Kell's Legend Read Online Free PDF Page B

everyone.!”
    Katrina stooped, and hoisted one of the albino’s swords. “Normal weapons won’t kill them, right?”
    Kell nodded. “You catch on fast, girl. The soldiers are blessed—or maybe cursed—with blood-oil magick. Only a suitably blessed and holy weapon can slay them. Either that, or remove their heads.”
    “Will this kill them?”
    “There’s only one way to find out.”
    Nienna and the third young woman, Volga, armed themselves with the dead soldiers’ swords. Kell led them to the spiral stairs, moving cat-like, wary, his senses alert, his aches and pains, arthritis and lumbago all gone. He could sense the women’s fear, and that was bad; something dark flitted across his soul, something pure evil settling in Kell’s mind. He didn’t want the responsibility of these women. They were nothing to him. An inconvenience. He wanted simply to save Nienna. The other two? The other two women could…
    I can kill them, if you like.
    The thought came not so much as words, as primitive, primal images, drifting like a shroud across histhoughts. For a decade she had remained silent. But with fresh blood, fresh magick, fresh death, Ilanna had found new life…
    “No!”
    They halted, and Nienna touched his arm gingerly. “Are you well, Grandpa?”
    “Yes,” came his strangled reply; and for a moment he gazed at his bloodbond axe with unfathomable horror. The Ilanna was powerful, and evil, and yet—yet he knew without her he would not survive this day. Would not survive this hour. He owed her— it, damn it!—owed it his life. He owed it everything…
    “I am well,” he forced himself to say, words grinding through gritted teeth. “Come. We need to reach the river. We can steal a boat there, attempt to get away from this…horror.”
    “I think you will find the river frozen,” said a low, gentle voice.
    The group had emerged like maggots from a wound, spilling from stairs into a long, low hall lined with richly polished furniture gleaming under ice-light from high arched windows. The whole scene appeared grey and silver; a portrait delicately carved in ice.
    Kell stopped, mouth a line, mind whirring mechanically. The man was tall, lithe, wearing black armour without insignia. He was albino, like the other soldiers, with long white hair and ashen skin; and yet, yet—Kell frowned, for there was authority there, integral, a part of his core; and something not quite right. This was the leader. Kell did not need to be told. And his eyes were blue. They glittered like sapphires.
    “You are?”
    “General Graal. This is my army, the Army of Iron, which has forcibly taken and now controls the city of Jalder. We have overrun the garrison, stormed the Summer Palace, subdued the soldiers and population. All with very little loss to my own men. And yet-” He smiled then, teeth bared, and took a step forward, the two soldiers flanking Graal remaining in position so the general was fore-grounded, set apart by his natural authority. “And yet you, old man, are fast becoming a thorn in my side.”
    Kell, who had been eyeing other corridors which fed the hall in the hope of an easy escape route, eased to his right and checked for enemy. The corridor was empty. He turned, fixing a steel gaze on the general who seemed to be observing Kell with private amusement; or at least, the disdain a piranha reserves for an injured fish.
    “I apologise,” growled Kell, eyes narrowed, “that I haven’t rolled over to die like so many other puppies.” His eyes flashed dangerous with a new and concentrated form of hate. “It would seem you caught many of the city-folk by surprise, Graal, with the benefit of blood-oil magick at your disposal. I’m sure this makes you feel like a big cock bastard down at the barracks, Graal, the whore-master, joking about how he killed babes in their beds and soldiers in their sleep. The work of a coward.”
    Graal was unfazed by insult. He tilted his head, watching Kell, feminine face laced