Restoration (Rai Kirah) Read Online Free PDF Page A

spittle.
    My hand fell away, and I stood up slowly. Kanavar ... a swearing so deep, so dreadful, so solemn that every man, woman, and child of an entire Derzhi heged would die to see it kept. The Hamraschi had sworn on the very existence of their family to destroy Aleksander.
    The namhir scrabbled weakly backward across the firelit grass. “You’ll die, too, slave,” he croaked. “And any who shelter you ...”
    I raised my sword to finish him, but my eyes were distracted by the shifting firelight and my caution by the import of his words, and so I missed the movement of his left hand. The wooden stave smashed brutally into my right side.
    My breath stopped. Red streaks of light shattered my vision as ripping, paralyzing agony exploded in my side. My right arm fell limp, and the sword slipped from my lifeless hand. Another blow, this time to my ankle. I scarcely noticed it, for I was fighting to get a breath. Doubled over, left hand fumbling in the dirt for my dropped weapon, I staggered backward. Head up, fool. The next one will crack your skull.
    The namhir was a dead man, no matter what. The injury I’d done him would have seen to it, whether I survived another moment. But to his mortal regret—and my own—I stumbled over Gordain’s body and saw what they had done to the good Manganar. They had ripped his throat to finish him as I knew they would, but earlier ... before I’d come ... they had cut off both of his hands and seared the stumps in fire so he wouldn’t die too quickly. Unimaginable horror for any man, but for a man who already lived without one leg ...
    “He wept like an old woman” came the rasping whisper. “I thought Manganar had more bile.”
    Darkness thundered in my blood. The remnants of my day’s madness surged anew, and I forgot the kanavar, forgot Gordain and Aleksander, Blaise and my child, forgot everything. Somehow I managed to lift my sword again, but I did not kill the namhir quickly. With strokes as precise as those of a gem cutter and so vicious they shivered my own bones, I took off the screaming Derzhi’s right hand ... and then his left ... and then the rest of him piece by piece until there was nothing left to cut.

CHAPTER 3
    I stood panting harshly, trembling and bent over with the searing pain in my side. I could not think what I needed to do next or remember why the silence seemed so strange. When a hand fell heavily on my shoulder, I almost shed my skin.
    “The boy’s all right, Seyonne. And Elinor, too. They’re safe.”
    Dully I stared up into Blaise’s pale face. He had a monstrous purple bruise on his temple, and even his sincere concern could not mask disgust. My arms were covered with blood, my clothing soaked with it and spattered with bits of flesh and entrails. What lay before me on the ground was no longer recognizable as a man. I dropped my sword and sank to my knees, pressing the back of my bloody hand against my mouth.
    “Are you injured?”
    I shook my head. Not injured. Diseased.
    The garish orange flames were already dying, only the blackened stone finger of the hearth marked that a home had once nestled at the edge of the trees. A short distance away stood Elinor, pressing Evan’s dark head fiercely into her neck, muffling his sobs and hiding his eyes from the carnage.
    “I’m sorry,” I whispered. Although I spoke to the iron-faced woman and to my weeping son, they could not possibly have heard me. “I’m so sorry.”
    “You saved their lives.” Even the kindest of friends could not sound convincing. Not on that night.
    It was a measure of Blaise’s heart that he did not recoil or run away.
    “Take me away from them,” I said. “Never let me near them again.”
    “Soon. For now they have to come back with us. Without Gordain, they can’t stay here.” He dropped my abandoned cloak over my shoulders.
    The night breeze swirled smoke, obscuring the stars and the strangely peaceful valley. Tendrils of flame crept toward the fences and newly