SpringFire by Terie Garrison

tearing out his hair. When the worst of his grief had burnt itself out, he resolved to right what he had done wrong: he would find Dayrina’s son and bring him up himself. Let the child take his mother’s place as Oggam’s heir, that his despair might be relieved and his line not come to an end.
    He returned to his village and began to seek in earnest. Word went far and wide that Oggam sought the child who’d been taken from the village green two years before. But every clue he chased, every faint path of hope he followed, all came to naught.
    Then one night a dark figure came to his door. Oggam could not tell whether it was a man or a woman, neither by appearance nor by voice. This person, who claimed no name other than “wise one,” would not set foot across the doorstep, but from the shadows offered to find Oggam’s grandson. It would take, promised the wise one, nothing more than a simple ritual of finding, one that was known to only a few. The cost: everything that Oggam had—his gold, his property, all that he valued. And yet all this, set against keeping his name alive, was as nothing to Oggam, who willingly agreed to the price.
    As instructed, at midnight nine days later, Oggam arrived at the place the wise one had told him, a secret place deep in the bosom of the mountains, a place of mystery and of magic and of marvel. The black-cloaked wise one stood at the head of a large, flat stone on which lay a covered bundle. Oggam crept nearer, fearful yet curious to see a ritual the like of which he’d never heard of before this.
    The wise one muttered words in a language Oggam did not know, whilst candles, magically suspended in the air, flickered. With an unexpected movement, the wise one whisked off the covering from the bundle to reveal a small human figure bound to the stone, gagged and unmoving. Oggam recoiled from the sight but felt compelled to keep watching, anxious that this ritual of finding succeed.
    With an unearthly cry, the figure raised a knife above the stone. Its blade glittered in the moonlight, capturing a beam and reflecting it onto the figure below.
    In which Oggam saw, only a second before the knife plunged into the child’s heart, Dayrina’s clover birthmark.
    ~an ancient tale from the deeps of time

Before I could gather my wits, a woman with a sharp, nasal voice said, “Tie ’em up.”
    Moments later, my hands were bound securely behind me.
    The woman who’d given the order whispered in my ear, her breath warm and sour on my cheek. “Rennirt is well pleased. Oh, yes, very well pleased indeed.”
    Rennirt! Shandry’s father!
    “Shove them off into the corners. And make sure they can’t move.”
    The guards holding me dragged me to a corner and forced me facedown to the ground. They tied my ankles together, then, to my horror, pulled them up behind me and tied them to my wrists. My leg muscles cramped up against the awkward position and tears sprang to my eyes.
    In a miasma of fear and pain, I lay there, unable to do anything—not even move—except listen to the guards’ long carousing. From their voices, I concluded they were all women. The sound and the smell of them filled the room.
    I couldn’t tell if the thing in my mouth was a stone of some kind, or perhaps the pit of a strange fruit, or what. It no longer tasted horrible; it had no flavor at all for it had numbed my tongue. Swallowing was making my throat grow numb, too. Stranger than that, though, was the numbness that blanketed my maejic. Anazian had cast a spell on me that made me believe I’d lost my power, so I knew that feeling well. But this was different from that time.
    I withdrew deep into myself. The laughter and bawdy conversation of the women became so much sighing of wind in trees. I couldn’t be bothered to give a drop of attention to it.
    I sought my maejic. When at first I couldn’t find it, I tried not to panic. Anazian, for all the effort he’d put into trying, hadn’t been able to take it away;