Read Glasswrights' Master for Free Online

witch like me.”
    He looked at her shrewdly, peering across the pool of glowing embers. “An herb witch like you, eh?” He curled the words into a rough caress. “I’ve traveled in lands where those words could buy you death.”
    â€œSo you say, traveling man. So you say.” Still, his warning sent a shiver down her spine. Sarmonia might not honor its witches. It might not offer them power and prestige. But it protected the Sisters. No one was allowed to destroy Kella’s possessions, to ride through her clearing and pillage her crops, her stores.
    There were other places, though. Other lands. Other people who did not honor herb witches properly. Kella shuddered as she thought of women wounded in the name of their craft. Murdered for sharing their power. She swallowed and licked her lips, suddenly aware of the breeze that whispered across the clearing.
    The embers from her working fire glowed in the night. He’d done a good job spreading them. They were even, smooth. Balance. That was what she must maintain. Keep the fire balanced with the earth, with the air. Avoid the need for water to take away the heat and the color of the flames.
    Grudgingly, Kella nodded toward the path from the clearing. “You were watching her, then?”
    â€œAye. I wonder why she comes here. Why she is in Sarmonia at all.”
    â€œThe high road leads to many places,” Kella quoted. His eyes still peered into the darkness, and a shadow had fallen across his cheeks. “Why, traveling man? Why do you care about her so?”
    He shook himself, like a dog shedding rainwater. “Her?” His smile was easy. “I care not for her. I only worry that she takes you from me, in the dark of the night.”
    Kella knew that she should not believe him. After all, he was young enough to be her son, and a late child at that. His hands were strong; his arms well-muscled. The moonlight glinted on his cheekbones, silvering his hair even as his lips curved into a grin. “Easy words, traveling man.”
    â€œHard ones,” he grinned, and he closed the distance between them. She felt his hands across her back, firm and commanding. She breathed in the smell of him–woodsmoke and sweat and a vague, unidentified dusting of spice. She held her body stiff for a moment, but then his lips warmed her; his hands melted her.
    When she pulled back from his kiss, the embers were dying in the night, flickering out the last of their orange life beneath the stars. The working was ended then. She had helped another deserving soul. She turned back to the man beside her and twined her fingers between his. “Very well, traveling man. Come speak to me of other things. Share more hard words with me, and I’ll see what I can do to ease them.”
    He quirked a smile at her, and her heart raced faster. She was foolish to respond to him so. Her hair was grey; her joints ached. She was no girl. She should not let him manipulate her. She shook her head and bit off a laugh. “Come, Tovin. Come to bed.”
    And he did.
    Â 
    * * *
    Â 
    She awoke before dawn, smelling dew on the grass outside. The night must have been cool–much water had accumulated. That was good, for her purposes. The sweetvine would bloom with the sunrise. If she could pick the petals before they dried in the morning air, she could brew the strongest love-draught in her books.
    She slipped from beneath her sheets, and the scent of lavender followed her across the room, seeping from her mattress. There was no witchy power in the herb, but she had always been charmed by its fragrance.
    Kella crouched by her hearth and began to poke in the ashes, burrowing down to the banked embers. There. A solid heart of orange, glowing in a grey silk bed. She filled her lungs and blew softly on the fire, encouraging it to strengthen, even as she squinted her eyes against a dusting of ash. Her fingers automatically reached for the dried deergrass she