Master (Book 5) Read Online Free PDF

said, bowing formally as best he was able to.
    “Ary!” Andren cried out.
    “It is good to lay eyes upon you again, Andren,” Arydni said, crossing the stone floor in her sandaled feet, her pure, white robes barely touching the stone floor as she walked, almost gliding, toward them.
    “It’s not bad looking upon you again, either,” Andren agreed, letting his word become literal as he stared at the priestess, lowering his gaze to her chest. Cyrus watched as Andren stared at her. “All of y—”
    “That’s enough,” Cyrus whispered to Andren, whose arm was still draped around his shoulder, helping him keep steady. “How we can we assist you, m’lady?”
    “She used to be my lady, you know,” Andren said under his breath.
    “Not now,” Cyrus hissed.
    Arydni broke into a gentle laugh. “I expect I could do you the courtesy of helping to look after you for a space of time before imposing upon you with any requests.” She crossed the distance between them with palms upturned, hands at her sides.
    “It is no imposition to have you ask anything of us,” Cyrus said.
    “Still and all,” Arydni said, now only feet away from Cyrus, “your guild has hosted me these last days, and to earn my keep would be a welcome task.”
    Cyrus exchanged a look with Andren, who nodded, his shaggy, frizzed hair and beard looking particularly wild now that they had dried. “You might not want to get too close to me right now,” Cyrus said, glancing back at the priestess. “I don’t smell all that wonderful, I’ve been told.” He cast a look over his shoulder at Martaina, who shrugged and gave him a look in return that told him, Obviously .
    “I am a Keeper of Life,” Arydni said, sliding next to him on the side opposite Andren and placing his arm over her shoulder. He felt only the lightest touch from her. “Let us get you settled so that I may examine you. All else can wait.”
    “Are you certain?” Cyrus asked, looking down at her. “I don’t know too many people who would travel all the way here from Pharesia for a problem that wasn’t important.”
    “Oh, be assured,” she said, looking up at him, face lit with a tiredness he had not seen in her, not even in the days after the fall of Termina, “what I come to you with is neither trifling nor some matter I will simply forget or fail to bring up out of politeness—when the moment arrives for us to discuss it.” She ran a hand across his shoulder; her touch was as smooth and soft as velvet. “But for now, let us tend to your malady.”
    With slow, halting steps, she and Andren helped him up the stairs to his quarters. Cyrus felt every one of them, his body resisting him out of fatigue, his pace slowed by frequent coughing fits. Still, in the countless floors between the foyer and his quarters near the top of the center tower, Arydni never once looked at him, keeping her silence the entire way.

Chapter 4
    “Do you have any lef’tres grass on hand?” Arydni asked after they had gotten Cyrus to his quarters. She bustled about while Andren stood near the hearth, fidgeting and watching her hover over Cyrus. “Also, I need honey and a basin of clean water.”
    “There’s running water in there,” Cyrus gestured to the door at the far end of his quarters. “I keep a basin in there as well.”
    “Andren, would you be a dear and fetch that for me?” Arydni looked over her shoulder at him. “And then light a fire in the hearth.”
    “Ah, yeah, easily done.” Andren snapped his fingers at the hearth. It promptly caught on fire, filling the air with a lovely aroma of light wood smoke, though there was no haze from it. He ducked into the bath and emerged a few moments later with a tin basin a little larger than a dinner plate. A cloth was hanging from the side.
    “Wait,” Cyrus said, and was halted by a cough. “I can bathe myself. There’s a tub in the bath.”
    “You need rest,” Arydni said, taking the proffered cloth from Andren and soaking it,