The Silver Pear by Michelle Diener

everyone’s head, proving herself, but it faded at the look in her eyes.
    “My mother died giving birth to me.” She looked down into her empty mug, and swirled the dregs around. “My father had bespelled me in the womb, and what he did leeched everything out of her. She had no strength, nothing left when it was time for me to come into the world.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Sure as if he’d plunged a knife into her heart, he killed her, and he knew it.”

Chapter Twelve
    W illiam’s men left after an hour. Mirabelle made bread spread thickly with butter and honey to take with them, filled two leather pouches with the cool, sweet water always present in the jug in the kitchen, and made her way out of the tree-house.
    Soren was waiting for her just below the platform, two bedrolls from one of the rooms strapped to his back. He stood just above the lowest branch, listening to make sure the men really had gone.
    He gave her a quick nod of confirmation, took the satchel of food and drink she was carrying from her, and ran lightly down to the ground.
    The way he moved, sure-footed and competent, stirred something in her, and she felt off balance as she followed him.
    There was something between them. Something strange and intense. It made her uneasy, and she hoped being out of the close confines of the tree-house and back on the road would help to dissipate it.
    They had both agreed their general direction was south, and they would go together until the time came for them to follow their own paths.
    “Garth told me he found the gem working the forests in south Klevan,” Soren told her. “He lives in Jaret and someone will know him there.”
    “And you?” She didn’t want him to leave her, but she had no right to ask him to give up his own quest so she didn’t have to search for the silver pear alone.
    He looked down, frustrated. “Kayla got us into Eric’s castle using wild magic. I can’t use that way again, and I don’t know where his castle is. The best I can do is go to Jaret with you and see if there is news from Gaynor. If Rane brought Kayla back to her father, surely the news would spread. That would at least tell me they escaped.”
    She didn’t want to add to his worries, but decided he would want to know what her father had told her about Eric the Bold. “Eric’s castle is hidden by magical mists. When the King of Klevan banished him for breaking the code and killing Hirst Red Tongue, Eric used up all his magic to hide his castle. My father said it’s why we didn’t hear much from him for so long, he needed time to recover. His castle’s impossible to find.”
    “It wasn’t impossible for Kayla,” Soren said, a stubbornness in the hunch of his shoulders.
    Mirabelle had no answer to that, and Soren turned away from her and took the lead, using the narrow, almost unused tracks that angled south-west and would take them out of the tame woods and into the Great Forest itself.
    The place where the one ended and the other began was difficult to judge, and no-one took the deeper paths unless they had to. Very little was worth tangling with wild magic.
    For her, Mirabelle knew, it was even more dangerous. Wild magic shouldn’t be sentient, but its interest in sorcerers was as unflinching as a cat’s. She’d never experienced it for herself, but her father had told her. It sensed them, came to them, creating strange, often deadly, creatures in its wake, and if it touched a sorcerer . . .
    She couldn’t suppress the shiver that gripped her this time. Her father said the screams would haunt him for the rest of his life.
    She could only hope that hadn’t been the way he’d died.
    She wanted to call out to Soren, warn him that while no-one was likely to follow them if they carried on down this path, it might be more dangerous than taking a chance on the roads. There was a possibility William was too afraid of attack from the sorcerer he was convinced was trying to infiltrate the stronghold to