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It’s all a fake.
At least, that’s what Ryder thinks. He doubts the witches really deserve their tithes—one quarter of all the crops his village can produce. And even if they can predict the future, what danger is there to foretell, now that his people’s old enemy, the Baen, has been defeated?
But when a terrifying new magic threatens both his village and the coven, Ryder must confront the beautiful and silent witch who holds all the secrets. Everything he’s ever believed about witches, the Baen, magic and about himself will change, when he discovers that the prophecies he’s always scorned—
Are about him.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published August 30, 2011
Cursed are those who believe in a Goddess, who cannot see that a world created by a woman would be a backward place, that rivers would run uphill, animals would rule over humans, the sun would give off darkness instead of light.
But worse still is the Baen woman who tries to sing. Remove her from the company of other women. Cut out her voice, and fill her mouth with mud.
Make her be silent.
“They were so beautiful in their opposition - like two sides of a coin.
They were... balance.”
As they watched, the chilling clouds parted, revealing a patch of brilliant sky. They both stared—stars were a rare sight in winter. Ryder knew he should be moved. "Yulla says that when the Goddess made the world she threw the stars into the sky like a casting, and that the witches of old could read a person's destiny in the stars the same way they read the bones."
"Any star tries to tell me my destiny, I will wrench it from the sky."
Skyla laughed at that. "Of course you will."
Ryder knew he should stop singing and bolt for the caves, but now that he'd started, he couldn't make his tongue stop moving. Everything had become bright and blinding—the snow, the trees, the stones, the purple clouds. It was if a skin had been peeled off his eyes and he was seeing the world for the first time in all its frightening beauty. He didn't want to see it. He hadn't asked for this. Skyla wanted magic, not him. There was too much to know. The snowflakes falling languidly around him all had names. Why couldn't he stop singing, for Aata's sake?