A Warrior's Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page B

to bed. Its way past your bedtime.”

Chapter Three
Fire from Heaven
    One month earlier in the land of
Assoria.
    Zalisha knelt on the hard floor unmindful of
her sore knees on the prayer mat. She had been praying for hours,
days really. And all she’d gotten from her dedication was silence,
which is all she ever got.
    She’d been the high priestess of the temple
for barely two years now. The spiritual leader of her people. They
looked to her to tell them how the spirits would move on behalf of
them.
    Seeking hope, simply a word of encouragement
that things would get better. She had nothing. Nothing to tell
them!
    Nothing!
    She could have just blamed herself if it
hadn’t been for the previous high priestess’s dying words to her.
She had told her with her last breaths that she too had never heard
from the spirits of the land, of water, or even of fire. That when
it came time to make a decision that she was to lie and say that
the spirits had told her such and such in order that the proud
traditions and hope of her people could go on.
    At the time she had thought the priestesses
last words were the whimsical folly of one near death, but now she
wasn’t so sure. It was a daring thing to doubt her people’s
traditions, but she did now openly within the confines of her
mind.
    If the spirits had been watching out for her
people like it was claimed that they did why had they not warned
them of the disaster that had befallen her people four days
previous?
    Her head lifted slightly and her eyes
drifted to her hand and the brand on it. The smooth skin of the top
of her hand had the symbol of the sorcerer sliced into it by a
knife. She had been held down by the assassin sent to kill her and
had watched as he had cut the symbol of the Sorcerer into the top
of her hand with the poisoned edge of his dagger.
    He had left her crying on the floor not
knowing that he had not been successful in killing her, otherwise
he would’ve thrust her through the heart.
    The edges of the cuts oozed a brownish fluid
and she had no feeling in her hand at all. Her body was fighting
off the poison, but she may yet lose her hand. At least she still
had her life unlike every other member of the royal family.
    All of them were dead.
    The king, his wives, children, close
relatives, distant relatives, even a newborn baby rumored to be the
bastard son of one of the king’s sons. Over four hundred people all
killed in one night by a veritable army of assassins in the employ
of the sorcerer.
    She alone of all the members of the longest
running dynasty of the Eastern Kingdom was alive. The people
thought of her survival as a miraculous sign and treated her as if
she was some sort of god, but she knew better. From the time when
she was a little girl and had been selected as a future high
priestess of the temple and sent to live there she had been fed a
steady diet of poison in small doses by the other priestesses,
until she’d gained a small immunity to it, which is all that could
be hoped for.
    So far it was working, but what really was
the point? They were dying as a people. Now they were without a
leader.
    Forsaken by their gods.
    Everything was hopeless.
    She brushed tears from her eyes with her
good hand. She could do one thing!
    She could stop this charade and groveling
before inanimate objects!
    She stood up and pushed over the holy
serving table with its food offering. Picking up a candle staff she
smashed away at tokens and demigods alike. Panting for breath she
looked around the room at the mess that she had made of it. Taking
her good hand she made a fist of it and shook it violently towards
the ceiling.
    “If you were real gods I would be dead right
now! But I’m not! I will never serve you nor prostrate myself in
front of you ever again!”
    Zalisha stormed out of the small round
temple and out into the refreshing air of her garden sanctuary. The
moon shone brightly illuminating the city and the great wall that
protected it in sharp