The Plains of Kallanash Read Online Free PDF Page A

Whatever his own doubts, Mia believed it all and drew comfort from it, and he was content with that.
    Eventually, the Karninghold Slave murmured, “It is time.”
    Jonnor was still lost in his grief, so it was Hurst who nodded acknowledgement, and the Silent Guards lifted the bier. The courtyard was in darkness now, the sun lower than the surrounding walls. The narrow funeral gate opened, casting a shaft of golden light across the yard.
    The Karninghold Slave took a torch from one of his acolytes and led the way through the gate. The bier followed, then Tella’s three Companions, clinging to each other, and another Slave with a torch. A sad procession they made, Hurst thought, the Slaves in their grey robes, the Silent Guards in gold, and Tella and her three Companions in the white robes of death. The gate clanged shut behind them, shrouding the yard in gloom again.
    Hurst, Mia, Jonnor and their Companions climbed a narrow stair set into the wall beside the gate, emerging onto a covered balcony overlooking the meadow and fields beyond it. At first the low sun set the Silent Guards’ armour aflame and the group was easy to follow, but then they passed into shadow. Soon only the flickering torches were visible, passing into the funeral tower on its small knoll, and climbing the stairs inside.
    When the torches reached the top of the funeral tower, the blue lights were lit inside, strange ethereal shimmers in the darkness, bright enough to see shadows moving here and there behind. There was such finality in those blue lights.
    The family was expected to stand vigil for a while, and braziers had been lit, cloaks and blankets brought, and food and wine provided. Jonnor sat on a stone bench, head down, wrapped in his own arms. Mia brought a cushion to sit on, watching the blue lamps in the distance. Hurst poured wine for them all, and silently stood beside her.
    He ached to take her in his arms, to let her weep on his shoulder, to cry himself – for Tella and for all of them. Yet he dared not. Mia would be Jonnor’s now, and that was the end of it. Unless… but it was better not to think about that, not to create any impossible hope in his mind. So he stood beside her, so close he could smell the herbal scent of the soap she used.
    The Karninghold Slave returned from the funeral tower, and acolytes lit incense sticks around the balcony, chanting. Mia joined in at the appropriate points, sitting passively, her hands still. Even Jonnor drank some wine and asked for a little fruit. Then all the Slaves withdrew, and one by one the Companions left too, until only the three of them were left on the chill stone balcony. Together they sat, looking out into the darkness at the otherworldly blue lights hovering.
    Mia stared mesmerised at those glowing lamps. Hurst left her to the cushions and withdrew to the bench with his wine. How grieved was she? Tella was her sister, but they had never been close. In the early days of the marriage, it was clear they knew very little about each other, and Tella had never made much effort to change that, focusing on Jonnor. When she tired of him, she grew restless and unsettled, disappearing for days at a time.
    In some ways, they would all miss Tella’s Companions more than Tella herself. Well, not Jonnor perhaps, but the rest of them. They were friends for Mia and her own Companions, and to the men, something more than friends. Unlike Tella, they had always been around the Karninghold, working with Mia and her own Companions, dealing with the domestic matters, helping with the children.
    Gods, the children! That was a bad business. Of the nine children, seven would lose their mothers with the dawn and the flames in the funeral tower.
    “It’s getting late,” Hurst whispered in Mia’s ear. “You will be exhausted. Why not go to bed for a while? We will be awakened well before dawn.”
    “If Jonnor will go, then I will too,” she said, moving to the bench and sitting next to him.
    “She was