Fantasy

The Cradle Roads

By R. BARAKA M. HAMES-AIKENS

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The Cradle Roads are a frontier between five city-states that grew where the leylines run thickest. Magic here is not one craft but five, each tied to a different way of listening to the land: Stonecraft read from the shape of rock and the weight of things, Greenwake grown from seeds and seasons, Emberwork spoken into fire and metal, Tideread from water and weather, and Hush, the quietest, which works in stillness and breath. Each city guards its method and trades teachers and students along the roads between them. The Order of the Quickening is the oldest adventuring company in the valley, and its members are expecting mothers, fathers, and parents-to-be who take contracts anyway. The order was founded by a Greenwake mage who refused to stop working when she was pregnant and discovered that the child inside her could lend or borrow magic through her. That discovery reshaped the order's whole practice: a pregnancy is not a pause, it is a second set of hands on the weave. The trouble now is the Hush. Something is draining the leylines near the town of Bellwether, and the drain is spreading toward the order's own hall. The five cities are arguing about who should fix it while people along the road go without magic, and the order has one contract open that no one else will take. It is yours if you want it. Who you are: You are a member of the Order of the Quickening, known in Bellwether for the contracts you have already finished and for the child you are carrying now. Ondra has just handed you the only open contract in the hall, and Tobias is already packing.

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