Vincalis the Agitator Read Online Free PDF

swore I would never chance killing
     anyone else. He’s already had the Way-fare in him for too long. I can’t get him back. And I won’t try. I won’t kill him, too.”
    “He knew that. He knew when he went.”
    “But we’re going to get out of here, Jess. And someday, I’m going to come back, and I’m going to find a way to free everyone
     who’s in here. Every single one.”
    She held his hand and nodded. “You will. I know you will. You can do anything, Wraith.” And then she hugged him, and prayed
     that once they were free of this place, he would never look at the Warrens again. She would miss Smoke; her heart ached for
     him, and for the knowledge that only two days had stood between him and hope.
    But the Warrens had a poison to them, a creeping, insidious evil that she could feel hanging in the air, leaching the life
     out of her day by day by day, and she feared that if Wraith didn’t get away and stay away, he would at last fall victim to
     that poison.

    “Grath Faregan, bound and blindfolded you come into this chamber to take an oath—to swear fealty not to magic, and not to
     the government of lesser men, but to the Secret and Honorable Society of the Silent Inquest. We hold the reins of the world
     in our hands, and you have, by word and action, proven that you deserve to be one among us. Before you passed through the
     final doorway, you were told that you could only pass through it again in one of two ways—either as our friend or as a corpse.
     Do you acknowledge that you came here of your own free will?”
    “I do,” the bound man said.
    “Will you take the test of loyalty?”
    “I will,” he said.
    “Know that if you fail, you will die—and your death will be terrible. You still have the option of a quick and merciful death,
     should you so choose.”
    “I’ll take the test.”
    “Very well.” Two men removed the bonds from Faregan’s hands and the hood from his head. Shackles still held his ankles to
     the dais in the center of the floor.
    He could see nothing beyond a brilliant light that poured at him from all directions. He lifted his chin, and took a deep
     breath, and waited.
    From all sides, then, spells attacked him. He knew that under no circumstances could he defend himself in any way or resist
     or reverse what was done to him. He proved his loyalty by proving he acceded to the will of those above him, whoever they
     might be. But when his body caught fire, he needed every bit of his control to let himself burn. He screamed, he fell to the
     ground—but he did not use the power at his disposal to put the fire out.
    He smelled his own flesh burning, and he wept, and he pissed himself from fear and pain—and then, suddenly, the ordeal ended.
     Though he still had pain in his right leg, in every other way he was fine.
    “Stand,” one of the voices from the darkness said.
    He stood. The right leg screamed, but he bore it without a whimper. No signs of piss, no signs of fire, no smell of smoke
     or roasting skin.
    “Repeat after me: I am a friend of the Inquest, a brother of the Secret Masters of Matrin, and I acknowledge no power save
     that of the Master of the Inquest….”
    Faregan repeated the words.
    “No god, no vowmate, no child shall come before the needs of the Inquest….
    “No life shall be sacred, if I am ordered to end it….
    “No law shall be sacred if I am ordered to disobey it….
    “From this day until death, the Secret and Honorable Society of the Silent Inquest is my first family, my first love, and
     my sole master, even to death.”
    As he finished repeating the oath, a voice said, “The brand on your leg is your mark—the mark that you are chosen. Your life
     is bound to it—if you deface it or remove it, you shall in that instant die. You are ours, and we are yours. And together
     we rule the world. Welcome.”
    The bright lights went down, and a cluster of old men moved around him, and hugged him, and gave him the clasp of