Read Lightnings Daughter for Free Online Page B

pinecone into a perfect sweetplum. She laughed with delight when she took a bite and the delicious juice ran down her chin.
    The sorceress practiced a few more times until she had a bowl of different kinds of fruit, then she went on to the next step: changing an organic substance into something inorganic. By this time her senses were more attuned to the process of bending magic to her wil . In only a few days she was able to transform the pinecone into stone or any object she desired.
    Gabria was so busy hunting for food and practicing her magic, she did not notice immediately that winter was giving way to spring. The weather had remained dry and mild so the changes came gently to the land. The fifth full moon of her exile had come and gone before she realized that the air was not as chil y and the days were growing longer. She had less than one month left before she could return to Khulinin Held.
    To her surprise, Gabria had to admit that she was not completely happy about going back. She had grown to like the freedom to use her magic. It would be difficult to give that up-even with the possibility that the council of chiefs would change the laws forbidding sorcery when the various clans gathered later that summer at the Tir Samod.
    But that was not the only reason she was reluctant. As much as Gabria liked Khulinin Held, she did not feel at home there.
    The only home she knew in her heart was a broad meadow far to the north, where the Corins had once made their winter camp. She had not been back since that day of the massacre, almost a year ago.
    One night, when the half-moon rose above the plains, Gabria lay on her pallet in the dark, cramped temple and thought about her family long into the night. After a while she dozed, drifting in and out of sleep. Her dreams crowded in and jostled with her memories of her father and brothers. She tossed and turned as the dreams grew more vivid, and the phantoms of her old terrors gathered like shadows in her mind.
    In the blink of an eye, her thoughts cleared. A vision came to her then, as real as the first time she had experienced it. It was the same vision she had dreamed that previous summer, just before her first meeting with Lord Medb.
    Gabria saw herself standing on a hill, looking down at the ruins of a once-busy camp. The sun was high and warm, and grass grew thick in the empty pastures. Weeds sprawled over the moldering ashes and covered the wreckage with a green coverlet. A large mound encircled with spears lay to one side, its new dirt just now sprouting grass.
    Gabria jolted awake. The vision faded, but the image of the burial mound remained clear in her thoughts. She had no idea if the mound was real. When she found Corin Held after the massacre, she had been alone and unable to do anything but leave her people where they had fallen. It was ill she could do to save herself.
    Gabria mulled over the vision for several days, and in that time her desire to see her home again became a powerful yearning. The more she thought about it, the more important it became for her to see for herself if her clan had really been buried. There had been no chance to say good-bye to her father and brothers on that horrible day. Perhaps now, while she stil had about eight days of exile remaining, was a good time to go. On Nara she could cover the distance to the treld in three or four days and be back before anyone missed her. No one would have to know she had left the temple.
    When Gabria told the Hunnuli mare of her idea, Nara agreed. To see your home once more wil give you strength, the mare told her. We wil go.
    They left the next morning in the cold, misty hour of dawn.
    Nara cantered east beyond the foothil s to the plains and gradual y swung north to avoid the Khulinin scouts. By sunrise they were wel to the north of Khulinin Held and fol owing the Sweetwater River. Nara settled into an easy, flowing canter that would carry them for hours over the open leagues of grass.
    Gabria relaxed