The walls of the room around me vanished. There was a moment of blackness, then I saw a mass of boiling storm clouds before me. Lightning flashed across the sky and thunder boomed. In the middle of the storm, standing on the blackest cloud of all, was a woman, wreathed in mist which swirled in the wind.
She was standing on a mountain peak, surrounded by the boiling storm clouds. Vast cloud banks moved behind and above her, and her silver hair whipped and billowed in the wind. With both hands lifted, she shouted, her great booming voice sounding like the breaking of waves on a cliffside. She spoke words in a language I did not understand, and lightning flashed from her fingertips. A torrent of rain swept the scene as she gazed out with piercing eyes at a horde of wraiths in front of her.
Just as in my previous visions, this woman gave a command to her horde, and they rushed to obey, fleeing into the distance in pursuit of some unseen foe.
When I came to myself, Mana was pulsing through my veins with more energy than before.
“I think I just acquired the Lightning affinity,” I said to Veronica.
She was lying halfway to the floor, and she pulled herself up onto the bed. “That’s wonderful news.”
I moved to sit with my back against the wall at the top of the bed and gestured to Veronica. She came to sit next to me, leaning her back against my chest, her flowing locks pressed against my skin. I put my arm around her, the weight of her breasts resting against it.
“How can we test to see if you acquired the affinity?” Veronica asked, her voice subdued with contentment.
“We can’t test it right now,” I said. “I don’t have any more Lightning Cores.”
Veronica stiffened and turned her head to look at me. “You mean, because you gave me a tattoo, you can’t test this on yourself?”
I laid a finger to her lips. “Don’t be concerned about that. I was happy to give that to you as a gift.”
“Are you sure, William?”
“Of course, I’m sure. And what you gave me today was worth far more to me. I don’t just mean the affinity. Bonding with you in this way and having your companionship is something far more important to me. I will always treasure the memory of this night.”
“So will I, William. This will be a precious memory to me.”
“Now it just means we have to hunt some more monsters to find another Lightning Core,” I said.
Veronica smiled. “Then we’ll have to hunt them together.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “For now, I just want to enjoy this moment.”
We settled in under the soft covers to rest for the night. Before my eyes closed in sleep, I couldn’t help thinking of what kind of sleep Katlyn had where she was right now. My rest would be far less fitful than hers. Doubtless she was tied up in some slaver’s wagon, or worse, chained up in a mine somewhere. Anger burned in my stomach, and I might not have been able to claim sleep but for the beautiful woman beside me who was already taken by slumber. I calmed myself by listening to her soft, steady breathing, and soon I was in a deep and dreamless sleep.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke to the rosy glow of dawn filtering through the window of the Sticks and Stones Tavern in Brightwater. It was early, and that was good; I was glad not to be sleeping in too late. A lot had happened recently, but everything else had paled in comparison to the horrifying news I received yesterday: Katlyn, my lover from my old life in Aranor, was a captive of slave traders. Only days ago, she had been seen passing through Brightwater as part of a slaver’s caravan, being transported to the Beast mines. Now, I needed to find out which mine she had been taken to so that I could rescue her.
There were dozens of mines in the mountains north of Brightwater, and Katlyn could have been taken to any one of these. For information on where she had been taken, I would need to get access to the records about the trading caravans that passed through the town. These records were held in the Trade House in the main square, and the only person who could access these records was Arnold, the Governor of Brightwater.
But Arnold was not in town. Instead, occupying the suite of official guest rooms above the Trading House, was Maximillian of Astros. He was one of the Arcanists, a group of powerful Mages who wielded influence at the King’s Court in Astros, the capital city, and oversaw much of the enforcement of law and order in the populated regions of the Kingdom. The Arcanists oversaw the training of people who had magical talents. Some of these trainee Mages would go on to become Arcanists, some became magic users in the King’s Army and some, like the beautiful woman who lay sleeping beside me now, went out into the world to forge their own path after their training was complete.
All of the magic in the Kingdom, from the spells of the most powerful Arcanist to the work of the humblest village healer, was powered by one thing: Beast Cores from the mines. A steady flow of Beast Cores came down from the mines, through the Trading House here at Brightwater and then out into the rest of the Kingdom.
Beast Cores were everything to the power structure of the Kingdom; without them, magical vectors could not be manufactured, new Mages could not be trained, and experienced Mages could not gain new powers. The high demand for Beast Cores was supplied by the network of mines in the mountains north of Brightwater. In the
