Book One – Chapter 17

They stepped onto the platform, and suddenly, they were right in front of Yu, so close he could see frost crusting their fur.

The borman adjusted his grip on the unconscious figures, cradling them close against his broad chest. His stance was taunt, not from fatigue but something more volatile. He shifted his weight foot to foot with visible impatience.

The shaman regarded both with the unreadable stillness of her blank mask. “Have you ever undergone a shamanic reading before?”

“No,” the borman stopped shifting. “Make fast. Just make.”

“No,” echoed the krynn, his voice low but edged with tension.

“It will take but one drop of blood,” the shaman said, “and one fraction of essence.”

The borman’s nostrils flared, but he gave no protest. “Just make.”

The beastkin held himself rigid. He was anything but calm, but not defiant either. Restrained.

Yu had never witnessed a shamanic reading or any sort of ritual. He had never been this close to a shaman before, or even looked at one for this long. For that matter, most magic he had experienced up close had not been done for him, but to him, back at Ayenfora.

The shaman stepped in front of the travellers.

Yu braced himself for whatever came next, and he saw the others do the same. The krynn and borman tensed. The ker’s hand rested on a long and thin blade at his hip, that of the witch on her shadow lantern. Tirran and Imbiad drew in tighter. Only Estingar remained unbothered, rolling his staff between his palms or pushing it from one hand into the other, back and forth, in a disturbingly playful manner.

Yu expected a knife or some other ceremonial tool for blood-letting. He expected chanting and elaborate gestures; a ritualistic performance.

Instead, the shaman lifted her hands and simply pressed her fingertips together. The effect was instant. The scales around her wrists, those precisely aligned blades, collapsed. Where they had stood vibrant, they dulled and curled inward, flattening to her body. The colour leached away and the silver-white shimmer turned to ash. The dark drew upward, from her arms to her shoulders, drawn into the folds of her cloak like water into dry earth.