Part Two—KazaKu
is able to pull off her desperate plan to remain with Karak/Beatrus
with remarkably little difficulty, only to discover that winner the
battle sometimes means losing the war or, worse, that the war was
doomed to be lost before it was even begun.
KazaKu is a boarder at the local sanctum for the arcanely gifted, possessing the battle gift which endows her with more than human strength and dexterity and a powerful resistance to fatigue and injury. Unfortunately, even if the side effect of this type of gift was an extremely violent temper, her options would be limited. Those with the battle gift make fine warriors but are good for little else and, since in her society women can not be warriors, she is left in a decidedly uncomfortable position. But she has not chaffed overmuch regarding lack of social prospects, present and future, unable to imagine an alternative, until a chain of events takes her life in a radically different direction.
This is a Short Story Sample
