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eBook Category: Fantasy
eBook Description: Bera was used to dealing with her own magic. But now she had to deal with a very different sort of magic, come from a foreign land.

eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: Sword & Sorceress 17, 2000
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2008

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Diana L. Paxson's Bera Steinbjornsdottir Series

19 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [25 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [40 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [19 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [195 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [19 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [69 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [90 KB] , hiebook (KML) [76 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [58 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [16 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [21 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [53 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [32 KB]
Words: 6061
Reading time: 17-24 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The world is burning. Screaming silently, the goddess struggles against her chains. Smoke billows above her, its harsh reek catching in her lungs. Fighting for breath, she twists in her bonds--

Bera coughed, heaving convulsively, and something gave way. With a gasp she sat up. Where was the fire? Her staring eyes saw only darkness, and she realized now that the bindings against which she had been fighting were only the tangled bedclothes. A nightmare ... she thought, kicking the blanket aside, left over from my vision ... Swiftly the images faded from her memory.

But the smell of smoke was stronger now.

Bera yanked open the bed-curtains and peered into the shadows of the hall. The hearthfire had been banked for the night--in the long trench only a few coals yet glowed. Achtlan would not have left green wood smoldering, and yet the acrid scent that had awakened her still hung in the air.

The darkness resonated with the familiar wheeze and snore of sleeping men. But there was something else--Bera tensed, certain now that she heard men talking in hushed voices, and then, unmistakably, the crackle of flames. She reached out to the log wall beside her and found it warm, looked up and glimpsed a sparkle of light in the thatching above her, and scrambled from the box-bed, shouting "Fire! Fire!"

Like an echo, from outside the hall came the bray of a horn.

The hall erupted in confusion as men still drunk from the celebration stumbled about, groping for their weapons. Bera dressed hurriedly, fumbling in the dark.

"Warriors, to me!" Olvir's bellow rose above the din as someone thrust a torch into the coals and held it high. She glimpsed Asmund shrugging into his hauberk, half-naked men clutching spears and swords.

"Olvir!" came a shout from outside. "Are you awake, old man? Are you warm enough? Soon you will be warmer still!"

"Havard Arnasson..." said Asmund, swearing. "He'll have fire set all around the hall, and men waiting outside the door."

Bera swallowed, realizing that she had foreseen this in her first vision, and thought it only an image, like the goddess in chains. Heated air rushed in as the door was opened. In the dancing firelight she glimpsed the glint of steel.