The Destroyer Goddess Read Online Free PDF

to."
    Zarien's frown cleared. He nodded. "Or... papa?" He almost laughed, then shook his head. "Um, no. Father is probably better."
    Tansen slapped him on the back and said, "Come on." He continued making his way along the path.
    "Wait! Tan—Father." Zarien put a hand on his arm. "What's wrong? What did she say to you?"
    "I'll explain as we walk." He would also omit all but the essential facts of the matter.
    "What happened to your sleeve?" Zarien touched the singed spot. "Did you get too close to a fire?"
    "Yes," he admitted on a sigh. "We should probably get up to the caves now."
    Zarien groaned and looked up the steep, merciless slopes of Mount Dalishar. "I just knew you were going to say that."

 
    Chapter Two
     
    Neither love nor madness knows a cure.
     
                                              —Silerian Proverb
     

     
    The fresh cut on Baran's right palm was stinging fiercely. He suspected that Mirabar had cut particularly deep on purpose with the marriage knife. If he had known how vindictive his bride could be, he wouldn't have agreed to marry her in shallah tradition.
    Now, as they faced each other, alone in Sister Velikar's Sanctuary, Mirabar stared warily at him with those glowing eyes. Looking at her, he could almost believe some of the superstitions about her fire-colored kind...
    Baran wondered if immolation in the marriage bed was grounds for divorce. Silerians were so strict about marriage that it actually might not be. He smiled, enjoying his thoughts as he shrugged out of his tunic—now grown loose on him—and tossed it aside. 
    The only place Baran and Mirabar could be safe from the Honored Society, whose waterlords and assassins he would completely alienate with this marriage, was Sanctuary or Belitar. Belitar was days away, and even the nearest Sanctuary was almost a full day's journey from here. So he and Mirabar had agreed to spend their wedding night in Sister Velikar's humble stone dwelling. Tomorrow they would commence the journey to Baran's home. 
    Although he looked forward to returning to Belitar, Baran dreaded the trip, knowing how it would tax his diminishing strength. Making the journey to Emeldar and curing the water there had been too much for him. He had remained five days in Josarian's abandoned village, which was how long Mirabar and Najdan deemed their witnesses—Lann and Yorin—needed in order to be sure the slow poison which Josarian had ordered put in the water, during the early days of the rebellion, was now expelled from it. When the goats drinking the water were still hale and hardy five days after Baran cleansed it, the two men were satisfied and returned to Dalishar with him.
    He had not enjoyed their company. 
    What a dull and ignorant lot the shallaheen were. How incurious about the world, how smug about the narrow boundaries of their own culture.
    Baran sighed and looked again at his shallah wife. Oh, well. At least she wasn't as dreary as other shallaheen —or other Guardians. Her feral childhood had expanded the wisdom of her heart beyond that of most other Silerians. Her extraordinary powers had made her intimate with things beyond the imagination even of worldly and educated people. And her prophetic visions had forged in her a strength and determination that few people alive could match.
    Now, as they shared a wary silence, Baran glanced at the simple bed where Velikar had recently spread fresh, sun-dried bedclothes for them, and he thought more practically about his new wife. A virtuous young shallah woman, a sorceress gifted with enough power to scare away any man less brave than that poor sod Tansen, an endangered Guardian protected day and night by an assassin as strict and old-fashioned as Najdan...
    "Do you know what's supposed to happen now?" Baran asked Mirabar abruptly, wondering if tonight would be even more awkward than he anticipated. 
    She blinked. "In general."
    He lifted one brow. " How