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

“Dreya, please!”

“You could just fly away.”

Cat shook her head. “I won’t leave you.”

“Why not?” Dreya asked, just as the ice finally broke apart. “Be honest,” she warned. “Tell the truth like your life depends on it.”

“Because…” Cat began. Dreya’s death knights stepped through the broken ice wall, the ghouls at their side. “Because it’s my fault you got injured…”

“The truth, remember?” Dreya insisted.

“That is the truth!” she insisted. “Well,” she amended, “that and I won’t get what I want from you if I do.”

She cringed at the admission, but Dreya just smiled.

“Now, that is the truth.” To her guards, she commanded, “Stand down, all of you, and return to your duties! Catriona here is not to be harmed unless I specifically order it.”

Her guards complied.

“I’ll have to train them to recognise the difference between an attack and an accident. It’s never come up before.”

“You know it was an accident, then? Not an attack?”

“Of course,” Dreya reassured her, choosing to remain seated on the ground for the moment. Catriona sat beside her, drained from the healing on top of all her other exertion. “You’re not stupid. Reckless, yes. Stupid, no.”

Cat apologised. She hadn’t expected that to happen when Dreya touched her staff.

“Only happened once before,” she said. “Actually, I don’t even know why I got it out of my pocket dimension. It’s like it wanted to come out. Needed, even. It’s very odd.”

“Well, as a further gesture of peace,” Dreya said, “would you mind allowing my gardening staff to get on with their work? You've left them tied up.”

Cat looked over and realised Dreya was right. “Sorry. I forgot.”

She asked nature to release the undead gardeners, who simply returned to their ceaseless duties. Cat further promised to tidy up the mess she’d made with her various magics, once she had her strength back, and take the roses away from around her door.

“Leave them,” Dreya told her. “In fact, why don’t you move the black ones and put all three colours together? It would be a good symbol for the co-operation of the three orders of magic, which is something I’m trying to achieve with the Council. As for you, Catriona Redfletching: you beat me.”

“Technically, my staff beat you,” she refuted.

“Semantics,” Dreya insisted. “You beat me.”

“Please don't kill me!” Cat cringed.

“Kill you? That's the best contest I've had for years. I'm in your debt, and I always pay my debts. Besides, why would I kill my betrothed?”

“Your what?” Cat laughed.

“You proposed, remember? I accept.”

“So, we’re getting married, after all?” Cat wondered.

Dreya grinned, and replied, “Well, like you said, why don’t we take it slow and start with a study date? I grant you full access to my tower's library and facilities whenever you like. How’s that for a romantic gesture?”

“Really? That's amazing!” Cat cried out in joy.

Dreya tried to stand, but even with Cat’s help, the world was still spinning too fast, and she promptly sat down again.

“Well then, in a romantic gesture of your own, you can carry me across the threshold.”

With help from some low-level levitation from Dreya, Cat was able to get them both into her main sitting room, where they collapsed together on a sofa.

“I underestimated you,” Dreya admitted. “It won't happen next time.”

“Next time?”

“Well, I was hoping for a rematch…but not right now, please, dear. I've got a headache.”

“I blame the door,” Cat quipped. “Your door dared to attack Dreya the Dark and must be destroyed.”

Dreya laughed, “I’ll have it burnt, immediately.” Cat gave her a meaningful look and Dreya got the message. “OK, I admit it: you are pretty funny.”

“Ooh!” Cat grinned, delighted. “You think I'm pretty, too?”

“I think your magic is beautiful,” Dreya replied.

Cat choked on a laugh and then blushed when she realised Dreya was serious. “Wow, thank you! No-one's ever said anything like that to me before.”

“That's because other people don't see magic as I do. Magic isn't just a tool or a weapon, it's…”

“It's an art,” Cat finished.

“Precisely,” Dreya agreed. “Your creativity is part of what I'm trying to achieve in magic.”

Dreya called one of her death knights to make some tea.

“Now, let’s talk about what you need from me, Cat, and how we might advance magic, together because, thanks to you, I'm more convinced than ever that magic can do so much more.”

*****

Sitting there, beside someone she dared to think of as a new friend, my mother slowly started to relax, and that, gentle reader, is the story of how Catriona Redfletching impressed Dreya the Dark.

If Catriona and Mandalee was a friendship for the ages, this was something altogether more complicated.

Chapter 18

When Catriona showed Dreya Shifting Stars and the other references that seemed to verify the claims made therein, Cat wasn’t expecting Dreya to snap her fingers and immediately advance her research. After all, it wasn’t reasonable to suppose the sorceress would have a complete inventory of the Black Tower’s vast library in her head. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary.

Dreya had been interested in some of the magical research conducted by Ulvarius. That may have worried some people, but not Catriona. She didn’t make the mistake others made with Dreya, in assuming she would one day become a tyrant like Ulvarius before her. That was prejudice, pure and simple: her black robes, plus her chosen residence did not automatically equal a prelude to world conquest. Dreya’s interest in Ulvarius was purely academic: nobody had had access to his research before, and to Catriona, leaving that resource untapped made no sense. How could anyone know whether there was something of value unless someone was prepared to look? It seemed to Cat that although Dreya was wholly committed to Dark magic and the power it could bring her, she had not forgotten her Red robe roots. No doubt Xarnas would have told her, many times, the central tenet of the order of Balance: ‘Knowledge is neutral; its application is not.’

In this case, gentle reader, the knowledge in question came from an entry in Ulvarius’ personal diary from the