Read The Magicians' Guild for Free Online Page A

chair, Harrin hooked a hand around her waist and pulled her close. She smiled at him affectionately.
    “Think you could fish us up something to eat?” he asked.
    “I’ll see what I can do.” She sauntered over to the door and slipped out of the room.
    Sonea sent Cery a questioning look and received a smug grin in reply. Dropping into the chair, Harrin looked up at Sonea and frowned. “Are you sure you’re better? You were out of it last night.”
    She shrugged. “I feel good, actually. Like I’ve slept really well.”
    “You
have.
Almost a whole day.” He shrugged, then gave her another appraising look. “What happened, Sonea? It was you who threw that stone, wasn’t it?”
    Sonea swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. She wondered for a moment if he would believe her if she denied it.
    Cery put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t worry, Sonea. We won’t tell anybody anything if you don’t want us to.”
    She nodded. “It was me but … I don’t know what happened.”
    “Did you use magic?” Cery asked eagerly.
    Sonea looked away. “I don’t know. I just wanted the stone to go through … and it did.”
    “You broke through the magicians’ wall,” Harrin said. “That would have to take magic, wouldn’t it? Stones don’t usually go through it.”
    “And there was that flash of light,” Cery added.
    Harrin nodded. “And the magicians’ sure got fired.”
    Cery leaned forward. “Do you think you could do it again?”
    Sonea stared at him. “Again?”
    “Not the same thing, of course. We couldn’t have you throwing stones at magicians—they don’t seem to like it much. Something else. If it works, you’ll know you can use magic.”
    She shuddered. “I don’t think I want to know.”
    Cery laughed. “Why wouldn’t you? Think of what you could do! It’d be fantastic!”
    “No one would ever give you any rub, for a start,” Harrin told her.
    She shook her head. “You’re wrong. They’d have more reason to.” She scowled. “Everyone hates the magicians. They’d hate me, too.”
    “Everyone hates
Guild
magicians,” Cery told her. “They’re all from the Houses. They only care about themselves. Everyone knows you’re a dwell, just like us.”
    A
dwell.
After two years in the city, her aunt and uncle had stopped referring to themselves by the term the slums dwellers gave themselves. They had made it out of the slums. They had called themselves crafters instead.
    “The dwells would love having their own magician,” Cery persisted, “especially when you start doing good things for them.”
    Sonea shook her head. “Good things? Magicians never do anything good. Why would the dwells think I’d be any different?”
    “What about healing,” he said. “Doesn’t Ranel have a bad leg? You could fix it!”
    She caught her breath. Thinking of the pain her uncle suffered, she suddenly understood Cery’s enthusiasm. It
would
be wonderful if she could fix her uncle’s leg. And if she helped him, why not others?
    Then she remembered how Ranel regarded the “curies” who had treated his leg. She shook her head again. “People don’t trust curies, why would they trust me?”
    “That’s ‘cause people think the curies make them sick as much as they make them well,” Cery told her. “They’re scared they’ll get sicker.”
    “They’re scared of magic even more. They’d think I might have been sent by the magicians to get rid of them.”
    Cery laughed. “Now that’s silly. Nobody’ll think that.”
    “What about Burril?”
    He made a face. “Burril’s a dunghead. Not everyone thinks like him.”
    Sonea snorted, unconvinced. “Even so, I don’t know anything about magic. If everyone thinks I can heal them, I’ll have people chasing me around but I won’t be able to do anything to help them.”
    Cery frowned. “That’s true.” He looked up at Harrin. “She’s right. It could get really bad. Even if Sonea wanted to try magic again, we’d still have to keep