Warriors of Ethandun Read Online Free

come. The sky was grey with unshed rain and a bitter wind ruffled Dan’s hair and he shivered in his thin T-shirt; it was good to be out of that stinking room.
    â€˜So?’ Taliesin said.
    â€˜So? Very clever, Taliesin. Thanks. I’m happy for you that you’ve got your magic back, but I can’t just disappear – I’ll be in even more trouble and I’m in enough already.This is my world, Taliesin – it doesn’t work like that.’ Dan softened his words by forcing a smile. He doubted that it would fool his old friend.
    â€˜Magic isn’t the answer,’ he added and folded his arms, which were now covered in goose pimples.
    â€˜It is true that magic has been well buried here.’ Taliesin sighed. He was no more suitably dressed than Dan and his nose was already beginning to redden with the cold. Dan put his hand on Taliesin’s shoulder and squeezed it. ‘It’s not that I’m not grateful, Taliesin, and I didn’t mean to sound so graceless, it’s just –’
    â€˜How can you live here, Dan? All the earth is covered in concrete and the bits that aren’t are fenced off and hedged around. The air stinks and the water is fouled and the magic is so locked away. This is no place for a man and especially not a man like you. They can’t imprison you.’
    Dan took a deep breath of the tainted air. It smelled better than the police station but Taliesin was used to the air of an unpolluted past. ‘I understand what you’re saying, Taliesin, but this is my home. My family is here. The police will have to let me go. Ursula is alive and she’ll tell them I didn’t attack her. There is no real case against me. It might take a few days, but then I’ll go back to school.’
    Taliesin snorted in derision. He thought literacy weakened a man. It was a Celtic thing. Taliesin had learned all the lore he knew by heart, for a man’s memory was his secret stronghold and the written word was only for the weak and the foolish, for men who could not keep theirmysteries. ‘And what will you learn in school, Dan? You know about war and power and the hidden secrets of men’s hearts. What more have you to learn?’
    Dan refrained from explaining about GCSEs: he did not think it would help.
    â€˜Taliesin, I am grateful for what you are trying to do, I really am, but I have to face this … misunderstanding and then get on with my real life. This is where I belong.’
    Taliesin shrugged thin shoulders: ‘What if Ursula wanted to go back to Macsen’s world. Would you go then?’
    Dan thought about his life with the Celts, about how he had been welcomed among the warriors as a brother, as a son, as one of their own, and he felt a poignant sense of loss. ‘Ursula won’t want to go back – she belongs here too.’
    â€˜You think that Ursula will not miss magic? You’ve only known a little of it, Dan. What she had back then, in Macsen’s world – that wild power in her veins …’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think you appreciate how much Ursula will miss it – the way magic sings in your blood …’
    Taliesin was wrong. Dan did know about that, had felt it for himself when he’d touched Ursula’s mind. But none of that mattered. They belonged to their own century, their own world, and that was all there was to it. Taliesin’s expression told Dan that he’d understood.
    â€˜All right. I’m not a fool. I know obduracy when I see it. I have two things for you. Here is your sword.’ Taliesin held out his hand and suddenly Bright Killer was in his fist, as if he were some kind of common or gardenconjuror. Dan’s hand ached to hold it – the sword that made him complete – but he wouldn’t let himself stretch out his hand to take it too eagerly. Taliesin would see that as evidence that he longed to be a warrior again and that