The Golden Shield of IBF Read Online Free

for her, and they were using magic to slow her response to their attack.
    There was no time for a compression spell. Her precious things would have to be left behind, perhaps to be retrieved later. Swan slowed her breathing, reduced her heart rate to normal. Her hands moving in all directions, she ordered the books and scrolls and vials and retorts to their hiding places, ordering the notes she had taken to fly into her leather spell bag.
    There was the noise of heavy footsteps coming up the winding stairs to the tower. Not much time.
    Swan extended her left hand, calling, “Sword and sheath and belt, come to me!” They flew immediately from the small couch on which she’d placed them when entering the tower, coming to her hand. She cinched the double wrap belt around her waist. “Dagger!” She had used the tip of her dagger to open the stubborn cork which had sealed one of her vials. There was always the temptation to use magic for everything. That was wasteful, and led to laziness. The dagger slid across the long rough-hewn table where she’d set it, coming to her open right hand. It was the only weapon she always carried. She raised her skirts to sheath it on her left calf.
    The footsteps were loud enough now that her second-sight only confirmed what she already knew. Six Handmaidens on the heels of a dozen black-clad warriors from the Sword of Koth. The warriors wielding crossbows, axes and fireswords.
    The window would be her only escape. If she used her Enchantress powers to fight these persons whom her mother had sent to kill her, she would be so drained that she might not have enough magic to escape if ordinary means should fail.
    Summoning her cape and her spell bag as she ran, Swan reached the window, twisting the latch. Her plan was simple enough. She could summon a strong night wind in a matter of moments, then cast herself from the window and the powerful air currents would set her safely in the courtyard. There’d be time to reach the stable and escape.
    Throwing open the sash, the first words of the wind summoning spell were on her tongue. Swan screamed instead, throwing her shoulder against the open window, slamming it shut, but not in time. Swan staggered back.
    The warriors from the Sword of Koth, the six Handmaidens, the breaking of the guarding spell. They were all a diversion. Her mother was about to kill her, personally. Only her mother could have summoned what lay beyond the window and was inexorably creeping across the tower floor, along the tower walls.
    Her mother had somehow, using magic Swan could not even begin to comprehend, summoned the Mist of Oblivion, the blackest of all magic, a fog but denser than the deepest, darkest night, damp and cold, consuming all that it touched, rendering everything into nothingness. In moments, the castle and all within it would be devoured by the Mist, would utterly cease to exist, not just as flesh and bone, stone and steel, but even as dust. If her mother somehow lost control of the Mist of Oblivion, all of Creath and all of the universe of sun and stars of night would be lost, every life within it gone forever.
    The stout wooden door at the far end of the tower shattered inward. Three of the Sword of Koth, faces swathed in black leather battle masks, ran into the room. The six Handmaidens, black robed beneath their cloaks, followed after them. The Handmaidens immediately formed a circle, joining hands. And they began their chant of power.
    “Fools!” Swan screamed at them. “My mother is murdering all of you along with me!” The other nine warriors were coming through the doorway now. A crossbow bolt was fired, streaking toward Swan’s head. She flicked her hand, diverting the missile from its target.
    The window, the wall where the window had been, the floor near the wall, all were gone, enveloped in the creeping blackness of the Mist. In a matter of eyeblinks, the warriors would be closed off with her where she stood and the Mist of Oblivion would