Battle Mage: Winds of Change (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 11) Read Online Free Page A

master, the girl was still a wizard and had little weapons training to protect herself beyond her spells. "They had warlocks who looked for auras besides. Yours as a wizard would be harder to mask than mine. My power is low enough that they missed it until it was too late."
    Ashleen looked at him and her eyes glowed. "You still have magic to your aura, but I will say that it reads as disrupted or broken now. If I could go back and look at you when I first met you versus now, I probably would wonder if you were the same person."
    "I think that the tattoos of rune magic might account for some of it," he answered with a nod.
    "But that still doesn't mean you get to return and just say 'hi'. I want details. How did it go?"
    Sebastian sat on the side of the bed and began to pull off his boots. With a little time before dinner, the mage hoped to relax for a bit. Ashleen was likely to want to meet up with their friends or find a place to dance with just the two of them, if they weren't available.
    He had taught her to use healing magic for wounds, but it was hard for the wilder and draining when she tried to use the spells; so he couldn't just have the girl ease the ache from fighting with a spell. They had come to believe that her magic was designed to attack and destroy. Lightning magic was a part of her and healing wizards often found that they had to specialize in healing while abandoning most attack spells. The conflict inside them seemed too much for most.
    A thud on the wood floor as the first boot fell was ignored as the young mage answered, "I had to listen to one of their speakers, a warlock, for over an hour spewing their ideas about breaking from Southwall to become their own kingdom or city state before I caught a recruiter's eye.
    "The city guards came to break it up about the same time, but I managed to get invited to an abandoned warehouse they were using. I was taken before one of their leaders, who was also a warlock, before things started getting interesting."
    "By that you mean, the warlock realized you were a battle mage and they tried to attack you," the girl summarized sitting back on her lower legs beside him. Her skirt only covered the upper half of her thighs revealing skin that had become tanner since they had returned to Hala. The summer had been unusually warm for a city in northern Southwall and Ashleen had taken to wearing clothing that was nearly scandalous during the day.
    She had become his assistant and apprentice as well, since coming to the Black Smith Inn. They worked in the smithy together. Between the heat of the forge and the summer air, Ashleen wore almost as little as the men working the fires. Such outfits had disturbed Ivol, the smith, and his son; but no more so than his wife Hilda, who ran the inn. At first the woman had tried to fight the younger girl on it, but after weeks of making apparent that she wouldn't change her ways; Hilda had apparently given up for the most part.
    "I was checked for weapons..."
    "Which you hid with the rune," she nodded.
    The second boot dropped with a thud and Sebastian lay back across the bed dangling his legs over the mattress edge. Her blue eyes followed his face, but the girl merely slid off of her legs sitting with them curled against her as she rested against her arm.
    "So when the warlock, Wiler, began to question why I had magic and what I was, it was pretty much time to distract them until the others arrived. I pulled the black sword. It is definitely ridiculously sharp and strong," he added getting distracted from the main story.
    "You weren't getting very serious if you didn't pull out one of the Hollow Swords," Ashleen stated with a bit of a frown. She knew that he was always testing things out. The black sword had been an interesting discovery while looking for the best swords he could find in the city in an attempt to make the best blades he could to build more Hollow Swords out of them. While an impressive weapon, it wasn't the best for use