A Trial of Sorcerers: Book One by Kova, Elise (universal ebook reader .txt) 📕

rocking against. She hadn’t paid attention to who was in the wagon with her. It could be Alyss and Marcus as easily as anyone else.

This trial is you against yourself; it is a test of survival, Ferro had said. We will send you all out and you must find your way back. The fastest will progress on.

As the cart continued to rock and rumble down the mountainside, Eira shifted her hands, folding them in her lap. She wasn’t going to touch her blindfold no matter how much of a headache it gave her. Instead, she focused on Ferro and their encounter the night before. She would fight to make it back to him.

And when I return, I will be the one to kiss him, Eira vowed to herself.

The cart made its first stop. The boards creaked underfoot, sagging as one of the candidates was removed. Silence, followed by the cart jostling once more.

Eira was the fifth person let off out of six. The guard tapped her shoulders and held her hands as he helped her off the cart. He tapped her shoulder twice and she heard the faint groan of the cart through the cotton of her ears.

Two taps, count to one hundred, they’d instructed. Eira wasn’t sure how they’d know if she counted to one hundred or sixty, but she did one hundred anyway before removing her blindfold.

The world was blinding. A thick sheet of white carpeted the tundra from the mountain blizzard days ago. The wind howled down from the mountaintops that surrounded her.

Eira turned in place, trying to get her bearings. The cart tracks did a few turns on themselves around her, no doubt trying to trick her. The sun was high in the sky by now. Too high to tell with confidence which way was east or west.

Fortunately, the trees were thin here. Eira summoned a small pole of ice in the snow and she marked where its shadow fell. While she waited, Eira paced, continuing to assess her options. She was in a small valley up on a ridge. Above and below her, the forest thickened. Given the altitude, she was either east or west of Solarin—closer to Oparium or Rivend. Eira was familiar with those two places…but she didn’t recognize where she was now in the slightest.

After fifteen minutes, Eira made a second line, assessing its difference from the first. The shadow had moved in a clockwise direction and the two lines helped create her compass rose. At least…it should, according to the book on survival tactics Alyss had found in the Imperial Library.

Eira stared at the cart tracks. There was a notable pile of snow by a deeper rut—likely where the cart had come to a stop. This meant that the cart had entered from the east. So she surmised she was closer to Rivend and Solarin should be back…

“In that direction, right? What do you think?” Eira murmured to the howling wind. It pushed on her back, as if encouraging her to the west, south-west. “Yes, that way? Let’s make sure.”

Eira lifted her hands slowly, feeling her magic swell. She swept them across her body and her power surged. A tide of water was summoned from thin air at her command, freezing in place against the ridge rising at what she suspected was her south. Stairs formed in the ice and Eira made her way up.

As she walked, she twirled her hands around each other. Eira imagined herself as a Lightspinner, unraveling invisible strands of power that condensed in front of her feet as she rose higher and higher above the trees. At the top of her staircase to nowhere, Eira came to a stop, coating her feet in ice to her calves so she wouldn’t fall.

Raising a hand to her brow, Eira squinted into the horizon. The snow and ice from the blizzard was blindingly reflective. But in the distance… Was that smoke, or a cloud? Smoke, it had to be.

Turning, Eira freed herself from the ice and raced down the stairs. Magic crackled around her, following her every step. Cold and quiet were welcome companions. The rustling of the trees were the only sounds she heard. Forests rarely had unintentional vessels to whisper at her.

Eira inhaled deeply. The air tasted like freedom. Her magic was alive here—she was alive here. She was untethered from the world. She was alone and the fact thrilled her rather than filled her with fear. This frozen landscape couldn’t hurt her if it tried.

After about two hours of what was otherwise a pleasant hike, it did try.

The world had grown still, the air holding its breath. There was a low whoosh sound, like the earth itself let out a soft groan. It was followed by a rumble, almost like thunder on the horizon. But it was too early for the lightning storms that plagued the South in summer.

No…this was a different and terrible sound that Eira knew as well as the terror that followed it in her bones.

She spun, looking up at the ridges and mountaintops around her. A fraction of movement caught her eye. A sheet of snow was breaking off, sliding down the mountainside. An element of the trial or bad timing? Either way, she had to act now.

The snow and ice was already racing toward her, sweeping up the mountainside. There was no way she could confidently outrun it. She’d have to brace for it.

Eira planted both her feet, facing the impending avalanche. Holding her arms out wide, Eira spun her power around her. A cocoon of ice began wrapping in arcs supported by thick beams. She anchored it to the sturdiest trees nearby. If the avalanche was going to take her down, it’d have to take down three large pines with her.

The ice was a deep blue, the shade of the ancient glaciers and equally strong. It would hold because this survival technique was one of the first things her uncle had taught her and Marcus when he’d found out about