Valor of the Healer Read Online Free PDF Page B

sacred pendants that would flare in the proximity of magic, warned of anything they needed to seek. There was nothing to keep him and Cel from seeking beds they ardently yearned for after hours on the road. For once Celoren didn’t even flirt with the serving girls. And though the innkeeper lit up when he saw his instrument case, Kestar dodged that portly worthy’s invitation to play in his common room that evening.
    For nearly four hundred years, the avowed duty of the Order of the Hawk had been to hunt down elven users of magic and purge them of their gifts. Hawks had ridden on their hunting patrols for as long as the Order had existed—such was the unshakeable truth of their purpose, as immutable as the might of the Four Gods, and as clear as the words of the Anreulag, their Voice. Hawks patrolled in times of peace or war, in all seasons of the year, when mages ran common and free and when they were so rare that Hawks could ride circuits for months on end without uncovering a single one.
    Kestar had learned not long after his anointing that boredom was a hazard every member of his Order had to face, for mages had indeed grown scarce over the past several decades. He and Celoren had found nothing on their past five patrols except an increasing number of Tantiu immigrants in Shalridan, a particularly dismal crop of peaches, and a steady stream of young women (and a few young men as well) eager to take their minds off the long, uneventful hours they spent in their saddles.
    So it had gone on their current ride until they’d reached the town. But even as they collapsed in their room for their night’s sleep, the memory of light stayed with him. He drowsed off, lulled by the beating of the rain outside, only to dream over and over again of the radiance on the mountain. And at last, in the smallest hours of the night, he snapped awake.
    The premonition was back, and it was stronger now. Kestar was certain, without a single cause he could have named on earth or in the heavens, that something vital had just taken place. Something to do with that glimpse of light.
    Their room looked no different than when they’d arrived, save for being darker. Window shutters kept out the cold wind and any noise from the street, and the candle stub on the table by the door was as lifeless as the ashes in the hearth. His saddlebag and soft padded mandolin case were still neatly stacked beneath the chair. There wasn’t much else, just his folded uniform, his sheathed sword propped against the bed, and his amulet on its cord around his neck where it always rested, the silver warmed by his body’s heat.
    Kestar rubbed his thumb over the knotwork pattern stamped on the amulet’s surface. If the blessed silver had tried to tell him anything in his sleep, it was silent now.
    In the opposite bed Celoren sprawled, his rangy frame overflowing the down-filled mattress. One foot dangled off the end, one hand out from under the quilt that only partially covered him. His nightshirt, as rumpled as his bedclothes, gaped open at his chest to reveal his own silver Hawk’s amulet. Where Kestar’s was an intricate knot in the rough shape of a shield, the edges of it following the knot’s pattern and its rounded corners attracting his fingertips whenever he was in thought, the other knight’s pendant was a disk etched with a delicate rendition of a birch tree. Now that disk was dormant, only a faint glimmer against Celoren’s skin.
    Celoren wasn’t going to like this. In truth, neither did he. With a tired sigh Kestar moved to his gear and rummaged into his saddlebag for his flint and tinder. He wasn’t loud, but the noises of his motions roused Celoren nonetheless.
    “What? What time is it?”
    “It’s too dark to read your watch. Let me light the candle.”
    “Damned infernal hour to be awake,” Celoren mumbled in sepulchral tones, several steps deeper than his normal baritone. One hazel eye cracked open, only to close once more at the sudden