base of a rocky outcrop, poking his finger in the damp blemish showing through otherwise crisp brown and gold leaves. The print in the underlying dirt showed the pad and claw marks of a fox instead of the scuff from a child's soft boot, and he stood with a scowl. The Highborn boy was as lost as ever.

  A single spatter of cold rain hit the ground, then another. Reandn regarded the marks dourly. But the boy had not started his fanciful unicorn hunt with the intention of rousting all of King's Keep Wolves for a boy hunt instead. Even the Hounds—normally limited to internal Keep guard—were out in the fitful weather, driven by the importance of this fosterling from the Resiore valleys of the north. And although he was ostensibly fostered at King's Keep as a favor to his Highborn father, the arrangement was also a reminder to the remote Resiores—a message of their ties and fealty to King's Keep.

  They would not do well to lose him.

  A gust of wind penetrated Reandn's wool jacket, and the cold rain hitting his cheek spoke of snow. Get moving, he told himself. Find the boy before he freezes to death. And then—

  No. Not now—

  That damnable odd pressure behind his jaw, the one that had plagued him on and off since late summer, made him work his jaw—even though he knew it wouldn't help. He'd learned to ignore it.

  Not this time. It took him by surprise, moving up into his ears to hum with an edge that was as jarring as sharpened steel scraping rock. He shook his head, hard—once, twice—

  And suddenly realized he had hit the ground, had fallen without even noticing. When the noise faded, it left only Reandn, stunned, on his knees with the cold seeping through his trousers and an even colder realization clutching his chest.

  It's getting worse. And he was a Wolf—Wolf First—and not someone who could afford unpredictable fits of bizarre dizziness.

  He'd hide it. He'd have to hide it. He didn't even want to think about Adela's reaction—after ten years with him, she'd understand immediately the danger of riding patrol under such circumstances.

  But life as Wolf First was what he knew. It was what he'd earned, fighting his way up from abandonment and a pot scrubber's life.

  Being Wolf meant he didn't have to deal with the Highborn, who had as little tolerance for Reandn as he had for them. Born into lives of privilege and position, they demanded respect they seldom earn
ed and Reandn could not fake. Being Wolf First meant he was second in command, answering only to Saxe, the Pack Leader, and Prime Ethne.

  It would take a lot more than a few odd spells with his ears to wrench him away from that life.

  Carefully, one leg at a time, Reandn got to his feet. There was no vestige of dizziness, no oddness behind his jaws. He took a deep breath and set out down the faint deer trail before him.

  A few more strides and he'd found deep concentration, dizzy spell forgotten as he scanned the thin golden-brown leaf layer—bounty from the stunted oaks and lean poplars that fought for a place among the thriving bristle-needled pines—for the slightest sign of recent disturbance.

  The deer trail joined a main path that ran nearly parallel to the road, an informal trail created by both roadmen and the Wolf patrols that hunted, among other things, the roadmen. Reandn strode along it more briskly, practiced gaze searching the ground ahead. If the boy had been heading for the clear waterhole the children called Unicorn Spring, he'd likely have come this way.

  There. Out of nowhere, boot prints. But they were those of a man, not a child. Reandn frowned, pacing alongside the prints—evenly spaced, not too far apart, not too deep. Slow walking. They eventually met and mixed with hoofprints, a round platter-foot like those of the large pony the boy had ridden. The prints merged, and Reandn slowed, the frown turning to scowl. If the boy had met an adult, he should be home by now—unless the adult meant trouble.

  Abruptly, both sets of tracks veered to the side and ceased in the midst of an area so scuffled that no amount of skill could decipher the story. The disturbance spilled into the woods, tearing through an area of baby pines whose damaged, spicy scent still hung sharp in the air.

  Reandn scowled at the inexplicable scene, and at the faint hum behind his ears. It was back, then. Ignore it. In the spitting rain, he paced the width and breadth of the disturbed sight, found nothing, and ranged outward, delving into the woods. Almost immediately he found a horseshoe, still bearing the six soft nails that had secured it to the pony's foot. A short distance away, essential to any unicorn hunt, lay a metal halter, its carefully fashioned links almost buried in the leaves. He picked it up, hefting it thoughtfully.

  He no longer expected to find the boy alive.

  And what if it had been Kavan?

  But it hadn't been, and he had a job to do.

  As much as he'd like to comb the area, to figure out exactly what had happened here, right now that job meant getting back to the Keep and reporting to Saxe. Reandn gave the area one last glance, absently working his jaw, and turned his back to head for the Keep.

  King's Keep carved its space from a granite hillside, its grounds carefully leveled and—inside the tall stone keep wall—paved. Built for defense, it sat deep inside the Northwest quadrant of Keland, where the risk from its neighbors—the smaller countries of Taffoa and Rolernia, all but inaccessible due to rugged mountains on the west and north and rough seas on the south and east—was mitigated.

  Inside the keep walls—along with the stone-walled barns and the small formal garden—there was room for the crowded, wood-framed buildings that housed the unmarried Hounds and Wolves. The Foxes were who knows where, and the Dragons—Keland's armed troops—bunked in a separate area, just north and uphill of the Keep.

  Keeptown sat almost a mile south from the Keep itself, with thick rocky woods filling the area between them. In this densely patrolled area, Reandn picked up the main road back to the Keep, past the training grounds just outside the south walls and through the main gate.

  Saxe waited in the Wolf barracks ready room. Saxe, with his dark hair cut short, neat, never ruffled. Sturdier than Reandn but not as tall—and always more deliberate, more thoughtful. For four years, he'd been Wolf Leader, and had immediately put his former partner in as his First—in command of his own patrol and the other patrol leaders. Only two others right now, as low a number as it had ever been.

  Caleb, the long-boned, rusty-haired Hound First, stood with Saxe by the squat iron stove at the far end of the long room, where they both warmed their hands and appeared dissatisfied with the situation in general.

  Reandn walked along the bench rows to join them at the stove. "How'd you manage to pull duty in here?" he asked Caleb. For this search, both Wolves and Hounds were combing the woods.

  Caleb shrugged, as if the situation had taken no maneuvering at all, which Reandn knew to be untrue. "I'm coordinating for the Hounds. Brant's with Ethne—" the Prime, who oversaw all the Keep security forces— "trying to get the Hounds off the hook for this blunder. After all, it was one of your trainees who somehow let the boy out—Wace, right?"

  Wace. One of Ser's Yearlings, a young man whose body's growth had outstripped his mind's. Stubborn at best, he took correction poorly and responsibility lightly. He'd been on training duty at the gate early that morning—all the Wolves trained to substitute at vital defense points of the Keep—and had let the boy through without referring to the experienced gateman.

  Saxe cleared his throat. "Best remember where you are, Caleb." Wolf barracks, no place for a Hound to get careless with his words, not even when they came from a friend. "Reandn, what's the news?"

  Reandn held out a clinking handful of halter. "Found this in Second Sector East. Got a shoe from the pony, too." He fished it out of his belt and dropped it on one of the long benches.

  "You didn't track him down?" Saxe raised incredulous eyebrows.

  "Nothing to track—trail just disappeared."

  Saxe clearly didn't believe it, and Reandn shook his head. "If I were you I'd get our best tracker—who is it now, that old fellow in Faline's patrol?—and go see for yourself."

  "I did hold him back from the search," Saxe admitted. "But I never expected to have to send him in after your work."

  "And I never expected to run into anything like what I found," Reandn said, not hiding his concern. He unfastened his jacket ties and moved closer to the stove. "I don't think you're going to discover any answers out there, Saxe. If we're lucky, we'll convince the Resiores the boy was killed by a hill cat."

  "But he wasn't," Saxe said flatly.

  "He wasn't."

  Saxe eyed his First for a moment. Contemplating, no doubt, the repercussions of the situation.

  The up-pass Resiores encompassed an area of wide valleys replete with the resources rocky King's Keep didn't have. Up-pass, the Highborn moved in their own separate circles, created their own cycles of social whims, and for the most part cared little what happened at King's Keep. Isolated by mountains, cut off from the sea by formidable cliffs, and tied to the rest of Keland by the one seasonal pass, the Resiores chafed at the chains that bound them to Keland, and to Keland's commerce and Highborn diversions.

  One of the biggest of those, Tenaebra's Eve, built to a head at the Keep even now. The one last traditional fling before the goddess Tenaebra ascended in prominence over her sister Ardrith and began a harsh winter rule—and, for King Hawley and his advisors, a key point in relations with the Resiore folk.

  It was not a good time to lose one of their children.

  Finally Saxe gave a short nod. "All right. We'll have a look."

  "It's where you'd split off the road to go to Unicorn Spring," Reandn told him. "I'm going to grab some sleep before patrol tonight. For that matter, any of mine you can send back to the barracks would be appreciated."

  "I'll recall them first thing." Saxe held his hands over the stove for a final moment, tucked his jacket closed, and headed out.

  "No sleep for me," Caleb said mournfully. "I'm heading for evening shift."

  "Which means you got your regular sleep last night," Reandn scoffed, roughly scrubbing his hand across his friend's head to destroy what little order there was to Caleb's rusty brown hair.

  Caleb futilely fingered his hair back in place. "Your trainee apparently got his this morning."

  "Wace is Ser's trainee, for as long as he lasts. For that matter, I hope Saxe lets him search the
North sector all night."

  Caleb dismissed the shirker with a shrug. "What about the boy? What do you really think?" He snagged his jacket from the wall pegs and accompanied Reandn outside.

  "It didn't make any sense," Reandn admitted. "A metal halter, one horseshoe and the biggest mess of tracks you've ever seen. That's all."

  Caleb shrugged. "How about the obvious? The boy dropped the halter. The pony stepped on its own shoe and pulled it."

  "A shoe gets torn off, it's twisted." Reandn scrunched his shoulders against the cold raindrop that found its way down his neck, and hesitated at the thick wooden door set in the base of the squat wizard's tower—home—where the overhand protected him from the drizzle. He raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Tell me you didn't mean to say that I missed a blundering pony trail."

  "Never," Caleb denied, looking askance at the wet sky as his rusty hair turned dark and limp. "Y'know, Brant won't need me for another couple bells. I'm for the Muzzled Fang. You?"

  Reandn shook his head. "Sleep," he said, thinking more about Adela than the bed. But as he reached for the door, it swung outward at him, and Kavan poked his head outside. At the sight of Reandn, his solemn little face brightened, and he ran outside. "Hey there," Reandn said, scooping up the slight boy and taking in his quick hug before letting him slide to the ground again.

  "Hey, Kavan," Caleb said, and the humor in his light blue eyes told Reandn his friend knew sleep now was out of the question, at least for the moment. "Good patrol tonight, Reandn," he said, reaching around Reandn to muss the boy's hair much as Reandn had recently done to him. "I'm off."

  "Good patrol," Reandn said to his retreating back. Then he turned to Kavan. "You're out early. Everything all right?"

  Kavan pressed his face against Reandn's side in lieu of an answer. He'd come to King's Keep an orphan, assigned to apprentice with Ronsin—the last King's Wizard in a world where there was no longer any magic. But he'd turned out to be a pale, undersized seven-year-old whose timidity interfered with his learning. The wizard frightened him—and the wizard had no idea how to deal with a withdrawn child.