Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 Read Online Free Page A

her out of his family. And never again would he feel the flush of shame when his mother said, ‘Look out for each other, you two’. What a joke. Glimmer had never needed his help, and he’d never wanted hers. But like the good little girl that she was, she’d obeyed their mother and stepped in to stop him being hurt every time there’d been a scuffle. The first time, he was eight and quite capable of taking a beating if it meant holding onto his pride, but Glimmer hadn’t understood that. He should have realised then that she was an alien. After the third time, kids had started asking him if his bodyguard was at school and his reputation as a loser was carved in stone.
    He’d wanted to kill Glimmer then. Now he was just glad she was gone.
    The tepid lake water soaked up the legs of his jeans as he waded in, and he knew he’d have to perform a cleansing ritual later to rid himself of leeches. For now the sensation was bliss. Though only at hip height in the deepest section, there was enough water for his purposes. He turned a circle, looking into the trees around the lake to be sure he wouldn’t be observed, then he closed his eyes and spread his hands out at his sides, close to the surface. The air seemed to hum with more than insect noise and Vandal couldn’t help the leap of excitement that came each time he tested his powers.
    He settled, focused, pictured Ennae with his mind, all brown, deep mists, heavy water, no animals, no insects, just people and plants. He pictured his father’s face and was unable to stop himself imagining a frown. When he had that clear in his mind he spread his hands wide and, in the deepest voice he could manage, he repeated the words his father had taught him in their Guardian game — ‘I am the light that warms the tunnel. I am the door that opens the way.’
    A minute passed, two, but Vandal held on, knowing one day it would work.
    And God help him, today it did.
    He felt a jolt within himself, as though his sending towards Ennae had touched and snagged a tenuous hold. His mouth fell open and he breathed through it noisily as he struggled to control his excitement and maintain the connection. It was working. He was linked to Ennae. His hands trembled as he dipped his fingers into the water and inscribed a circle onto the lake.
    ‘Ancient powers, take from my hand the sacred element of our land,’ he intoned. ‘This water that gives Magoria its hue will forge a way betwixt the two.’
    A thrill of sensation ran up Vandal’s spine into his mind and he gasped in amazement at the beauty of what he was seeing — more than colours, it was life, a primordial swirl that pulsed with the stuff of the universe, magical beyond his wildest dreams and yet so real he was already a part of it. The wonder was indescribably intense and, before he could properly appreciate it, intrusive. The sensations grew, overloading his mind. Crushing him.
    His hands came up to his head, clutching the sides of it as though to stop it being torn apart. Violent images raked at his mind, and in self-defence he opened his eyes and gazed blindly at his surroundings. ‘Magoria,’ he cried. ‘I’m on Magoria.’ But his mind wouldn’t revert. Jagged sensations ripped behind his eyes, more agonising than anything he could have imagined, and before he could even cry out, he lost consciousness, falling backwards into the water, arms outstretched.
    Crucified by his own untrained power.

CHAPTER THREE
    ‘A ll is not as I expected it to be,’ Mihale said, fingering the talisman he had returned to his neck.
    Talis looked up from where he was tending the unconscious Plainsman. ‘Majesty?’ he said, confident that his duty had been fulfilled. They were returned to Ennae and the stone had not been lost.
    Mihale stalked the length of the Royal Crypt, his cloak stirring dust, his shoulder-length snow hair a bright spot in the gloomy cavern, lit only by a thin central skylight above the funeral platform. Around them