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Spellbound
Blake Charlton
Dedication
To my mother, Louise Bryden Buck, M.D.,
for patient love and lessons in healing
Epigraph
As for the poem, one dragon, however hot, does not make a summer, or a host; and a man might well exchange for one good dragon what he would not sell for a wilderness. And dragons, real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale, are actually rare.
—J. R. R. TOLKIEN,
“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”
He is at once a stratum of the earth and a streamer in the air, no painted dragon but a figure of real oneiric power, one that can easily survive the prejudices which arise at the very mention of the word “dragon.”
—SEAMUS HEANEY
Introduction to his translation of Beowulf
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Chapter One
Francesca did not realize she had used an indefinite pronoun…
Chapter Two
Suddenly conscious, Shannon dropped the text he had been holding.
Chapter Three
High up in Avel’s sanctuary, Nicodemus crouched in a dark…
Chapter Four
With Deirdre in her arms, Francesca charged up the eastern…
Chapter Five
Shannon ran to the window and thrust his hand into…
Chapter Six
Francesca’s hands tingled. Whatever cloth Deirdre ripped must have loosed…
Chapter Seven
The warkite was written on an eight-foot-long strip of white…
Chapter Eight
As Francesca fell from the lofting kite, her eyes met…
Chapter Nine
Shannon-the-text touched his fingertips to those of Shannon-who-still-lived. Golden light…
Chapter Ten
When the lofting kite rose to a height above the…
Chapter Eleven
An unseen wartext blasted the ghost’s right arm into a…
Chapter Twelve
When Cyrus and Francesca were flying above the Auburn Mountains,…
Chapter Thirteen
Squinting in the sunlight, Nicodemus examined his school of five…
Chapter Fourteen
When consciousness returned, Deirdre found her eyes filled with tears.
Chapter Fifteen
Francesca opened her eyes as something hard dug into her…
Chapter Sixteen
Cyrus had just removed the spells from Francesca’s robes when…
Chapter Seventeen
The secluded Hall of Ambassadors stood three stories up on…
Chapter Eighteen
Francesca followed Cyrus down several hallways to a narrow room…
Chapter Nineteen
Suddenly, Francesca was light-headed.
Chapter Twenty
Anxiously, the ghost reexamined the contents of Francesca DeVega’s bedroom:…
Chapter Twenty-One
In a dream, Francesca had diagnosed an inflamed appendix in…
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cyrus landed his rig in the South Market. Most days…
Chapter Twenty-Three
Deirdre pulled her shawl around her shoulders. She was standing…
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cyrus followed Francesca through the labyrinthine alleys until they left…
Chapter Twenty-Five
Once they were back on the street, Cyrus walked close…
Chapter Twenty-Six
One monster jumped forward to land an overhand hatchet strike…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At first Cyrus struggled against the spellbindings, but he was…
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cyrus scanned the sky above the line of watchmen. “There…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cyrus looked down at his robes. Only a thin network…
Chapter Thirty
The bluemoon hung as a bright shard among the skeins…
Chapter Thirty-One
“What under the holy sky do you mean we’re being…
Chapter Thirty-Two
The wind picked up as Nicodemus took his students over…
Chapter Thirty-Three
Shortly after dawn, the rain clouds rolled away from Avel…
Chapter Thirty-Four
Deirdre chewed her lip while looking at the loose pages…
Chapter Thirty-Five
“I believe everything you said,” Francesca said to Vivian, “except…
Chapter Thirty-Six
Vivian’s palms went cold as she listened to Lotannu try…
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Before anything else, Francesca became aware of the hot, musty…
Chapter Thirty-Eight
On their trek through the savanna, Francesca thought about snide…
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Francesca supposed that it was an hour or two after…
Chapter Forty
Francesca burst from the cabin into sunlight and chaos. Uprooted…
Chapter Forty-One
Cyrus had been in the wind marshal’s quarters only once…
Chapter Forty-Two
Francesca had always thought of airships as flying boats. She…
Chapter Forty-Three
Nicodemus tried to sleep as they waited for darkness.
Chapter Forty-Four
Francesca couldn’t sleep. Cyrus lay next to her in the…
Chapter Forty-Five
Francesca woke in a tent lightening with dawn. It took…
Chapter Forty-Six
As Captain Izem brought the Queen’s Lance around to approach…
Chapter Forty-Seven
When