Flight Into Darkness Read Online Free PDF

straying from the point here? You used me. You played on my love for Imri. You manipulated me.”
    Estael did not even flinch. “Have you forgotten the vow you took on the day you became an Emissary?”
    “So when Imri's ghost came to me, it was not a trick of the Rift as you so callously told me.” The memory sent shivers through Rieuk. I'm cold, Rieuk, the revenant had said to him. Imri had been crying out to him for help, and he had believed Estael's lie. “Enough!” Rieuk's patience was burned out. He didn't care what became of his own life any longer, he only wanted to fulfill his debt to Imri. And he was prepared to risk anything, even if it meant traveling into the Ways Beyond to find him. “Where is Imri's tomb?” Rieuk turned around in the darkness, aware that he had lost his bearings.
    “In that glade.”
    Rieuk caught a crystalline glimmer in the turbulent air. Hurrying down the slope, leaving Lord Estael behind, he came to a sudden stop. The tomb, fashioned from aethyric crystal, looked as though it were encrusted with layers of ice. It was impossible to distinguish what lay within anymore… a mere suggestion, a shadow of a human form seen through hoarfrosted glass.
    Rieuk could hear Lord Estael following him down the slope, breathing hard as if the air was too thin. If he didn't act instantly, Estael would try to stop him.
    “Forgive me, Imri, but I have to know.” Rieuk focused all hispower on the crystal casket. No one else can do this. I am the only crystal magus left in this world.
    “Rieuk, stop!”
    He channeled the power in one single, concentrated wave. The tomb lit up, radiating a light of dazzling purity that filled the darkness, pulsing ever brighter, until the crystal split apart in a rain of icy shards.
    “No!” cried Lord Estael, too late.
    Rieuk stared as the fine mist of aethyric crystal slowly dispersed. There lay Imri's body, perfectly preserved by the aethyric crystal.
    He couldn't help himself. Even though every instinct shrieked that he should hold back, he fell to his knees and reached into the open tomb. His fingers caressed the chill contours of the beloved face, the cold lips that had once awoken his nascent powers with a kiss. It was like touching a statue fashioned out of ice.
    And the instant his fingertips made contact, Imri's body began to disintegrate, vanishing so swiftly before his horrified gaze that even as he blinked away involuntary tears, there was nothing left but dust.
    A barren wind shivered through the trees.
    “What have you done, you fool? What hope is there to restore him, now that his body is destroyed!”
    “Hope?” Rieuk rounded on Estael. “How can there be any possibility of hope left when his soul is gone?” His voice burned with rage and despair. That one last glimpse had broken him. “From the moment Tabris vanished, Imri was lost to us.”
    “Have you never heard of the Spirit Singers of Azhkendir?” Estael spat back.
    Rieuk was beyond patience. “What new nonsense is this?” He was not sure if he was entirely sane any longer; he knelt amid the melting mist of dust and ice that had once been Imri Boldiszar, wondering.
    “Shamans who travel through their songs to the Ways Beyond.”
    Rieuk looked at him blankly.
    “They summon the souls of dead clan warriors to possess the living in battle, to give them supernatural strength. Guslyars, the Azhkendi call them.”
    “They summon the dead?” Was that what Lord Estael had been scheming? “And whose body were you planning on using for this spirit possession?” The possibilities filled him with a blaze of conflicting emotions; Imri restored, but in someone else's body?
    “It's a practice not so different from soul-stealing.”
    “Then why have I never heard of them till now?” Rieuk heard his own voice asking as if from a great distance away.
    “Because the Drakhaon, Lord Volkh, slaughtered them when he took his revenge on the Arkhel clan for killing his mother. Although I now have