Cyador’s Heirs Read Online Free PDF

You need it.”
    After he leaves his aunt’s rooms, Lerial realizes that Emerya has never responded directly to his observation about Amaira not showing as deep a sense of order blackness as did Ryalah. Because her father wasn’t of the Magi’i? Or for some other reason? And why was she disturbed about your being able to feel different degrees of order blackness?
    He shakes his head, thinking about how complicated things are getting just because he’d told his aunt about his troubles in sparring with Lephi. Or would they have gotten complicated anyway?

 
    III
    On fourday, after breakfast, but well before midmorning, Lerial stands outside the stables off the north courtyard of the palace, holding the reins of the brown gelding that has been his mount for the past five years, despite Lephi’s scarcely veiled suggestions that a stallion might be more appropriate. He wears the pale green summer trousers and tunic that are worn by either Lancer or healer trainees, not that there are many men who are healers. He has picked a spot where he and the gelding can stand in the narrow shadows that are shrinking moment by moment as he waits for Emerya.
    For an instant, he does not recognize the rider who approaches, followed by two Lancer guards, because Emerya is wearing a filmy but largely opaque head scarf that hides her red-streaked, silver-white hair. He immediately mounts and urges the gelding to move up beside his aunt, who is riding a mare, if one nearly as large as Lerial’s gelding.
    “I’m glad you’re ready,” Emerya says. “Your father had a few questions I had to answer before I left.”
    “About me coming with you?”
    “He didn’t know about that until I told him. When I said it was necessary for you to get better control of your abilities and that I’d talked to Magus Saltaryn, he just nodded. No … there were other matters we discussed. If you want to know what they are, you’ll have to ask him.”
    Lerial manages not to frown, since Emerya has to know that he isn’t about to ask his father about anything unless Kiedron brings up the subject first. But then, that’s why she said it that way, rather than just saying she wouldn’t tell you.
    The courtyard gates are open, and guarded but by a pair of Lancers, both to the eye not that much older than Lerial. Neither gives Emerya, Lerial, or the two Lancer guards more than a passing glance.
    Once on the main square in front of the palace, Emerya turns her mare to the left toward the boulevard leading northeast. On the right is the Ministry—the building that holds the high minister, and the tariff inspectors and the well-guarded treasury on the lower level. As he rides past the two-story structure, Lerial looks ahead. While he knows that the Hall of Healing is on a low rise overlooking the river piers, and has even ridden past it more than a few times, he has never been inside the sandstone walls, let alone into the Hall itself.
    “What are you going to do today?” he asks.
    “What I always do every day. I try to heal people. What you will do is to observe closely and say nothing until I ask you a question or give you permission to speak. Do you understand?”
    “Yes, ser.”
    “Good. I don’t want to have to remind you when others are around.”
    Lerial can understand that, and he wouldn’t want to be corrected in front of others, especially healers. He is always happy to be out of the palace, and he begins to study both sides of the boulevard.
    Although his parents and Emerya have all assured him that, as cities go, Cigoerne is small, it does not seem that small to Lerial. The palace is located on a flattened ridge almost two kays west of the Swarth River, with the Square of the Magi’i directly before it on the east side. East of the square, beyond the walls around the Ministry, stretching somewhat to the north and south, are larger dwellings, all of two stories, and all with center courtyards and fountains. These house the families of the