The Prince of Exiles (The Exile Series) Read Online Free PDF

directly to him, directly from her, asking him to check the surrounding area once more for signs of life.
     
    He closed his eyes and reached through the Raven Talisman, feeling the black markings grow warm across his shoulders and back. His mind expanded outward, barely touching on the group of lights surrounding him, those of the Kindred squad, instead moving farther out, going as far as a mile in each direction, down over the edge of the cliff, up further into the mountains, back the way they had come, forward the way they were going.
     
    In his mind’s eye he perceived a vague, hazy background light, punctuated here and there by brief moving flashes that were plants and animals. These did not interest him – he was looking for something brighter, something that would press on his mind, something that would reveal the presence of a person, either man, woman, or Child. He strained his mind, going as far as he could, thinking if there were anything to sense it would be a ways distant … but there was nothing. Just the group of Kindred troops.
     
    Raven opened his eyes again, caught Leah’s gaze, and shook his head just enough that she caught the motion. She nodded to Davydd, and they broke up the meeting. Leah, Lorna, and Davydd made their way over to where he and Tomaz were still sitting. The four of them usually included him in their councils, which made him feel both proud and confused. He was a valuable source of knowledge about Imperial tactics, but it was still difficult for him to give advice on how to attack the Empire when he had spent his whole life learning to defend it.
     
    “So in the morning we go back through the Branch,” Davydd said, red eyes glowing in the twilight as he dropped into a squat next to Raven. The others joined him, forming them into a circle, as the sun finally dipped below the horizon.
     
    “It’s the place most suited for a final ambush,” Tomaz said, black eyes hard as stone. It was his battle face, and it reminded Raven once again that this man, for all his normal joviality, was a trained killer.
     
    “Indeed,” agreed Lorna simply. “We need to tread softly. We aren’t safe until we’re back in Roarke.”
     
    “Still, it should be pretty simple,” Leah said, taking a swig from the waterskin she carried at her waist.
     
    “Simple enough even for someone too scared to carry his own sword,” Davydd muttered so only Raven could hear him.
     
    Again, he pointedly ignored the young man’s barb. His interactions with Davydd often went like this – the red-eyed son of General Goldwyn trying to prod Raven into an argument, Raven pointedly ignoring him. The sword by his side was plain steel – of good make, and well cared for, but plain steel nonetheless. Aemon’s Blade, the sword Davydd was mocking him over, was tied behind his horse’s saddle, tucked carefully away. At first he had left it at camp, thinking no one would be foolish enough to try to touch it. But then a small child, one of the many sons of the frugal Captain Philander, had touched it on a dare and been thrown backward twenty feet into a tree, hand burned as if by a brand. No one blamed Raven – he’d packed the sword away carefully out of sight – but he’d carried it with him ever since. Though, truth be told, he wished he could have left it back in Vale. He wanted nothing to do with it.
     
    The Blade marked him out as Aemon’s Heir, the last of the line of Aemon, the founder of the Kindred. But, because everyone knew that Aemon’s Heir was also the former Prince of Ravens, wearing it, or even just being close to the damned thing, was enough to make half of the Kindred swoon, and the other half spit as he walked past. It was the latter of the two groups that had angered Leah – and she had taken to challenging anyone who she saw cursing him. It was a testament to the girl’s fearsome reputation that no one had taken her up on it.
     
    Suddenly they heard a distant sound that seemed to be