Who Walks in Flame Read Online Free PDF

stop him. Yet she feels his death approaching. They have won the day and need only to outlast him.
    She crawls toward Kerenthos. “Kill me, torture me, do as you will,” she says to the Witch-King, “but I will suffer at my love’s side.”
    Khuar-na smiles in a most sinister way. "I am not a fool, woman. I know the game you're playing. Trying to delay me, to hold out just a little longer. But I will not let you win. You have ruined everything. Death slithers up to me, but before it strikes, I will see that you pay for what you've done."
    He places a hand over his wound and staggers toward his huddled foes. The woman holds the man, tears streaking down her face, and with the power of her voice, she soothes his pain. Khuar-na gathers his fading strength. I must see this through. I owe that and so much more to my old friend. A rapid sequence of visions race through his mind, visions of twisting spires, of roaring crowds, of harems and feasts, and another planet he once called home.
    “You must pay for the life you stole from me. Your people must pay for centuries of transgressions. This world will burn under my rage.”
    She glances at the white-steel saber, lying ten paces away.
    “Even dying, I could kill you three times before you ever reached that blade.” 
    Crestfallen, Bregissa and Kerenthos gaze into one another’s eyes.
    “You have but a few moments left,” Khuar-na says. “Spend them wisely.”
    Bregissa clings to Kerenthos, and tenderly, they exchange proclamations of love.
    Khuar-na turns his back to them and trudges over to the Scorch-Walker. “Here you will always lie, old friend, your massive bones an eternal monument to our rage.” 
    “Hope,” Kerenthos whispers to Bregissa. “There is yet … hope for…” His body trembles and he begins to fade.
    Bregissa thinks of the seed she planted in the roots of the Oak of Antenin. She looks at her lover, and suddenly she knows, somehow, what he did. She grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him until his eyes open and he focuses on her. 
    “Kerenthos, stay with me. Keep your thoughts on the Sacred Oak. Think with all your might. We fight for it now and we shall guard it into death and beyond.”
    There is doubt in his eyes.
    For the second time she summons the full might of her voice, backed by Orthinn's spirit and her own passion, and such is the power in it that they both believe what she now says beyond any shadow of doubt: “We will guard the tree in the beyond. We will guard it forever.”
    Khuar-na, Witch-King of the Skithikri, pulls a jeweled knife from his belt and slits his own throat. He whispers a mighty incantation as his blood pools on the iron amulet hanging from his neck. 
    The wall of fire mushrooms and swallows Bregissa and Kerenthos, killing them instantly. From there, the flames spread outward. 
    Khuar-na’s last sight is that of a world ablaze.

    ***

    On the Sacred Isle of Antenin, the shockwave of flames blasts the oak. But what is already burned by divine fire cannot be burned again, even by the otherworldly magic of Khuar-na. Instead of destroying what was left of the tree, the flames restore it to life.
    New shoots spring out. Buds form and then flower. And as the heat recedes, a human embryo nurtured by the oak begins to grow rapidly and split once, twice, a half-dozen times.
    The blast also strikes the two, mysterious clay pillars, and by the power of a voice carried on the shockwave, the flames reshape them. There stands there now two beings of clay: a man and a woman who once frequented this place. Guardians for the tree and the embryos, parents for the children soon to be born.
    A hand moves. A mother smiles. One day the children of her children will fill the land and see the desert turn green once more.

Other Books by
    David Alastair Hayden

    Tales of Pawan Kor
    The Tales of Pawan Kor series can be read in any order.

    Chains of a Dark Goddess
    Wrath of the White Tigress
    Who Walks in Flame

    Storm Phase
    This