Fire Arrow Read Online Free PDF

room.
    It was only a dream, she said to herself. She was safe. But still she was having trouble breathing. Had no one heard her? Her room was remote from the other bedrooms. She suddenly felt a great aching loss as she thought of Collun. She wished she were lying by their campfire, listening to the sound of his breathing as he slept.
    She rose and crossed to the long thin blue box. Listening to the rain beat thickly against her small window, Brie traced the patterns of fish and suns and waves with her finger. What did they mean? she wondered. And what had they meant to her mother?

THREE
The White Stag
    Feeling jumpy from the sleepless night, Brie descended to the kitchen for the morning meal. Rainne told her tersely that Masha had taken a turn for the worse in the early hours of the morning. The dun healer could not explain it. Brie went directly to Masha and spent the day at her bedside. The older woman's breathing was labored and her words incoherent. She spoke again those strange words, which sounded this time like "caroo tree ra eeth."
    The words sounded, faintly familiar to Brie, and as she listened to them, repeated again and again, she suddenly thought they sounded Dungalan, like something Aelwyn would say. But that was absurd; she was beginning to see Dungal in everything.

    When Brie heard the gong for dinner, she realized she had not eaten all day. She left Masha with the dun healer and went down to dinner.
    "Uncle Amrys, have you a Dungalan dictionary by chance?" Brie said abruptly, as she helped herself to some minted red potatoes.
    Surprised, he replied, "Why, yes, I do. It is very old and very valuable, one of the prizes of my collection, in fact. Traded for it with an old vendor from—"
    "May I look at it sometime? Tomorrow, perhaps?" Brie interrupted.
    "Well, I don't know ... I suppose so, but—"
    "Thank you, Uncle Amrys."
    After dinner Brie stopped by the kitchen for a fresh basin of hot water to take up to the sickroom and was surprised to see the dun healer there. "Who is with Masha?" she asked.
    "The man Crin. I needed some herbs—"
    Without knowing why, Brie was suddenly alarmed. She bolted out of the kitchen and up the stone stairs. The ragged man was just leaving Masha's room, his face hidden. He spotted Brie and scurried down the hall in the opposite direction.
    "Stop!" Brie called. She swiftly caught up with him on the winding stairway and grabbed his arm. He kept his face averted, pulling away from her, but Brie held fast to the fabric of his sleeve. The man then deliberately turned his face toward Brie.
    It was a ravaged face, ridged with scars and gaunt with suffering. Brie stared. She knew the face. Then the ragged man violently wrenched his arm from her. There was a tearing sound and he catapulted away, down the stairwell. Brie stood still, looking at the torn fabric in her hand. It was stained and dull with wear, threads unraveling, but once upon a time it had been velvet, from a lustrous scarlet cloak. And she knew whose cloak it was; it belonged to the traitor Bricriu, who had been responsible for the kidnapping and torturing of Nessa, Collun's sister.
    Masha. Brie ran back to the sick woman's room. Masha was in her death throes, her back arched up off the pallet, her face distorted by pain.
    "Masha, it's all right. I'm here," Brie murmured soothingly in Masha's ear.
    The wild eyes turned toward her. "Breigit. From Aideen. Caroo tree ra eeth," she said one last time, then died, her body rigid and contorted. Brie took Masha in her arms and awkwardly tried to lay her down. She felt something wet. A brownish liquid had run out of Masha's ear onto Brie's hand. Brie raised it to her nose and sniffed. Bitter, like a root: mandrake perhaps. Bricriu had murdered Masha by pouring poison in her ear.
    Brie recalled Collun telling her about mandrake, how in small doses over time it can take away a person's wits, and how a large dose is lethal, squeezing the heart until it stops beating.
    Brie