Keeper of the Dream Read Online Free PDF Page A

features was his mouth, and it looked ruthless and cruel. He moved and Arianna flinched, but he was only loosening ‘the straps of his helm. He pulled it off, then pushed back the mailed hood of his hauberk.
    The wind lifted his sweat-dampened hair, hair that was as black as the ravens that wheeled overhead. She lookedinto his eyes, but they didn’t see her. They were focused on the distance, and they were gray and cold. And as hard as his dull black armor.
    They were the eyes of the man in the vision.

2

    The knight stared hard at the bloodred walls of Rhuddlan keep. The rain had stopped, the wind had died, and a gray mist roiled in off the river, enshrouding the motte and bailey with an air of mystery and gloom.
    The castle was his now. His. He felt the old fires of ambition flaring within him. Once, when he had been young and full of faith and hope, he had sworn that someday he would wrest for himself a title and land. Someday, he, the earl’s bastard, would forge for himself a dynasty to rival that of his father’s. It seemed only fitting now that the dynasty would be built here, at Rhuddlan. The scene of his father’s betrayal.
    Title, land, and power.
    His. At last, at last these things would be his.
    Sheathing his sword, Raine had started to turn his back on the keep, when he felt someone’s eyes on him. He looked down, startled to see a girl staring up at him with a look of rage on her face. She knelt beside the body of a young man.
    Wet, tangled dark hair framed a pointed, sharp-boned face filled with eyes the dusky green color of the sea on a wintry day. Those eyes held him, and he thought of dark,misty mountains, hidden forests, and fairies dwelling beside deep, forgotten lakes. For a moment he felt a childish compulsion to make the sign of the horns to ward off the evil eye.
    He shook his head over his own foolishness. He had taken a step away from her, when a raven landed on the bloody chest of the slain boy. The girl screamed and rose up, and Raine froze, expecting her to leap at him like a cat, all teeth and bared claws. But she flung her fury at the raven instead. The bird flew off with a flap of black wings just as Raine heard a familiar voice shout his name.
    A knight approached the open gate at a canter. His silvered coat of mail sparkled like newly minted coins even under the gray skies. He rode a cream-white palfrey accoutred with a gilded saddle and a breastplate decorated with jingling bells. In his wake followed a squire mounted on a dappled rouncy with a hawk on his fist. Another twenty knights in full panoply galloped in a pack behind them.
    Raine’s eyes narrowed. This dazzling knight was his younger and so-very-legitimate half brother, Hugh, Earl of Chester, ruler of a good part of England. And the man who had everything Raine wanted.
    He turned his head and spat the taste of envy from his mouth—
    And caught the flash of a blade out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, throwing up his arm. A quillon dagger grazed the mail sleeve of his hauberk with a grating of sparks. All Raine saw were muddy tangles of dark hair and blazing green eyes. The girl pulled back the dagger and came at him again. But this time he was better prepared. He grabbed her wrist, squeezing hard. She made not a sound, though he was almost crushing it enough to break the bone. When the weapon dropped from her outstretched fingers, Raine let go of her.
    And knew an instant later that he had made a mistake.
    She flung herself at him, her clawed fingers going for hiseyes. He jerked his head aside and her nails raked his neck. She rained blows on the front of his hauberk, heedless of the fact that she was cutting the hell out of her hands on the sharp metal links. She did it all in a silence that was more unnerving than her crazed fury.
    She went for his eyes again. This time he grasped both her wrists, twisting her arms behind her back. She tried kicking him instead, and she seemed to have as many legs as a spider. There