Ascendant's Rite (The Moontide Quartet) Read Online Free PDF Page A

life – it was an old myth of the Kore.’
    Ramita frowned. ‘But is not your Corineus the same god as this Kore?’
    Corinea laughed in amusement. ‘Good Heavens, no! Kore was a Rondian god, had been since time immemorial. Remember, this was the time of the Rimoni Empire, and Rondelmar was just a province. People spoke Rimoni as well as their native tongues, and the only gods who could be worshipped openly were Sol and Luna, the Sun and Moon of the Sollan faith. Kore’s worshippers had been driven underground.
    ‘Then Baramitius told Johan that he’d found the key, and by then his drugs had us all enthralled – we might have thought his ravings about eternal life were just symptoms of his insanity, but we were addicted, physically and mentally, to his potions and powders. He spent days measuring us and writing all these notes, as if researching every part of us, then he produced this special potion, with each measure tailored to the individual recipient. We were warned that it was potent, and that we would be sent into a dream-state for some hours.’
    Alaron struggled to reconcile this account with the words of the Book of Kore , which told of a night of solemn purpose and destiny. He might be a sceptic, but questioning something he’d grown up half-believing in was hard.
    ‘We’d heard whispers that a legion was coming to arrest us,’ Corinea went on. ‘Baramitius wasn’t the only one of us to sense that our untrammelled freedom – and for him, the opportunities to experiment freely – were ending, but it drove him to take risks. Even so, that potion – the one now called “ambrosia” – well, it exceeded his wildest dreams. We all fell into a dream-state, which he’d told us to expect, and I remember my senses intensifying. I was sure I was dying – my body was wracked with shooting pains; I’ve never forgotten, even through all these years – but strangely I wasn’t afraid. My mind began to open up, and just went on opening. I felt like I was passing through room after room in a bewildering palace filled with glowing people and treasures, lights and scents and beautiful textures, laughter and crying, sweetness and fulfilment. I felt connected to everything and everyone, as if we were climbing toward a transcendent bliss, as if Paradise were seeping into our world and changing it for ever.
    ‘And most of all, I felt close to Johan. We were wearing nothing but white shifts and flowers, passed out on blankets with our food and wine spilled everywhere. Our hands were joined, and our every thought was shared, an intimacy that grew in intensity with every passing second. I felt like we were as one: the most profound communion I have ever experienced. Then the visions began.’
    Corinea took a sip of water to calm herself. Her voice, which had started to become impassioned, even feverish, softened again. ‘I know now that the ambrosia was taking our bodies to the threshold of death while freeing our souls – normally the soul is confined until death, but the ambrosia allowed those who survived to access powers we now call the gnosis, the Secret Knowledge. Most of us gained simple things, like the ability to manipulate water or fire, but the more intellectual among us gained more complex powers. Johan was a visionary, of course, and in some ways so was I; with our minds entwined, we both dreamed of what was to come, a world in which the gnosis ruled . . .
    ‘Then Johan tried to kill me.’
    Her final sentence was like being doused suddenly in iced water. Alaron clutched Ramita’s hand and they both squeezed.
    ‘In the vision Johan and I shared,’ Corinea continued, ‘I became a Seeress, and the future I saw was without him – because he, like so many in our group, was not destined to fully gain the gnosis. His body partially rejected the ambrosia, so he would only become a Souldrinker . . .’
    Alaron swallowed. This was the greatest heresy he’d ever heard: an inconceivable renunciation of all