The Darkest Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

voice from Dun Maura cry out on Maidaladan, in mourning for the sacrifice come freely.
    And with that, her thoughts circled back to the one who had become Liadon: Kevin Laine, brought from another world by Silvercloak to a destiny both dark and dazzlingly bright, one that not even the Seer could have foreknown.
    For all Jaelle’s knowledge, all her immersion in the nature of the Goddess, Kevin’s had been an act so overwhelming, so consummately gallant, it had irrevocably blurred the clarity with which once she’d viewed the world. He was a man, and yet he had done this thing. It was, since Maidaladan, so much harder to summon the old anger and bitterness, the hate. Or, more truly, so much harder to summon them for anything and anyone but Rakoth.
    The winter was over. The summonglass had blazed. There was war, somewhere north, in the dark.
    And there was a ship sailing west.
    That thought carried her back to a strand of beach north of Taerlindel, where she had watched the other stranger, Pwyll,summon and speak to the sea god by the water’s edge in an inhuman light. Nothing was easy for any of them, Dana and the Weaver knew, but Pywll’s seemed such a harsh, demanding power, taking so much out of him and not giving, so far as she could see, a great deal back.
    Him, too, she remembered hating, with a cold, unforgiving fury, when she had taken him from the Summer Tree to this very room, this bed, knowing that the Goddess had spoken to him, not knowing what she had said. She had struck him, she remembered, drawing the blood all men should give, but hardly in the manner prescribed.
    “
Rahod hedai Liadon
,” the priestesses sang under the dome, ending the lament on the last long, keening note. And after a moment she heard Shiel’s clear voice begin the antiphonal verses of the evening invocation. There was some peace there, Jaelle thought, some comfort to be found in the rituals, even now, even in time of darkness.
    Her chamber door burst open. Leila stood in the doorway.
    “What are you doing?” Jaelle exclaimed. “Leila, you should be in the dome with—”
    She stopped. The girl’s eyes were wide, staring, focused on nothingness. Leila spoke, in a voice tranced and uninflected. “They have blown the horn,” she said. “In the battle. He is in the sky now, above the river. Finn. And the kings. I see Owein in the sky. He is drawing a sword. Finn is drawing a sword. They are—they are—” Her face was chalk white, her fingers splayed at her sides. She made a thin sound.
    “They are killing,” she said. “They are killing the svarts and the urgach. Finn is covered in blood. So much blood. And now Owein is—he is—”
    Jaelle saw the girl’s eyes flare even wider then, and go wild with terror, and her heart lurched.
    Leila screamed. “
Finn, no! Stop him! They are killing us!
”
    She screamed again, wordlessly, and stumbling forward, falling, buried her head in Jaelle’s lap, her arms clutching the Priestess, her body racked convulsively.
    The chanting stopped under the dome. There were footsteps running along the corridors. Jaelle held the girl as tightly as she could; Leila was thrashing so hard, the High Priestess was genuinely afraid she would hurt herself.
    “What is it? What has happened?”
    She looked up and saw Sharra of Cathal in the doorway.
    “The battle,” she gasped, fighting to hold Leila, her own body rocking with the force of the girl’s weeping. “The Hunt. Owein. She is tuned to—”
    And then they heard the voice.
    “
Sky King, sheath your sword! I put my will upon you!
”
    It seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere in the room, clear, cold, utterly imperative.
    Leila’s violent movements stopped. She lay still in Jaelle’s arms. They were all still: the three in the room and those gathered in the corridor. They waited. Jaelle found it difficult to breathe. Her hands were blindly, reflexively stroking Leila’s hair. The girl’s robe was soaked through with