The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Song of the Lioness #3)

His eyes snapped open. She stepped back, her heart thudding with horror. He smiled.

Alanna threw her covers aside and rolled out of bed, shaking. Lurching to her feet, she ran out of the tent with Faithful just behind her. Once outside she stood panting in the cold night breeze, feeling chills as it struck her sweat-soaked body.

“The first magic you learn is fire-making,” she told her pupils. They were in the desert not far from the village. Alanna didn’t want to be near people or tents, in case of accidents. A warrior of the tribe stood a safe distance away, his bow strung and ready. The hillmen were too near for anyone to risk going far without a guard.

Alanna put a twig down on top of several others. “It’s easy for anyone who has the Gift at all to make a fire or to create light,” she went on, feeling uncomfortable. She had taught combat arts to pages and squires before, but never sorcery; she was worried that she might do something wrong. “You look at what you want to burn—later you won’t have to look at it—and you picture it burning. Then you want it to burn.”

“What if I don’t want it to burn?” Kara asked.

“You have to want it to burn,” Alanna said. “Otherwise why would you be trying this spell?”

“Oh.”

“The source of all your magic lies in your own will,” Alanna continued. “Things happen because you want them to. It’s like anything else in life —becoming a warrior, or a good shaman, or a good cook—it will happen if you want it badly enough. If you focus your will, and see that thing burning in your mind, then what you want becomes real. The thing will burn. Kara, you try first.”

The taller of the girls squinted at the pile of twigs, sweat pouring down her face as she concentrated. A tiny puff of smoke drifted up, but it soon died. “That’s good for the first time,” Alanna told her. “I couldn’t raise a little smoke when I first tried. All right, Kourrem.”

Kourrem scowled at the twigs; her eyebrows knitted together. At last she shook her head. “I don’t think I want it badly enough.” She sighed.

“You want to be a shaman, don’t you?” Alanna asked her.

Kourrem’s face lit up. “Yes!”

“You can’t be a shaman if you can’t do this. Even Akhnan Ibn Nazzir could light a fire.”

Kourrem’s eyes widened with alarm. In the next moment sparks flew from the pile of twigs.

Alanna grinned. “See?” She waited for the flurry of sparks to die out, then pointed to Ishak. “You next.”

Grinning smugly, the youth pointed at the wood. It flared up in a spout of flame, instantly consumed. Alanna looked at him for a long moment, itching to slap the cocky look off his face. She knew the emotion was unworthy of her; Ishak had simply wanted to show off a little. Getting her temper under control, she nodded. “I forgot you already knew some fire-magic. Before we go any further, I’d better find out exactly what each of you can do.”

“I can do fire and light,” Ishak announced. “I can find things. Sometimes I can see things that are going to be.”

“He dreamed that you would make our lives good,” Kara put in eagerly. “We laughed at him because he said a woman who was a warrior would be the one. That was the day before Halef Seif brought you to our tribe.”

Alanna nodded. “What about you, Kara? Have you seen things become different because you wanted them to? Do you see pictures in the fire?”

“Things move when I am angry,” Kara whispered, blushing. “Sometimes they fly through the air. Then I am beaten.”

“She makes the wind blow,” Ishak volunteered. “And it rains when she cries. Not always, but sometimes.”

“Weather magic,” Alanna said. “As a shaman you’ll find it useful. Kourrem?”

“I don’t know,” the youngest of them admitted. “Sometimes I see balls of colored fire, and I play with them. The old people like me to come when they’re sick; they say I make them feel better. I thought it was because I tell them stories, but—” Her eyes were hopeful as she looked at Alanna.

Remembering how Duke Baird had tested her on the day Jonathan took the Sweating Sickness, Alanna held out her hand. “I slept badly last night,” she told Kourrem. “I still feel tired. Take my hand and make me feel better.”

Kourrem reached out, then pulled her hand back. “I don’t know how.”

“Find your own strength, and then shove some of it through your hand into me,” Alanna instructed. “Go on.”

Kourrem obeyed. The next moment Alanna felt a tingling energy flooding into her body, making the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up. She yanked her hand away, and shook the tingling out of it. “I was only a little tired,” she told the girl, who looked as if she was about to cry. “You didn’t need to give me so much!” She looked at them, bracing her hands on her hips. “We need to think about what you should learn,” she admitted. “You each already know something, or you couldn’t control your magic as well as you do.”