Rough Magic Read Online Free

across the small side garden and out the final door in the wall. The guard posted there did not even glance her way as the door opened and shut.
    Quickly, she was within the outskirts of the wood, the trees whispering their welcome. She had always been well served by the trees. In a short time she came to the clearing. Here was the magic circle where the moon shone directly upon a large flat white rock. She had seen this place from one of the high towers. Certainly her husband would never agree to her roaming about in the forest. He knew only too well the strength she could find here.
    Stone power. That was what she needed right now. The power to withstand her enemies in the court. She must become a fortress.
    Because she had many enemies now. It had not taken long for the secrets of her marriage to become common knowledge. And as soon as it was known that Alonso did not love her, that he also found her foreign ways alarming and strange, the dance of the courtiers began. They tried to win his favor by insulting her. He did not protect her. His sense of obligation had diminished. Soon it would be gone altogether. And now that he was surrounded and rooted in his own place of power, he did not fear her as he had.
    She stripped off her cloak and knelt on the rock. Wearing only a thin, white gown, her flesh puckered immediately in the chilly night air. She drew the small flint dagger from her belt, intending to lift it to the moon and begin the slow, harsh song of the stone spell. But she paused, then froze.
    She had been followed. Sycorax could sense him somewhere in the shadows. Her nostrils flared, testing the wind. There. He was crouched low beneath the fir tree. One of her husband’s men, probably a soldier. She knew that he would not be open to bribery.
    Her mind raced, but she kept her body still, calm. She must disguise her purpose, make her kneeling here on the ceremonial rock seem innocent. Fortunately, she had not begun the rites. Ideas tumbled through her mind like pebbles in a stream, until one shone clear. She tucked the knife back into her belt, then lowered her face into her hands and began to sob.
    It was not hard to cry. She had been holding back tears for so long that they were grateful for a chance to flow. She wept for her child, her father, for her lost land, for the life she would have had, for the life she’d dreamed of, and for the work of her own foolish hand in all her troubles.
    It worked. She felt the soldier draw back, hesitate. She sensed his shame. He had followed a woman to catch her committing a crime, and instead he had to witness her loneliness and sorrow. Even so, he did not leave. That annoyed her, for it meant that she would have to go back to her rooms with the rites undone. Who knew when she would get another chance, especially now that her stone had been discovered. But there was no help for it. Though inwardly she seethed, outwardly she kept the ruse of a fragile and broken woman. She wrapped her cloak around herself and stole back to the castle, pausing every now and then to sigh and weep some more. The shadow was behind her the whole way.
    Back in her chambers Sycorax paced angrily. She was in danger now, that much was clear. Her husband hoped to free himself of his foreign wife. He needed only to catch her performing her outlawed magic and he would have his reason. The queen could not be a witch.
    She clenched the fabric of her skirt in rage. The banning of magic had been a master stroke of his, without a doubt. She had sat beside him, mute and powerless, while he persuaded the council that the use of magic, which had enslaved his own royal person, must be considered a grievous crime. They had agreed readily, their eyes gleaming and victorious in the glances they stole at her from beneath lowered lids. And she had been allowed to do nothing more than vent her fury at him in private, reminding him that it was magic that had saved his royal life, her magic, and that she was the