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

that the post-Corineus Church taught. In the Book of Kore – which had of course been revised by Baramitius! – Corineus was the Saviour, the one who sacrificed himself to gain the gnosis for his brethren. Corineus a Souldrinker?
    Surely not!
    ‘Our minds were linked,’ Corinea repeated in a hushed voice, as if she could hardly bring herself to say the words out loud, ‘and of course he saw what I’d foreseen, a future in which I was empress, blessed with a gnosis that he could only gain by killing. He saw himself demonised, alongside all those similarly tainted, and at first all I felt was his panic, and my own horror – because I truly loved him; I worshipped him beyond life itself, and I couldn’t bear what we both foresaw.
    ‘Then his mind seized on other potential futures in which he would kill me and trigger his own powers that very night, then show those others who were afflicted as he was to do the same, by killing their neighbour and draining their souls – so they would be the only ones to survive that night: there would be an Ascendancy, yes: an Ascendancy of Souldrinkers, led by Corineus, for no one else with these new powers would last until the dawn.
    ‘With that plan in mind, he took up his hunting knife and tried to kill me . . .’
    ‘What did you do?’ Alaron asked in a husky voice.
    ‘I fought back – I might have been in love, but my mother was Estellan and I knew how to use a knife. In the time it takes to tell you this, I had caught his wrist, twisted it and jammed the blade backwards, even as his other hand found my throat. As his weight settled on me, he fell onto the blade and it slid between his ribs and into his heart. By the time I rolled him off me, he was dead, but others were waking and some had seen what had happened – or at least, what they thought had happened. Baramitius was the first to have awakened and he started shouting that I had murdered Johan, so I ran.’ She looked sad. ‘I might have killed others, one or two who tried to stop me, but even now the rest of that night remains a blur. And I’ve never really stopped running.’
    Alaron tried to take it all in: Corineus, the messianic figure of the Church of Kore, doomed to be a Souldrinker emperor, prevented from reigning only by his lover . . . ‘Why didn’t you tell them?’
    ‘Tell them what?’ Corinea asked sharply. ‘How could I have proven anything? And why would they listen? Corineus was our leader, and beloved by all, not just me. My crime was unforgivable. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking rationally! I wanted – I needed – to flee that terrible place. I’d just killed the man I loved and idolised! By fleeing, I proved my guilt.’
    Alaron stared at her. Holy Kore, is anything I’ve been taught true? ‘What happened next?’
    ‘I escaped,’ Corinea said, ‘because people were only just coming round and there was a lot of confusion. By the time the legion attacked at dawn and the magi awoke to their new powers and destroyed them, I was long gone. Afterwards, the leadership had other concerns, like conquering Yuros. Baramitius revised the Book of Kore as a rallying point against the Rimoni emperor, casting Johan as the Son of Kore and me as a tool of the Lord of Hel, and I have been reviled ever since.’
    ‘If this is true . . .’ Alaron began to say, then stopped. This was true. Not a word of it struck him as anything less than gospel – not a holy gospel of the Kore, but truth nevertheless. He floundered at the enormity of it all.
    ‘It’s true, every word,’ she replied, as if reading his mind. ‘I once convinced a Kore priest in Verelon, but that got him burned as a heretic and I barely escaped. I tried to tell Antonin Meiros, but he had loved Johan as deeply as the rest of us and wouldn’t receive me. At the time he was hunting a Dokken Seeress called Sabele, and I think he believed Sabele was my tool. I had to flee again. That’s when I went into Lakh.’
    Ramita looked at Alaron,