Fever Mist by L. K. Rigel Page A

to anger the prior sitting on his right side.
    I’ve narrowed the location of Kaelyn’s cottage to the Small Wood east of the castle, near Nine Hazel Lake, but all my spells have been useless in pinning down the exact place. I’ve searched with the glimmer glass and summoned her with dust, all for naught.
    Sometimes I swear Brother Sun and Sister Moon thwart my efforts. I can’t believe they would be so cruel, though I have no right to complain. Loneliness is my punishment for the unspeakable things I’ve done; I accept that. Most of the time.
    Running out of dust was more than an irritation. It was a threat to my sanity.
    I found my herb basket and went outside to gather sticks and leaves. I make an excellent glamour dust from the yew tree not thirty yards beyond the door to Glimmer Cottage. I was taught the formula by my mother, Frona, the great wyrding woman and King’s Oracle, over a hundred years ago. She would have marveled to see how supple and potent our yew has grown.
    Not that I’m that old! Ha-ha. There’s a riddle there.
    It was indeed over a hundred years ago Mother taught me the wyrding ways. It was during the time of King Jowan, the last king of Dumnos. When I was eighteen, I made a terrible mistake with one of my wyrds. In the confusion afterward, I was taken to the faewood and brought before Idris, regent king of the Dumnos fae, who tried to keep me with him there as his lover.
    I escaped Idris before a night and day had passed, but when I returned to Dumnos everyone I knew was gone. A hundred years had elapsed in the human realm, an eyeblink in my life. I rousted the couple who’d taken up residence in my house and lay a boundary around the grounds so that no one, human or fae, would notice my existence.
    I’ve tried venturing out into the world, covered in protective charms and obscuration spells, but the nearer I come to another human being the more Galen and Diantha scream to get out of the double-banded silver and gold Oracle’s ring on my right hand.
    This was how I lived: in the company of crows, grinding dust from my yew tree, with the constant yammer of two captive, lovesick souls constantly seeking and sometimes finding ways to break free and take over my will until I herd them back into their gold and silver prison—a ring I could remove, but only on pain of death, mine and theirs.
    I’d never been with a man, and I had accepted the impossibility of ever knowing love. I had turned to watching love’s play where I could find it.
    Through the glimmer glass I’ve watched innocent lovers steal chaste kisses on the stairs of Tintagos Castle. I’ve seen a nobleman bed the girl who’d come to light his morning fire while his son was in the kitchen, lifting the skirts of the cook’s helper. Over ten years, my interests have varied. I tend to search in themes. For a time, I watched only redheads, then only couplings out of doors. One year I couldn’t be bothered unless there was force or bondage involved.
    When the fever mist came, I’d been on a kick for male beauty. After Idris, who radiated splendor and sexuality, my concept of the male ideal had become… more difficult to impress. I’d planned to spend the day on the roof with glamour dust and a three-dimensional view of the Tintagos Castle and its current guest.
    The evening before, a young knight in silver armor had arrived from the south, and I’d caught a glimpse of his welcome. He was on his way to Sarumos—London, he called it—to join King William’s brother on a crusade to the holy land. He had promised to tell all about it at Lord Tintagos’s table this evening.
    Not that I cared a whit about kings in Sarumos and crusades in the east. The silver knight was simply the most beautiful human man I’d ever seen, and I wanted to see more.
    “Kaelyn calls! Kaelyn calls!” The crow in the yew cried out to me as I broke off the tender end of a low branch and dropped the wand into my basket. “Kaelyn calls!” he said