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eBook Category: Fantasy
eBook Description: Can the special bond between twins transcend time and space, even death itself? When sisters who share one soul are parted, the doors to another dimension, a place of terrifying evil, swing open.

eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: Sword & Sorceress 14, 1997
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2010

5 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [35 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [40 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [17 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [189 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [18 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [68 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [90 KB] , hiebook (KML) [73 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [50 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [15 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [19 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [52 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [29 KB]
Words: 5341
Reading time: 15-21 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

On the night of the summer solstice, a breeze rippled through the plainsgrass and whispered to the Azkhantian nomads as they lay dreaming in their tents. To the east, mountains rose stark and silent, only the highest peaks still touched with snow. Below them, on a solitary hill, a bonfire set within a circlet of ancient stones sent billows of smoke to the heavens.

An aged enaree, his robes stitched with mystical symbols in threads of gold and blood-saffron from far-off Meklavar, labored to the top of the hill.

Two girls barely into womanhood waited for him, so alike they seemed like a doubled image. The flickering orange light burnished their brown skin to bronze. They wore sleeveless jackets of camel-wool stitched with their tribal emblem, the lioness, and both carried short, curved bows.

Seylana, the younger by ten minutes, stepped forward. "We have prepared everything, even as you asked." With a tilt of her head, she indicated the fire, the pots of nightskull and orienna root, the young man poised over his drums.

"It is you, my daughters, who have asked," the enaree replied in his quavering, sing-song voice. He raised his hands, accompanying his words with intricate gestures. "Not asked to be born as you were, one soul split between two bodies, but asked to be reunited, to be made one. The risk of such a Change is great, the risk of death, the risk of madness. The risk of the shadows which lurk in the dark of the eclipse."

Meriadess shivered at her sister's side. "Qr..." She whispered the single syllable.

"That's just an old legend." Seylana bit her lip. "It must be. What clan would follow the totem of a scorpion?"

The enaree shook his head. "At the solstice, in the time of the eclipse, the walls between the worlds grow thin. Power flows freely. Power to bring you through the Change. Power to give flesh to your fears. Think again if you truly wish to do this thing."

"We are Azkhant." Seylana tossed back her bronze-gilded hair. "We fear nothing." She had always been the bolder of the two, the first to tame a pony to her hand or ride out to hunt the savage plains boar.

Her sister said nothing, only gazed into the brilliance of the fire.

The enaree took a handful of orienna and one of nightskull and threw them into the fire. As the flames shot up, filling the air with pungent smoke, the boy began drumming. Seylana listened for a moment before laying aside her bow and unfastening her jacket. She knew all the rhythms of war and dance, but this was different, like an echo of her own heartbeat.