Out of the Shadow at Last novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Her Own Ward

Linnet's POV

The Seal was so hot that it hurt to hold, and I held it.

I had written wards in chalk all my life, a rune at a time, at a desk with a lamp.

I had never written one across a river.

The silver light poured off the disc and ran along the top of the wall in a line, and then the line began to climb.

"Ivar," I said. "Give me your hand."

He put it in mine at once.

I cut his palm with the rune pen, just a nick, and pressed his blood to the Seal beside my own.

"What does that do?" he asked.

"Northgate is your border. The ward has to know whose it is."

He didn't ask anything else.

I wrote the first rune in the air with my free hand, and the whole wall answered.

I felt it go through every stone of the hold, from the gate towers to the kitchen yard, and the people inside it, and the dogs.

It was the biggest thing I had ever touched.

It was also the first thing I had ever done in front of people who knew my name.

The collector's smile slipped.

"Pretty," he said. "Bring it down."

The ranks on the shingle moved all at once.

They came up the bank at a run, fast and silent, and they hit the new ward at the foot of the wall.

The light flared white.

The front rank went up in flame, and the screaming was thin and high and short.

The second rank stopped.

"Again!" the collector shouted, and they came again.

Every blow landed on my chest.

I felt each one as if somebody had thumped me with a plank, and my knees began to go.

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