Sorceress of Faith (62 page)

The
Swordmarshall steadied him. “Easy, lad.”

Koz-Andrew
glanced at the Towers, then to her. “Go, Marian,” he said, and the lilt when he
said her name was the same, though the voice was deeper. He smiled, and somehow
that was the same, too.

She
grabbed his hands, which were not at all the same. “I’m your sister and I love
you. I want you to be happy.” She didn’t want him fighting. But it was not her
decision.

Marian
swung her gaze to Alexa’s. Koz had been a part of Alexa’s household. The other
Exotique winked and nodded, and Marian released a relieved breath. Alexa would
watch out for him.

Koz
was taller than Marian, so she stood on the balls of her feet and brushed a
kiss against his cheek. “I love you.”

“I
love you, too,” Koz said. His eyes narrowed as he looked past her to Jaquar,
who came up to them and placed an arm around Marian’s shoulder. “Looks like
you’ve got a man. Don’t take any crap from him.”

She
smiled. “I won’t.”

Bossgond
announced, “I think I will establish a school centered around my Tower.” He
stood, hands on hips.

“Wonderful!”
Marian said. The old Circlet needed to be more sociable. She looked at
Bossgond, a grumpy old man who’d become the father she’d never had. Alexa and
Bastien gazed at her, smiling, too. Sinafin and Tuck paraded around as peacocks
and Marian caught Tuck’s chirp.

“
I
am the boy. I have the pretty feathers. You are the girl and are a pea
hen
.”

Sinafin
ignored him.

Everything
Marian had ever wanted was here, even though she’d never known it, could never
have imagined this life. She’d been right to return. Her heart and future lay
here.

On
Amee she’d learned to open herself to more people than Andrew—to trust and
love. Her adventure had forced her to become an integral part of a vibrant
community engaged in an awesome task, instead of a distant, academic observer
of life. Relationships with people, particularly these people, would be
fascinating and ever-changing, expanding the knowledge of her heart and leading
her to wisdom instead of mere understanding.

“You’re
my friends,” she said.

They
cheered. She curtsied.

A
breeze feathered against her skin. The last, blessed lesson of the day floated
over her, into her—the knowledge that she was perfect in her own unique way.

She
laughed. “I won against the Master Mahlyar.
We
won against the Dark.”
Marian looked at her twin Towers and flung out her arms and whirled in complete
freedom. They were hers. Her new home and school. But who knew what condition
they might be in? Whether there would be furnishings or food? She didn’t care.

She
said something she’d never said impulsively before, because before it had
needed to be planned, it had needed to be perfect and right and tidy. But this
moment was perfect in itself, as were all moments. As she was. “Let’s party at
my place!”

Jaquar
scooped her up and spun her around and they lifted off the ground in a rush of
air.

Another
perfect moment. She’d live a lifetime of perfect moments.

Shaking
her head, she chuckled. That sounded very Zen. But she was an Exotique Circlet,
ready to add another melodic line to the symphony that was Lladranan culture.

Marian
slipped from Jaquar’s arms and took his hand. She Sang her Song as she ran to
her Towers, and her lover and friends and brother followed.

Cut Second Scene from Original
Chapter 1

Socreress of
Faith

All rights reserved;
copyright © Robin D. Owens.The text contained within may not be reproduced in
whole or in part or distributed in any form whatsoever OR SOLD without first
obtaining permission from the author.

Note: Marian's name
was originally Brandy (and her hamster, Soda), changed at the request of Luna.
I picked Marian because it's a derivitive of Mary, the perfect woman...and
Jack's first name was Richard, but I have a good friend who is NOT a jerk named
Richard who might read the book, so I changed it to something that sounded more
like the hero's name Jaquar.

You'll be seeing a
lot of different scenes that were cut from the front of the book...here's one
with Jack Wilse, Marian's ex-lover, who's mentioned in Sorceress. I rewrote
this scene a couple of times adding and subtracting magic...

Enjoy!

Mistake.
Brandy squinted at her monitor as the table of figures swam. At
the end of this project she'd need glasses for sure. After four months as the
Assistant to the Dean of Engineering at the University, she knew her lateral
transfer had been the wrong thing to do. Not the worst blunder she'd made in
the past few years, but definitely traipsing down a false path. She
hated
making mistakes. One of the reasons her thirst for knowledge was so great
was because she didn't like correcting stupid errors.

She huffed out a breath and glanced at the scrawled paper beside
her. Was that a 7 or a 2? She peered closer, "7." Right. To clear her
mind, she pinched off a sprig of mint from the verdant plant on her desk and
chewed the leaves.

Her little zen clock chimed soothingly and she looked at the
digital readout. Noon. Her shoulders relaxed. The Engineering Department Office
closed precisely from noon to one. She hadn't needed an alarm clock in the
Theater Department. Looking back, the over-the-top emotions and dramatics of
the students in Theater weren't as bad as she'd thought.

Brandy rose and locked the door, then returned to her desk and got
her uninspired sack lunch and a book from her drawer. After the failure of her
dawn meditation, she'd just grabbed food on hand for her lunch. She'd known
she'd have to eat at her desk to get the report done on time.

She ate her lunch and studied the bagua chart in
The Way of
Feng Shui for You
. She'd given up hiding her reading material after a
month. Did the Chinese really have so many octagonal rooms? She hadn't thought
so.

"You don't really believe in that junk!" Associate
Professor Richard Wilse came from the conference room behind her, stopped and
snorted.

Brandy looked up at the blond hunk. She admired his body and
deplored his mind. It was inconceivable to her now that she'd had a brief
affair with him.
Mistake.

She folded her hands. "I have an open mind."

Wilse grunted.

"One of the tenets of Feng Shui is simplicity," she
said. "Ridding your life of clutter." She looked pointedly through
the open door of his office to the edge of his desk. A waterfall of paper
toppled from the stacks on the edge to the floor.

"Bunch of crap," Wilse said, but a hint of color showed
in his cheeks. His pale blue gaze lingered on Brandy's breasts, then went to
the curve of her stomach.

He nodded approvingly at her apple. "I see you're taking my
advice about nutrition." He flexed his muscles. "Exercise some more
and you'll get rid of those extra pounds. You want another guest pass to my
club?"

Mature women don't have flat stomachs, Brandy told herself, trying
to believe it. The female body is constructed to carry weight in the abdomen,
butt, and thighs. Mature women are curvy. She still ground her teeth.

"Thanks,
Richard, but no. I'm fine." Better than her anorexic five-times-married
mother, at least.

"Huh." He looked at her book again and shook his head.
"You know, here in Boulder there are two sorts of people: real people and
flakes."

"That's
right," Brandy agreed. "Two sorts of people: academic folks and the
real people."

"If you two are finished, I'd like to talk about
work.
"
The Dean's dry voice came from behind her. Brandy winced.

A stack of papers containing columns of figures and
equations in small block
handwriting plopped onto her dark blue
blotter
decorated with gold suns, moons and stars. "Those are the final statistics
for our latest departmental paper on the structural integrity of the older
campus buildings. My part of the report is now done." He tapped his finger
on the document. Just like the rest of him, his finger was long and lean and
nondescript. "With a day to spare."

He lifted his balding head and glanced at Richard. "Dr.
Wilse, is your portion of the research ready to be inputted?"

"Almost, sir.
I'll have it for Brandy within the half-hour."

The Dean's bushy gray eyebrows, the only luxuriant thing about
him, drew together. "See that you do." He nodded coolly to Brandy,
then left.

Richard strode into his office. When he sat and pulled his chair
up to his desk, more paper rustled to the floor. He ignored it and began
tapping on his computer keyboard.

A few minutes later he made a sound of disgust and his chair
squeaked as it rolled back. He marched to Brandy's desk and flipped a diskette
atop the Dean's stats that she was already working on.

"That's the information. It's all there, but I can't get the
table to format right." He glanced at his watch. "Time for my
afternoon class, see you." Picking up an overfull briefcase,
he hurried from the room,
shoulders hunched—not waiting for her reply. Not that she could get one past
her gritted teeth. She glared at the diskette. It was bound to be a mess.

Overtime again today and with a stop at GoldenRaven's she wouldn't
get home before dark. She glanced at the moon chart taped to the back of one of
her shelves—the moon was waxing, four days until full, so she'd have
some
light
on her way home.

She eyed another apple and decided to run across the quad to the
student union and get some buttered popcorn.

Marian and Golden Raven

Socreress of
Faith

All rights reserved;
copyright © Robin D. Owens.The text contained within may not be reproduced in
whole or in part or distributed in any form whatsoever OR SOLD without first
obtaining permission from the author.

Late Spring, Boulder,
Colorado, the same evening

Slowly rising from the pillow on the floor and flicking her skirt
out to straighten it, Marian Hrasta watched GoldenRaven's other students thank
the woman and file out the room to the house's entryway. Marian braced herself
to talk to her teacher about the strange sounds—chimes, gongs, and chants—that
had haunted her this last month.

When GoldenRaven turned back to the living room and saw Marian
waiting, her smile faded. Marian didn't like that. She'd always been a good
student, and it dented her pride—perhaps even something more—if her profs
didn't like her.

GoldenRaven stepped into the room and folded her hands at her
waist and tilted her blond head. Her blue eyes were stern. "This was the
last session in our endeavor to find your totem animal. You were deep in
meditation, Marian and I believe you found your totem, didn't you? Therefore
the class was a success in your mind, yes?" GoldenRaven's smile was a
little too sharp for what Marian thought of as a laid-back, new age
practitioner. But a teacher had asked a question.

"Yes, an owl." Shades of Harry Potter, must have been
the movie she'd seen a week before. "A snowy owl."

GoldenRaven nodded once. "Good."

"Uh, GoldenRaven, I know that you spoke the guided
meditation, but did you use music, too? Chants and chimes and a gong, for
instance?"

"No."

Marian was afraid of that. She wet her lips, but before she could
broach the reason she stayed, Goldenraven spoke. "You're like many of my
university grad students, studying me and my beliefs rather than the subject—the
lifestyle—I want to teach." She started straightening the living room,
picking up pillows from the last guided meditation session.

"I'm sorry if you don't think that I take you
seriously."

GoldenRaven sighed, took a seat on a broken-down sofa. She was
several inches shorter than Marian and even plumper than Marian herself. Unlike
Marian, GoldenRaven accepted her body-shape. She gestured to Marian to sit,
too. "Marian, you have a great deal of intelligence, and more, just plain
magic
in you, right beneath the surface. But you dabble. You don't commit yourself to
the learning.”

Marian felt heat creep up her neck. She'd
always
been a
good student.

"Listen to me," GoldenRaven said, "You dabble, not
taking what you learn seriously. Yet I feel a brilliant spark within you, just
under the surface." She tapped Marian's chest above her breasts.
"Strong magic."

She
wanted
to believe. Wanted to think that some magic
actually worked, but was unable to cast aside the last little nugget of logic
and reason.

GoldenRaven sighed. "My belief in magic is integral to my
spiritual beliefs. Life itself is magic—the growing of a babe in the womb, the
unfurling of the bud to a blossom, a rainbow. All to be celebrated, all life.
And I know that you—" She made a helpless gesture as if searching for
words. "I
must
show her," she whispered to herself. She turned
to Marian. "Sit back down and relax. We'll try a little something."