The Tainted City Read Online Free PDF

ridiculous. From the moment the Council had bound him, he’d been unable to use his magic for anything but passive reading of charms, living day and night with the constriction of their spell flaying his inner senses raw.
    A faint frown creased her forehead. “I do not.”
    “But others do, and not just Stevannes.” Kiran’s hands clenched. “Isn’t it enough that you keep me bound like this? That I’ve done everything the Council has asked?”
    “The Council is entrusted with the safety of Alathia,” Lena said coolly. “Do you truly think their caution with you is unreasonable?”
    Kiran didn’t answer, his attention caught by Stevannes’s still-active spell. The shimmer above the sigil had taken on a sickly gray tinge, mottled by holes with dark, crackling edges. Dread coalesced in Kiran’s chest. He pointed at the spell.
    “If that represents your border wards…it’s Ruslan, isn’t it? He’s casting against Alathia, and your wards are failing.” He’d known this day would come. But so soon—he’d thought Ruslan would need more time to analyze the ward patterns. For all Ruslan’s hot temper, he was far too clever to cast against an enemy in haste. He’d waited twenty years to strike down Simon Levanian, until Kiran had unwittingly presented him with the perfect opportunity. Kiran hadn’t dared hope for nearly that length of time before Ruslan moved against the Council, but he had thought he’d gained a few seasons’ grace.
    “Our wards hold.” Lena passed a hand over the sigil on Stevannes’s table. The gray shimmer vanished. “Stevannes’s spell showed…merely a warning.” But her eyes slid aside from his, her motions abrupt as she collected Stevannes’s carved stone rods.
    “You don’t deny Ruslan is casting against you.” Return him to me, or I will tear down your country stone by stone, Ruslan had said; and the Alathians had refused him.
    Lena surveyed him, a sharp line between her brows. “There is no direct evidence of Ruslan’s involvement.”
    Kiran blinked. “What? But—”
    “I cannot say more.” Lena turned away. She thrust Simon’s charm into the warded copper chest sitting beside Stevannes’s neatly ordered stacks of treatises. “Put away your things. You’re finished here for today; I’ll escort you back to your quarters.”
    Her clipped tone said he’d learn nothing further. She must have been ordered to keep silence; and while Lena might treat him with calm kindness, she’d never disobey an order.
    Kiran’s mind raced as he picked up chalk shards with cold, fumbling fingers. No direct evidence…given the cunning Ruslan had displayed against Simon, the Alathians had to realize Ruslan’s capacity for subtlety. Yet if Ruslan cast against Alathia, why should he conceal it? The Council would suspect him regardless. Far better for Ruslan to strike openly, counting on his dark reputation to instill further fear and division within the Council.
    It didn’t make sense. Yet Kiran couldn’t shake the bleak certainty within. His reprieve from his master, brief as it had been, was over.
    * * *
    (Dev)
    I knelt amidst bedraggled reeds and thrust my hands into the chill shallows of the stream. Weariness dragged at my eyes and turned my muscles to lead. The sun had long since set; stars spattered the strip of sky visible between the black bulwarks of the cliffs. The peeping of mossfrogs echoed from the seeps, punctuated by clanks and shouted orders from the mine as crews worked to shore up the main tunnel. In the dim silver glow of Talmaddis’s magelight, the blood crusted on my hands and forearms was as dark as the grime coating my clothes. Talmaddis stood silent beside me, his shoulders slumped, as I scrubbed gore from my skin.
    Jathon’s idea had worked. The powder charges I’d eased down the airshaft had blasted through the back side of the cave-in. The shaft wasn’t large enough for a man to pass, but it allowed enough good air through to keep the miners