Shifting Stars by Gary Stringer (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

Cat fought the urge to respond to that. It was possible Dreya knew all about her avian activities. However, it was equally likely the sorceress knew only that she could shapeshift and was simply making a perfectly reasonable guess. Cat was an information trader, and she wasn’t going to make the mistake of volunteering information just because the other party might already know. She’d used that trick herself.

“Still,” Dreya continued, “it only requires a thought to reactivate them, if necessary. So, tell me, Catriona Redfletching—”

“—Call me Cat,” she interrupted, taking back some control over the conversation.

“Very well, Cat it is, then, and while we’re on the subject of names, given my rank as Secondmage of the Black order, you really should address me as Mistress Dreya, according to Council rules.”

“Actually, I have a few issues with Council rules,” Cat told her.

“So do I,” said Dreya.

“You see? We’ve got something in common. Our date’s going really well already!”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“Sorry,” Cat apologised. “You were going to ask me something and I interrupted you.”

She was determined not to let the supreme mistress of control have things her own way, so she made it seem as if Dreya needed her permission to continue.

“That’s OK,” Dreya accepted, showing not a hint of irritation. “I was just talking about my defences.”

“What about them?”

“Well, why shouldn’t I activate them and be rid of you?”

Cat pounced. Now she knew she’d got Dreya’s attention.

“Because you’re not insecure enough to jump at every shadow that passes across your land,” she said. “Come on, Dreya, if you want to be rid of me, do your own dirty work!”

“An excellent suggestion,” Dreya conceded. “I could use the exercise.”

Without warning, she conjured a flight of poisoned darts that flew towards Catriona, but a sudden gust of wind blew them harmlessly away.

“OK, direct approach, then,” Dreya remarked, focussing her magic to create the poison directly from the magic inside Catriona’s body.

Cat shot her a withering look. “Really, Dreya? Poison? I’m a druid – we’re awesome at curing poisons.”

“Well then, let’s see how you fair if I take your magic away.”

Dreya had developed the ability to literally drain magical power from a wizard’s body, take it for herself. But Cat wasn’t a wizard, she was a druid. Her magic came from an entirely different source.

“You can’t drain me because the power isn’t really mine. It’s the power of nature herself, and you can’t drain nature.” Some of Catriona’s plants began to extend themselves towards the sorceress. “Come on, Dreya,” she said. “Take me seriously, or I’ll just tie you up in your garden and demolish your tower, after all!”

“Alright then,” Dreya agreed. “Let me take things up a notch.” With that, she unleashed flames from her fingertips, but Cat threw some water in the air and directed it to form a jet of water in the path of the flaming attack, extinguishing it, harmlessly. Dreya upped the power to a pair of fist-sized fireballs, but Cat used more water to create a suspended aquatic shield that blocked the strike.

“So, you need water to make water,” Dreya observed. “What happens if you run out?”

She invoked her magic, and Cat’s water bottles shattered, spilling their contents on the ground. Then, for good measure, she caused the spilt water to boil away, robbing Cat of her aquatic resources…or so she thought.

“Well?” she prompted. “Where are you going to get your water from now?”

“Dreya!” Cat admonished her. “I thought you’d be more observant than this. Haven’t you noticed the sun?”

Dreya glanced up at the sky.

“It’s gone behind some clouds, so what?”

“Look at those clouds, Dreya,” Cat said. “Really look. Clouds like that mean only one thing. It looks to me like it’s going to…”

Right on cue, the rain began to pour – hard!

“Well, you certainly have a flair for the dramatic,” Dreya remarked, approvingly. “Just two questions: First, if you can make it rain on cue, why carry water around with you?”

“Partly for convenience, but mostly because the rain makes my hair go frizzy.”

For the first time, there was a flicker of something on Dreya’s face, and while Cat wouldn’t go so far as to call it a smile, it was a beginning.

“Second question?” she prompted.

An enormous fireball, three feet in diameter grew between Dreya’s hands. “Do you think a bit of rain is enough to stop this?”

In response, the rain in the air between them became a waterfall, a curtain of water separating them.

“This might,” said Cat.

Dreya just shook her head, sending the fireball forth. Cat was confident of her aquatic shield, but to her surprise, instead of passing through it, the fireball quickly darted around it. Choosing the better part of valour, Cat shifted to her falcon form and tried to fly away from the approaching fireball, calling off the rain to make flying more comfortable, but no matter what aerobatics she tried, it tracked her every move. She’d never tried to use weather control magic in another form before, but staying as a falcon was the only way she could stay ahead of the fire. It helped that it was the first form she’d ever mastered. By now, it was almost as familiar to her as her real body, which meant she didn’t need much concentration to maintain it. Compartmentalising what her avian-self needed, she devoted the rest of her brain to manipulating the airflow around the moving fireball into a mini-whirlwind, spinning faster and faster until it removed the air from the eye and extinguished the flames.

That done, she shifted back to her true self in midair, standing on one of her Windy Steps.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with fire?” she wondered.

“I think she may have said something about that,” Dreya admitted, “but then she also told me to marry a prince, who was willing to overlook certain things, and get showered with rose petals in a traditional marriage ceremony. As if becoming a Faery princess should have been the pinnacle of