Last First Snow Read Online Free PDF Page A

I.”
    â€œYour side won, in case you didn’t notice.” A woman waved to him and he waved back. “My king fell, and my gods are dead. I would have died with them, if not for you.”
    â€œI’m sorry I interrupted your … show,” she said. There were other words for what she’d seen, but she could not use them. Especially not now the sun had risen and its clear morning light replaced the half-formed world in which she’d seen a man sacrificed who did not die.
    â€œNo trouble. Have you ever noticed that the followers of Glebland mystics rarely write about their teachers’ normal days? They prefer to speak of interruption. For each surviving sermon there are ten tales of blind men who thrust themselves into private conferences, leprous mothers who tackle sages in the street, cripples whose friends lower them through the skylights of houses where masters sleep. You can trace the death of a faith by its decreasing tolerance of such interruption.”
    â€œSo you’re a prophet now?”
    He laughed. “I am trying to be a good man. Or at least better than I was before.”
    As they walked she overheard snatches of fierce argument:
    â€œâ€”not as individuals, but as members of a class—”
    â€œâ€”a seed isn’t insignificant—”
    â€œâ€”Any more wine?”
    â€œSystems are like magicians, when they claim to be honest with you’s when you need to watch them—”
    â€œHow’s Food Com? Any word on stock after the fire, that’s all, need to know if I should run out and get my own—”
    â€œWhere’d you find that coffee?”
    â€œâ€”Sleight of hand, that’s all, sleight of—”
    â€œâ€”More to a city than just lying to people—”
    But as they approached, the speakers saw Temoc and fell silent. The tremors of the priest’s footfalls shook them from one record groove to the next. As a Craftswoman, as a partner in a large firm, Elayne was used to spreading fear. This was different. Fear was only a piece of it.
    Wherever he went, Temoc bore a piece of his sunrise sacrament.
    A young couple approached Temoc, cautious, escorting their five-year-old son. The boy’s chest rattled when he breathed; when he saw Temoc he curled into a ball and began to cry and cough. The cough started last night, his mother said.
    Temoc touched the child over his heart. The scars on his arm glowed green. A piece of the power he’d gathered at sunrise, the strength the godlings gave him, flowed into the boy and made him whole.
    Simple trick. Medical Craft could accomplish as much with as little trouble. But there was no doctor here, and Elayne doubted a doctor would have received such tearful thanks.
    â€œChel mentioned a Major,” she said when they left the couple and their laughing boy behind. “A rival leader?”
    â€œI am not a leader, and so I have no rivals. But not everyone in this camp thinks peaceful protest is the best road. Some feel this crowd should be the core of a new army. Most of those have never fought a war, you understand.”
    â€œWhat about you? Do you want peace?”
    â€œI want to help people,” he said.
    â€œSo do I.”
    But before he could respond, a group of camo-clad men and women had a question about the distribution of supplies. After came a young man with a broken arm. Temoc ran his hand over the wound, smoothing the bone whole. Elayne watched. What the others made of her presence, she could guess: outsider who did not comprehend their ways, servant of the dark powers arrayed against them.
    Fair.
    Temoc slowed. He gave more thought to the decisions put before him, and grew more careful with the healing he offered. The power of the morning ceremony ebbed. Mock sacrifices, it seemed, did not impart as much glory to Temoc’s gods as the blood-gushing kind.
    A cluster of youths dressed in dust and ripped denim bore a stretcher to