Wheel of the Infinite Read Online Free PDF

didn’t think she had heard of that before. She forged on anyway, “They aren’t always omens, though people think ...”
    He was shaking his head. He pointed toward a stone block set back against the wall of the stall, and angled the lamp so the light fell more fully on it. Hanging out of the stone was the front half of the lizard.
    Maskelle wet her lips, feeling a coldness in the pit of her stomach. She said, “All right, that one is, uh . . . odd.” The front half of the moray hung limply out of the stone, its front legs and the wicked oblong head like some bizarre decoration. The stone itself was a square block with cracked mortar on the sides, as if it had been broken out of a wall.
    “Could this be the result of your curse?” the priest asked.
    Maskelle lifted a brow, but she found the bluntness rather refreshing. “A dark power, following in my wake, you mean? It’s possible. When did it happen?”
    “Six days ago.”
    She shook her head, a little surprised. “I wasn’t in this province yet. We’ve been travelling hard.”
    He turned away, the shadows falling over the monstrosity in the rock as the lamp was withdrawn.
    Maskelle followed him out into the relatively fresh air of the court, where the other priests still waited outside. One of them must have realized she wasn’t just an ordinary, albeit eccentric, Voice travelling the Great Road and told his fellows; the tension emanating from them was palpable now. The lead priest stopped and eyed her narrowly. He said, “When I saw you, I had hoped for an easy answer.”
    She resisted the impulse to say something philosophical about easy answers. She didn’t suppose him to have any more patience with such platitudes than she did. Instead, she said, “If it’s an omen, it’s a frightening one. I’ll tell the Celestial One of it when I see him.”
    “If it is a dark power . . .”
    It would be simpler if it was a byproduct of her curse, a wandering dark power that corrupted whatever it touched, following in her wake. “If it’s a dark power, I’ll deal with it. I haven’t been with the Adversary for seven years, but He does take care of His own.”
    There was a stifled noise of shock and fear from one of the other priests. The lead priest glanced back at them, frowning. He turned back to her, and she could see him recalling what she was, despite everything. He hesitated, then said, “I offer you our hospitality . . . The guesthouse . . .”
    His companions were badly startled, but evidently their fear of her was still an abstraction, whereas their fear of him was firmly founded, and they made no open protest. She smiled, badly tempted, and she knew she hadn’t quite left the desire to cause chaos behind. She shook her head. “No, we both know how that would end.”
    He misunderstood and his grey eyes turned angry. Maskelle sighed. She had forgotten what it was like to deal with the young of the well-born. She said, gently, “You can stand bond for everyone in your temple, but you aren’t their conscience, and I don’t have the time to waste in fighting.”
    He still watched her grimly, no sign of any bend in that stiff spine. Then he stepped back and gave her a full sixth-degree bow, only one degree less than the rank actually due her. He turned away and his retinue followed with less grace, one of them sneaking her an abbreviated bow behind the backs of the others.
    Maskelle walked slowly through the dark, back to the wagons where Rastim and Old Mali waited for her by the fire. Rastim let out his breath in relief when he saw her and Old Mali grunted in eloquent comment. “Trouble?” Rastim asked her.
    She nodded and leaned her cheek against the staff. Trouble. She had known it would happen, but perhaps she hadn’t thought it would be so soon.
Maybe I am too old for this
, she thought.
Too old for war, too mean-tempered for peace
.
    “Should we move on tonight?” Rastim sounded worried.
    Maskelle looked around. A few other members of the