Read Online Gift of the Unmage by Alma Alexander - Free Book Online

American cities were equally divided in their focusbetween the lure of Paul’s boss, the triumphant once-and-future president, and the smallest member of his entourage, carried in Ysabeau’s arms and knuckling sleepy eyes at the press.
    The Alphiri had come visiting in a Florida hotel. Thea’s actual memory of the event involved herself wearing a particularly beloved outfit involving lots of yellow, walking around the air-conditioned hotel room. She remembered the three Alphiri for two reasons. One was their physical appearance, their tall angular frames, their odd pointed ears, and their long, long fingers. The other was their attempt to dress to human expectation, and the sight of Alphiri wearing bright Hawaiian-print shirts over red-checked golfing shorts with their strange feet thrust awkwardly into flip-flops had been enough to brand them into Thea’s imagination. She didn’t think she remembered the rest of it, until she returned in her dreams to that room and saw those Alphiri messengers again.
    They had gathered around her, a trio of solemn faces on shoulders too sharply angled and legs too long to be human.
    “We come,” the first one said to Thea, “as traders.”
    “We offer knowledge,” said the second.
    “For a good price,” said the third.
    The Alphiri were always in the market for a good price.
    It was entirely possible that these things had in fact been said to her parents and not to herself—but that wasn’t a given. The Alphiri were known to go straight to the source, and they had never quite grasped the concept of human children other than as pint-size human adults. But whether they had spoken to Paul and Ysabeau or to Thea herself, Thea could not recall any response to what they had said. Whatever the reality had been, in the dream three-year-old Thea had been dumb, unable to do anything other than stare at them out of eyes as large and as cobalt blue as Florida’s ocean. What knowledge? her dream-mind asked, but the Alphiri gave every appearance of not being able to understand, or not wishing to.
    “We know you are seeking.”
    “We have maps.”
    “We have directions.”
    Where am I going ?
    In the real encounter, Thea would have been far too young to formulate such a question, andanything the Alphiri said would have seemed entirely unconnected. But now, in the dream, Thea realized that they did, in fact, reply to what she had asked.
    “We can show you the roads.”
    “But we want something in return.”
    “We want exclusive rights.”
    Exclusive rights to what?
    Again, the Alphiri in the dream seemed to respond directly to the questions she had asked.
    “We will want a guarantee that we will have first claim.”
    “First claim on anything you do, on anything you find.”
    “We will pay well.”
    What am I supposed to be looking for?
    One of the Alphiri had gone down awkwardly on one bony knee and had taken Thea’s chin into his long-fingered hand, staring intently into her face.
    “But we will want guarantees.”
    “We want to know if it is all true.”
    “We want to be sure.”
    And then, more ominously, and this was a part of the dream-memory Thea knew had never happened in the way she was dreaming it butsomehow knew it to be a deeper truth, as though her dreams had made the Alphiri say out loud what they had been holding silent and close and wrapped in secrets.
    “We will make sure.”
    “We will find the triggers.”
    “We will wake what needs to be woken.”
    Their eyes were huge and somehow cold and cruel as the three Alphiri leaned in closer to her, scouring her with that look, trying to see somewhere deep inside her.
    Thea-the-child whimpered; Thea-the-dreamer cried out.
    What do you want from me?
    But that seemed to be the one question her dreams would not answer. And she would wake—none the wiser, sometimes so tangled in the remnants of her dreams that it would take her long minutes to wrestle with what was not reality and come back to herself and her real