Read Heart's Magic for Free Online

challenger create
the potion entirely herself?" Gathmann asked.
    "I can detect no other hand
in it," Allsup responded reluctantly.
    "That is the only
requirement for a challenge," Gathmann stated, looking down the
line of wizards yet to verify. "Contenders can create any spell
they choose, as long as it is their own work, whatever the guild.
Continue."
    The last three or four
worked quickly, all agreeing that the two potions were entirely
Elinor's and Cranshaw's own work. At last, Rosato and Dodd held the
goblets again and walked back down the long space toward the
central table where Elinor waited with the man who hated
her.
     

CHAPTER THREE

    A wizards' challenge, she'd
been informed, would be a quiet genteel affair, unlike the violent,
explosive, run-and-hide challenges of alchemists. Harry had told
her tales of his days in the academy, when the alchemy boys spent
half their time in plotting to blow each other up. The conjury
students weren't much better, though their challenges tended more
to the prankish, since spirits couldn't move much with any weight
or mass in the material world.
    Because wizards--male
ones--were so rare, they'd been out of bounds to the other boys,
protected from the pranks and explosions, for the most part. Elinor
hoped it might make Cranshaw overconfident. He had likely never
truly been challenged by another male. And given that he apparently
believed women some sort of lesser being, possibly not even members
of the same species, she thought she had basis for hope.
    The two seconds reached the
center table and exchanged goblets. Rosato tested Cranshaw's potion
with a look, a sniff and a sneer, evidently unimpressed.
"Competent," he damned it.
    Dodd did the same with
Elinor's potion, right down to the sneer. "Swill," he dismissed
it.
    Rosato's smile was as serene
as Elinor's. " Si, it is swill. But very poisonous swill, yes?"
    Dodd set Elinor's potion
down on Cranshaw's side of the table as Rosato set Cranshaw's
potion on her side.
    "Inspecting of the wands,
please." Rosato held his hand out.
    With a sour expression,
Cranshaw took out a pair of wands--ash and alder, Elinor
thought--and handed them to Dodd, who gave them to Rosato, who gave
them a cursory looking-over and handed them back.
    Now it was Elinor's turn.
With a sigh and a crossing of her fingers, Elinor drew her fistful
of wands from her quiver and passed them to Rosato for Dodd's
inspection.
    Dodd frowned at them, hands
at his sides in belligerent fists. "What's this? Who does she think
she is, a bloody alchemist?"
    "Language, signore, " Rosato
reprimanded gently. "There is a lady present."
    "She's no damned lady,"
Cranshaw snarled. His hands were in fists too. Elinor relaxed hers
forcibly.
    "There will be no cursing
during this challenge." Gathmann's voice floated over the crowd,
carrying magic with it to enforce his edict. "What is the
problem?"
    "She's got a whole fistful
of wands," Dodd said.
    "Only seven," Rosato
corrected. "Hardly a fistful."
    "A proper wizard needs no
more than one," Cranshaw shouted. "Two at most."
    "Why?" Elinor asked him.
"Why shouldn't a wizard use more than one wand? Why shouldn't we
follow the magic where it leads us?"
    "Because it leads to--"
Cranshaw began, but Gathmann's clipped accent cut him
off.
    "There is no rule limiting
the number of wands," he said.
    "That's for alchemists!"
Allsup protested.
    "For any challenge,"
Gathmann informed him. "The wands are allowed."
    Elinor let the tension seep
slowly out of her as Dodd inspected each wand minutely, obviously
searching for something to get one or all of them thrown out. He
wouldn't find it. Now that her multitude of wands had been allowed
by the rules, they were in.
    She hadn't been at all
certain she would get to keep them, for Cranshaw was entirely
correct. Wizards traditionally used a single wand, taking up a
second only when the first broke. Elinor now thought it pure
laziness, because it was easier to use a wand already tuned to
one's magic. She