Keepers of the Flame Read Online Free PDF

the night, an
effervescence that twinkled like stars in the sky outside the walk. She swayed.
    A
woman clasped her shoulders, helped ground and steady her, though she didn’t
seem able to grip or work the healingstream. Marian.
    Incredible, echoed in Bri’s
mind from the sorceress, went to Elizabeth. I’ve never sensed Power like
this.
    Elizabeth,
mind sharper than Bri’s, monitored their patient, cut the healingstream when
they were done. Bri wriggled her shoulders and Marian stepped back.
    “She’s
still very dehydrated and undernourished,” Elizabeth said, looking to Sevair
Masif who stood near, and Marian translated. “You’ll ensure that she gets
additional treatment?”
    “Of
course,” said a female dressed in a red robe with a white cross. A medical
person.
    “Good,”
Bri said. The one word was harder to form than she expected.
    “Next?”
Elizabeth said in a too-brusque voice as if squelching fear. The healingstream
was new to her. Elizabeth might have used a surge of healing energy from
herself, or touched on the stream, but had never opened herself to it.
    Bri
had been the one kicking around the world, finding herself in villages or
refugee camps with people who needed help while she only had her hands and the
healingstream to depend upon. Many times that had not been enough. Then she
grasped a wispy thought of Elizabeth’s. She was thinking how she’d shut herself
and her talent off and had depended only on her medical training, not her gift,
except in rare instances. Many times all her knowledge and training had not
been enough.
    Once
again Bri followed Elizabeth, and they began to establish a balance to handle
the cycling energy. Elizabeth learned to open herself, Bri learned to limit and
direct the healingstream. Marian stood behind Bri with her hands on her
shoulders, steadying, supporting, but unable to join them.
    By
the time they’d helped six, Bri began to feel the whole jet-lagged incredible
event-packed day wearing upon her and moved by rote, summoning the
healingstream, sending it into sick bodies. She felt the shadow of Elizabeth’s
thoughts as she studied and dismissed different diagnoses. Nothing was familiar
about this sickness.
    Somewhere
between two hours and infinity they were finished and Bri was swaying on her
feet. Elizabeth stood with the straightness of a woman refusing to give in to
exhaustion then swung an arm around Bri’s shoulders and they were drawn to a
moonlit opening to the courtyard. The cloister had been dark, too dark to work
in, why had they?
    “Light
hurts the sick’s eyes,” Marian said, and Bri realized she and the other woman
had shared enough of a bond for the Sorceress to pick up on her thoughts, even
if they weren’t linked anymore. Dangerous.
    “No,”
said Marian. She bowed deeply, keeping her gaze on them. “I promise I will
never hurt you. Either of you.”
    “Huh,”
said Bri. She started to lean on the edge of the stone door opening and missed.
Was falling. Something oddly shaped set against her and pushed her upward. In
the brief contact, she felt a different sort of energy wash through her,
tingling from top to toe, clearing her mind, giving her own energy—and
Elizabeth’s—a boost.
    “Thank
you—” She turned to her savior and gawked. A horse stood there, eyes huge and
liquid and gleaming with…with…with magic ? It whinnied and stepped back.
Others like it stood in the courtyard. The smell of resinous amber crumbling
into perfume wafted to Bri.
    “They’re
curious.” Calli walked past them into the stone courtyard and rubbed the
horse’s nose. “They say you’re using Power they only dimly sensed and didn’t
know how to access. One has gone to report to the alpha pair in Volaran
Valley.” She pointed. Bri followed her finger to see a white horse. With wings.
Soaring over the buildings on the opposite side of the courtyard and off into a
night sky that held too many stars.
    Impossible.
    Elizabeth
stiffened into rigidity.