The Fall of Neskaya Read Online Free PDF Page A

reed flute.
    As Coryn set out a cushioned chair for Tessa, he felt Dom Rumail’s eyes on him. A little thrill went up his spine. Perhaps this sense of his was a kind of laran . He might be able someday to pilot a glider with his starstone. Images of hovering, soaring, looking down on forest and meadow from eagle’s height, surged over him. Fervently, he prayed to Aldones it might be true.

    Dom Rumail was given the small chamber used for hanging linens to dry during the winter for his testing. All through the next morning, he examined the girls, beginning with Tessa. Coryn didn’t see her until that evening, for Eddard sent him out to ride the boundary lands around the fire, searching for any deeply-buried embers. Dinner was informal, as was usual on work days, with hot meat pies, aged chervine milk cheeses and dried fruit bars, nutbread and bowls of oat groats with savory sauce laid out in the kitchen. Coryn found the two younger girls and Petro here, chattering away.
    “It was like—” Margarida lifted her hands in a fluttering gesture, “—like dancing on a cloud.”
    “Do you mean he made you go to sleep?” Petro said, scowling. “What’s so grand about that?”
    “You’re jealous ’cause you got left out,” Coryn said.
    “Am not,” Petro said. “I just don’t want some old wizard poking around in my mind. Who knows what he’ll do once he’s in there? He could read your thoughts . . . all your nasty little secrets. How’d you like everyone to know about the time you set fire to Tessa’s hairbrush and then dropped it down the latrine?”
    Coryn landed a punch on Petro’s shoulder while Kristlin giggled, “So that’s what happened to it. She was mad as Durraman’s donkey for a tenday, thinking she’d lost it.”
    Before Kristlin could ask exactly how Coryn had set the hairbrush on fire, Margarida said, “It was rather nice, what Dom Rumail did. In a dreamy sort of way.”
    “Well, I didn’t like it,” said Kristlin, sticking out her lower lip. Her brows knitted, stormy. “It felt . . . I don’t know, like the way a snake sounds over dry leaves.”
    “You? What do you know?” Coryn grinned. “You don’t even have a starstone yet. You’re just a little girl, running around in boy’s breeches—whose were they, anyway? Fra’ Domenic’s?” he jibed, unable to resist teasing her.
    “What do you care, so long as they weren’t yours?” she said, darting away when he reached out to tickle her.
    One of the house servants came in and said that if Master Coryn had finished eating, could he please attend Dom Rumail? With a tingle of excitement dancing in his stomach, Coryn made his way to the linen rooms. The air smelled faintly of cedar and goldengrass, used to sweeten the sheets and keep away moths. A handful of candles filled the little chamber with gentle light. Rumail sat on a stool, hands loosely folded in his lap. Folded blankets cushioned a low table and formed a pillow.
    “Am I to lie down?” Coryn asked.
    “Not just yet, young master. I have a few questions for you. I have already studied your lineage, so we need not go into that. How long have you been having attacks of dizziness and disorientation? Has the nausea made it difficult for you to eat? Have you had visual disturbances, where things were not the right shape or color or would not hold still?”
    “I didn’t—” Coryn bit his lip. He’d thought he’d done a good job masking his weakness. Eddard hadn’t noticed anything on the fire line, or hadn’t seen fit to mention it. “It’s excitement, that’s all. It has nothing to do with, well, anything.” But even to his own ears, he sounded unconvincing.
    “It has very much to do with the awakening of laran .” Now a steely certainty rang in Dom Rumail’s voice. Coryn felt something darkly powerful emanate from the laranzu . “And it is not a thing to be either ashamed of or taken lightly. These are the symptoms of threshold sickness, which often comes when