Restoration (Rai Kirah) Read Online Free PDF

budded trees, only to die away in the damp. Farrol, his round face blackened, his shirt half scorched away, holding his hands in the rigid posture that told me how severely they must be burned, was trying to prevent Elinor from approaching Gordain’s body and the horror on the ground beside it.
    “Tell me who they were, Seyonne. What further danger do we face?” Gingerly Blaise picked up my fouled weapon, made some effort to clean it, and stuffed it in my scabbard. Then he got me to my feet with a hand under my elbow, nudging me away from the dead. Even as we retreated, Elinor shoved her way past Farrol’s quiet pleading and knelt on the blood-soaked ground beside Gordain, still clutching my child to her breast. She did not scream or cry out at the sight of her husband’s mangled body, but only touched his broad shoulder tenderly and closed his eyes with a steady hand. When she rose at last, her glance swept the gruesome earth about her and came to rest on my face. She stared at me as if she were unable to comprehend that such creatures as the namhirra and I could share the same earth, much less the same blood, with those she loved. She tightened her embrace of the whimpering child, then turned her back and walked with Farrol up the hill into the woods.
    “They were assassins,” I said. “Sent by Aleksander’s enemies.” I pulled the cloak about my trembling limbs, as if wool could warm the night’s chill. “They knew where to find me.” An ominous mystery in itself, for I had believed that only Aleksander and my friend Fiona knew that secret, and neither of them would willingly reveal it.
    “But why? What possible—”
    “The assassin said Aleksander was under a kanavar ... a heged oath ... that he will never rule the Empire. The entire Hamrasch family has sworn it. Maybe other hegeds, too. No way to tell.” It was as if the light had gone out of the stars, and the deadness in my own soul had infected the universe itself. I could think of only one way anyone could prevent Aleksander from inheriting his father’s throne. “They’re going to kill him.” The hope of the world. The friend who had shared his soul with me. The brother so unlikely. The consideration was so painful and the night’s events so disturbing, I could not think.
    “Then why are they trying to kill you?”
    I shook my head. It made no sense. I had scarcely seen the Prince for three years. “But if they want me dead, they won’t stop. I don’t know how they found me, but when these don’t come back, they’ll send more. I’ll leave Karesh, but even then—”
    “So the rest of us will have to hide. We’ve done it before. Let’s go.”
     
    I was away from Karesh before Blaise had all his people out of bed. I stuffed my meager possessions in a cloth pack, and into a pocket of my cloak I dropped a few of the zenars I had earned by reading and writing for local merchants. Unable to face those who would soon hear the tale of my savagery, I bade farewell to no one but Blaise.
    “You must give me a way to find you,” he said as I pulled on my spare shirt, fastened my cloak about my shoulders, and gave him the little leather bag that held the rest of my earnings to use for Evan and Elinor. “I’ve never opened the gate to Kir‘Navarrin without your help. What if one of the others needs to cross and I can’t open the way?”
    “I’ve taught Fiona everything. Without being demon-joined, she can’t open the way herself, but she can remind you of anything you forget, help you use your power.” My fiery young friend was off and digging in ruins, searching for remnants of Ezzarian history.
    “Your son needs you, Seyonne. I’ll keep him as safe as I can, but—”
    “He needs no one capable of what I did this night.”
    “You know better. You’ll find the answer. This is a sickness. It is not you. And you saved their lives as you’ve done so many others.” He followed me down the stairs and into the night-shuttered lane where