The White Mists of Power Read Online Free PDF Page A

shrugged. “The Enos who trained me did. That’s enough for me. For now. I suppose the time will come when I have to test that belief.”
    “Did Rury?”
    “No. No one stood up for him. Except me, in my own ineffectual way. I begged Dakin to examine his policies and make a compromise with the villagers. After all, he needs them as much as they need him. Without their labor, he has no wealth. But he doesn’t see it that way. I made him angrier. And he decided to go after Rury’s sister, Nica.”
    “The herb witch,” Seymour said. He remembered her kindnesses. She had taken over the job after his mother died, even though she lacked formal training. Nica had always felt inferior, rather like Seymour. They shared that, at least.
    “I hid her, found her a horse, and sent her to a friend of mine south of here. When Dakin discovered that Nica had disappeared, he decided to kill Rury. I think Dakin had other plans for Nica, or–I don’t know. I just know that he was infuriated. Rury died the next morning. He was no match for the hounds. He had been imprisoned nearly a month, and he could barely stand when they brought him out to the riverbank. Dakin made me watch the whole thing, and I could do nothing. He expected me to write a song about it, and I did. I sang it that night at the banquet. It was a rollicking tale, about the lord of the manor developing a taste for blood. I compared him to his hounds, I laid all those deaths at his hands. I kept singing until he grabbed my lute and smashed it against the table, and even then I didn’t quit. He knocked me out. When I woke up, I was in his dungeon, waiting for my turn with the hounds.”
    Seymour clasped his hands together to prevent them from shaking. Dakin would never forgive the man. He wanted the bard’s blood. Dakin hated a personal insult, and Byron had insulted him more deeply than anyone had before. “Other gentry overtax their peasants,” Seymour said, wishing that he had never heard the hounds bay the day before.
    “I know,” Byron shot Seymour a quick glance. “I get into trouble a lot. But I have a lot of friends. I can find someone to help you once we’re out of the woods.”
    Seymour sensed that Byron was apologizing. “Once we’re off Dakin’s land, what you did won’t matter,” Seymour said. Unless it happened again. Seymour would have to make his own way in the city.
    “Dakin’s hounds will find us soon, won’t they?” Byron asked.
    Seymour nodded. “This hut is pretty visible.”
    “The afternoon, then.” As Byron stood up, his movements were a little shaky. “Will you be able to get everything together by then?”
    Seymour glanced around the hut. Almost everything belonged to the place. A few of the items he had made, but nothing that he wanted to keep. He would leave everything for the next needy person. “There’s nothing to take.”
    “Except provisions.” Byron lifted the cloths Seymour kept near the door, probably looking for one large enough to carry things in.
    “Byron?”
    He looked up.
    Seymour’s stomach was jumping. “I’ve never been away from these lands. We need to go to the city, but we can’t stay there too long. Lord Dakin’s land surrounds it. We might have to go somewhere else.”
    Byron smiled, slowly and easily. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always fancied being bard to the king…”
     
     
    v
     
    Lord Dakin dismounted outside the stable. As his feet hit the soft ground, his legs quivered. He had been riding for over three days. He leaned against the stallion for a moment, smelling the sweet odor of horseflesh and feeling the sweat on the animal’s side. He had ridden the horse too hard. The grooms would have to give it a good rubdown and feed it well. He needed a bath and a meal himself.
    He walked up the path to the great house. He was so tired that his body felt heavy. Damn the bard. So few escaped the hounds. He should have known that the bard would be one of them.
    But the magician–who