Glasswrights' Test Read Online Free PDF Page B

brought the glasswrights to Brianta for one simple reason: here, he was safe from rendering any payment to the house of ben-Jair. He did not need to fund royal soldiers, beasts who would trample through a guild’s gardens, tear down kilns, maim and murder innocents. …
    â€œClain preserve us,” Parion muttered out of habit, and then he recited the Guildsman’s Prayer, the familiar words that had begun each day of his craftsmanship since he was a child. “May all the gods look upon my craft with favor, and may they take pleasure in the humble art created by my hands. May Jair Himself be pleased with the humble offering I make, and may the least of my works bring glory to the world. May my works guide me to the Heavenly Fields in my proper time, as the gods do favor. All glory to the Thousand Gods.”
    His fingers fumbled for the glass medallion that rested in the center of the altar. Raising it to his eyes, he gazed at the morning light that streamed through his window. The sunshine set the emblem sparkling, dancing through dust motes like the pilgrims’ chants that rose from the street on the Briantan breeze.
    The medallion was flawed in the middle—a jagged crack ran through its vortex of black and white. Black and white, like Morada’s hair. Black and white, like the battle that raged in Parion’s heart, the struggle for revenge, for stability. Despite eight years of handling the cracked medallion, it remained unbroken. He muttered a grateful prayer without specifying one of the Thousand, and he laid the glass against his forearm. The cool round drew the fire from the livid scars that laced his flesh, scars from his sworn fealty, from blood oaths strewn with salt in ben-Jair’s dungeons.
    Even now, after all this time, his veins heated at the memory of the Instructor who had fashioned the glass piece, at the woman who had given him the final token of her undying love.
    Undying love perhaps, but not an undying body.
    Eight years ago, Morada had been executed by Shanoranvilli ben-Jair’s torturers. She had been taken by the crown as a pawn in a game that she had not begun to understand. Why hadn’t she listened to Parion when he tried to warn her? Why hadn’t she protected herself when he told her that no sane glasswright would toy with politics?
    He could still remember how Morada had turned from him that night, the first time that she’d lied to him. Even then, she had plotted her escape from the guild’s watchful eye, from Parion’s arms. She had gone to some secret meeting, some clandestine assignation that had promised her the power that she craved. Desperate to create something beyond test pieces for apprentices, Morada had used her considerable glasswright skills to create a mosaic for some noble faction, to decorate their secret den.
    Parion could remember the first time, months later, that he had seen the entwined snakes tattooed across her arm, twisting about themselves viciously. Hungrily. Hopelessly. She had admitted that the design was the same that she had done for the secret cabal, the same that she had set in tile in their hidden meeting place.
    And yet, Clain save him, he had not ordered her to abandon the noble power struggles. A master in the glasswrights’ guild, he had thought that he understood her connection to those villains. Morada was merely mourning the life that she had lost, the adventures that she was denied because of her promise to stay at the guildhall and teach. After all, Instructors often embraced extreme fashions—clothes or mannerisms or wild, extravagant feasts. They needed something to break up the monotony of their guild-bound days.
    Morada! Parion thought as he polished the medallion. If only I had known! If only I had saved you from the political fray, from the vengeance of ben-Jair when he learned of the plots against him!
    He had not seen her head on a pike. For that, he was grateful to all the Thousand