magic, not healing.
She was, if not oblivious to her exhausted body, unmindful of it. If her efforts
were successful there would be time enough for rest and recovery. She continued
manipulating the bonds which made all she had ever owned a focus for her power.
She set resonances at each flawed boundary, reinforced them as motes of warding
eroded away and tried not to feel the tremors that were Straton.
It was not her way to move with such delicate precision- but it was the only way
she had left. Balancing her power through every focal object within the Peres
house which could contain it, she hoped to build her presence until she could
pull from all directions and burst the warding sphere Roxane had created. She
had discarded the thread tying her to the bay horse. She had never regarded the
creature as hers but only as a gift, a rare gift, to her lover. Thus the moment
when it had scented Strat’s blood passed unnoticed but the instant when it
penetrated the wards was seared into her awareness.
Her first response was a heartfelt curse for whatever was causing havoc in her
neat, tedious work. The curse soared and circled the wards until Ischade
understood she had an ally within the house. She examined the small skein of
living and dead within whom she had a focus and found that one, Stilcho, was no
longer anchored. Stilcho, whom Haught had stolen and fate had set to living
freedom.
Smiling, she pushed her imperceptible awareness past the ward-consuming
emptiness.
“Haught,” she whispered, weaving into his mind. “Remember your father. Remember