The Bone Doll's Twin Read Online Free PDF

children; by the time they reached the edge of a settlement, only a few armed men would be in sight. These men made no threats, but offered no hospitality.
    Lhel’s welcome had surprised them when they’d happened across her lonely hut. Not only had she welcomed them properly, setting out water, cider, and cheese, but she claimed to have been expecting them.
    Iya spoke the witch’s language, and Lhel had picked up a few words of Skalan somewhere. From what Arkoniel could make out between them, the witch was not surprised by their request. She claimed her moon goddess had showed them to her in a dream.
    Arkoniel felt very awkward around the woman. Her magic radiated from her like the musky heat of her body, but it was more than that. Lhel was a woman in her prime. Her black hair hung in a tangled, curling mass to her waist and her loose woolen dress couldn’t mask the curves of hip and breast as she sauntered around her little hut, bringing him food and the makings for a pallet. He didn’t need an interpreter to know that she asked Iya if she might sleep with him that night or that she was both offended and amused when Iya explained the concept of wizards’ celibacy to her. The Orëska wizards reserved all their vitality for their magic.
    Arkoniel feared that the witch might change her mind then, but the following morning they woke to find her waiting for them outside the door, a traveling bundle slung ready behind the saddle of her shaggy pony.
    The long journey back to Ero had been an awkward time for the young man. Lhel delighted in teasing him, making certain that he saw when she lifted her skirts to wash, and losing no opportunity to bump against him as she moved about their camp each night, plucking the year’s last herbs with her knobby, stained fingers. Vows or no, Arkoniel couldn’t help but notice and something in him stirred uneasily.
    When their work in Ero was finished this night, he would never see her again and for that he would be most thankful.
    A s they rode across an open square, Lhel pointed up at the full red moon and clucked her tongue. “Baby caller moon, all fat and bloody. We hurry. No
shaimari.”
    She brought two fingers toward her nostrils in a graceful flourish, mimicking the intake of breath. Arkoniel shuddered.
    Iya pressed one hand over her eyes and Arkoniel felt a moment’s hope. Perhaps she would relent after all. Butshe was merely sending a sighting spell up to the Palatine ahead of them.
    After a moment she shook her head. “No. We have time.”
    A cold salt breeze tugged at their cloaks as they reached the seaward side of the citadel and approached the Palatine gate. Arkoniel inhaled deeply, trying to ease the growing tightness in his chest. A party of revelers passed them, and by the light of the linkboys’ lanterns Arkoniel stole another look at Iya. The wizard’s pale, square face betrayed nothing.
    It is the will of Illior
, Arkoniel repeated silently. There could be no turning aside.
    S ince the death of the king’s only female heir, women and girls of close royal blood had died at an alarming rate. Few dared speak of it aloud in the city, but in too many cases it was not plague or hunger that carried them down to Bilairy’s gate.
    The king’s cousin took ill after a banquet in town and did not awaken the next morning. Another somehow managed to fall from her tower window. His two pretty young nieces, daughters of his own brother, were drowned sailing on a sunny day. Babies born to more distant relations, all girls, were found dead in their cradles. Their nurses whispered of night spirits. As potential female claimants to the throne dropped away one by one, the people of Ero turned nervous eyes toward the king’s half sister and the unborn child she carried.
    Her husband, Duke Rhius, was fifteen years older than his pretty young wife and owned vast holdings of castles and lands, the greatest of which lay at Atyion, half a day’s ride north of the city. Some said that