Path of Honor Read Online Free PDF Page A

playfully. Reisil staggered.
    “Itchy? All right, come on, then.” She scratched his forehead and behind his ears. He groaned, stretching and tilting his head. Sodur’s horse looked on enviously, and Reisil obliged him with a chuckle.
    Sodur and Reisil ate their breakfast in silence. Reisil couldn’t help twitching every time something scurried through the underbrush or the wind rattled the trees.
    “They’re gone. They won’t be back,” Sodur said, scraping his bowl.
    Reisil cast him a dubious look. “Met a lot of them, have you? Or maybe they whispered it in your ear?”
    He flushed. “They’re gone. That’s all.” He rose and strode off to rinse his dishes in the rill.
    When he returned, he began packing up their camp, and Reisil quickly finished her porridge and joined him. Most of the last two weeks had been a meandering journey, a chance for her to see Kodu Riik, meet more of its people and, perhaps most important, relax after months of winter confinement in Koduteel. But now she felt all the tension come flooding back. They were here for a purpose. Her stomach tightened, the porridge balling thickly in her stomach. She thought about the previous day, her inability to call up even a trickle of power. They were here to find plague victims. But what she was going to do with them, she didn’t know.
     
    The morning quickly warmed, though high clouds made wearing a hat unnecessary. They ranged higher into the foothills, Sodur pushing their pace as fast as the exhausted horses would go. Lume trotted close beside him while Saljane flittered and twisted through the trees.
    As they crowned a high ridge, Reisil couldn’t resist twisting in her saddle to gaze behind at the Karnane Valley stretching out below them. Far across the vast valley she could see a purple smudge where the Melyhir Mountains hemmed in the eastern expanse of the Karnane. They had traveled through the southern end of the valley after leaving Koduteel, taking a wide, circuitous route from the city. Drought continued to hound the valley dwellers, with the rivers providing the only source of water. Even deep wells had run dry. Fields were stunted and withered, except in those small green patches where farmers had devised ways to draw water from the rivers.
    Reisil sighed and turned back around. The irony of the mountain greenness did not escape her. But with the nokula packs, who from the valley would brave the mountains to hunt or forage? She glanced at Sodur. She ought to tell him about her failure to draw her power yesterday. The words withered on her tongue. He stared ahead, his gaze distant and brooding. She’d never seen him like this. Not even after Upsakes’s betrayal. Until now he’d always shown infinite patience and unshakable tranquillity.
    Reisil turned away, touching her bond with Saljane for reassurance. The isolation was creeping up again: the feeling that she was always on her own, even in a crowd. Sodur didn’t mean to do it. He had no idea how much she had come to rely on him. And it wasn’t fair to burden him. But the sudden wall between them was like a slap in the face, and she felt lost.
    ~Times like these, I even miss Juhrnus.
    ~Juhrnus is a friend.
    ~Juhrnus is a bully and boil on my backside.
    ~You like him.
    ~Don’t tell him.
    ~He knows.
    ~And takes advantage of it every chance he gets. I wonder when he’ll get back.
    ~Before winter. Esper does not like the cold.
    Reisil’s lips quirked. Juhrnus’s ahalad-kaaslane was a sisalik. The enormous lizard hated anything resembling cold and would revolt against another winter riding circuit. As completely besotted with Esper as Juhrnus was, she didn’t doubt that the two wanderers would be back before winter took hold. She smiled. As much as he’d bullied her through her childhood, she never would have imagined Juhrnus could care about anything as much as he cared for Esper. But nearly losing his ahalad-kaaslane when Upsakes had tried to murder them had made Juhrnus