Chased By Fire (Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

up doing if his father still lived, but not that. “Besides, it wasn’t a wolf. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a wolf.”
    His mother looked up again and pushed her papers away, focusing on him entirely. “What was it, then?”  
    Tan wasn’t sure if she humored him or if she believed his concern. Cobin hadn’t questioned. And his mother knew he was a skilled tracker and what he’d learned from his father.  
    “Some kind of hound,” he answered, shaking his head. “I couldn’t see them clearly. Some kind of smoke or cloud of dust.”
    She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, visibly calming herself. “You came upon a pack while tracking an unfamiliar creature.”  
    There was a heat to her words now. Tan needed to choose his answer carefully. “We needed to know what attacked the flock. Father would have done the same!” Immediately he knew that he’d misspoken.  
    Her eyes flashed with a quick anger. Fists clenched before slowly relaxing. “Your father,” she began, taking a deep breath before continuing, “is no longer with us.”
    Tan knew she intended to say something different. Almost more than him, she still suffered daily by his father’s absence. Before he’d gone, she smiled easily and laughed often. All that changed when he went to war at the king’s bidding. When he didn’t return, neither did his mother’s mirth.  
    “Tan,” she said quietly. “I cannot lose you, too.”
    “I know.” But she still wanted him to leave Nor. She wanted him to go to Ethea, learn at the university like his father had, but Tan wanted something different. Why should he go to the capital when everything he knew and loved was here?
    She shook her head, touching a hand to her neck where a small locket hung. “How did you get away?”  
    He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”  
    His mother didn’t care what he’d seen, only about his safety. But there something about the creatures gnawed at his senses.  
    He sighed, knowing his father would have understood.  
    “Sighing won’t bring him back.”  
    “I know,” he said softly.  
    She set her hands on either side of her desk and studied him a moment. Then she took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “It’s time for you to think about your studies.”
    Tan swallowed before answering. “But I don’t want—”
    “You need to understand your gifts, Tan. Like your father, the Great Mother gifted you as an earth senser. You can learn to master that gift in Ethea.”
    “And have to serve like Father?”
    She nodded.  
    After what happened to his father, he didn’t understand why she pushed him to study in Ethea. “The other sensers in Nor never went to the university. Most are like me—too weak to do anything useful anyway.”
    “How can you know how strong you can be if you never try?”
    He shook his head. His father would have understood. Had he not gone off for the king, he would’ve taught Tan himself. “What can I learn at university that I can’t in Galen?”  
    “The fact that you ask tells me how much you have to learn.”
    He sighed.
    “Tannen!”
    He blinked and took a deep breath. “The king called Father to serve because he’d studied at the university. I’m just a weak earth senser. No use to the king.”
    “That’s for the king to decide.”
    “He’s not my king,” Tan mumbled. He squirmed under the look she shot him. A moment of silence fell between them and he let it settle before speaking again. “There was something else.” She opened her mouth as if to say something, but Tan pressed forward. “Bal saw Aeta.”  
    “Bal was with you?”  
    He shook his head. “Not with me,” he said. “I found her. She followed Lins Alles into the upper reaches but got lost. If I hadn’t found her—”  
    Hopefully telling her about Bal would ease some of his mother’s anger. She knew how impulsive Bal could be.
    “And she found Aeta?”  
    Tan’s frustration continued to rise.
    “And