Wizard of the Grove Read Online Free PDF Page B

and Rael felt himself turning pink. “Yes, sir, I’d like to go with you.”
    When the king and the heir rode out that evening, they wore plain armor and took only two of the Palace Guard, but everyone in the camp knew the iron-haired warrior and the young man with the fire-green eyes.
    Rael drank in the sights and sounds and smells: the kraken pennant of Cei, blood red against the gray of evening; two men cursing genially as they diced; sweat and leather and steel. Here was a different world from those he had known—the forest and the court—cruder, less disciplined, more rawly sensual.
    Raen watched the tall young man riding beside him with pride, and some amusement, as his son tried to take in everything without appearing to notice anything at all. He submerged the thought that in war young men die and he buried the fear that this one he loved so dearly could be taken from him.
    The men were in good spirits and some called out to the riders as they passed. They had a long march ahead with Lord Death waiting at the end of it and a soldier, even a temporary soldier, makes merry when he can. Many of the sentiments were not those normally heard in the presence of the king and the heir to the throne. A grizzled archer bellowed out a riddle so coarse that the prince blushed, but the King roared with laughter and gave back the answer.
    â€œAye, the king knows his women,” slurred a loud voice from the crowd. “Pity he can’t find a real one to get a son on.”
    Raen stopped laughing. Silence fell. So complete a silence it was possible to hear the soft whistle of the horses’ breath. He held up a hand to stop the Guard from riding forward, and watched his son. He remembered how Milthra had handed him the squalling, naked babe, the love in her eyes lighting up the whole Grove. When Rael looked up, he nodded.
    A pulse beat in Rael’s throat like a wild thing held prisoner, but it was the only movement visible. His eyes flamed and one by one, not even aware they did it, men stepped aside until a massive soldier stood alone.
    Silently, Rael swung off his horse. Slowly and deliberately, as if afraid a sudden movement would release the emotions held rigidly in check, he moved to stand before the man. He felt his mother’s heritage well up within him. The strength of the tree. The strength to withstand wind and storm. The strength to root into bedrock and hold on. His blood sang and his eyes blazed. And his fists clenched, for he was also his father’s son.
    â€œYou have no right to speak of my mother.”
    His voice was so soft it might have been the passing breeze that spoke.
    Swaying unsteadily on tree-trunk legs, either too foolish or too befuddled by wine to see the threat in the slim young man who faced him, the soldier narrowed his eyes belligerently. “Your mother,” he slurred, “was likely a common street whore who spread . . .”
    In the stillness, the sound of Rael’s fist striking the other’s jaw rang out like a thunderclap. The soldier’s head snapped back, he hung for a moment on the night, and then crumpled to the ground.
    Still outwardly emotionless, Rael remounted. He ignored the blood running down his fingers from where the skin had split over a knuckle. Only the trembling of his hand as he took up the reins betrayed that he felt anything at all.
    â€œHis neck’s broken,” said the old archer looking up from the body. “He’s dead.”
    â€œThen bury him,” said the king. And they rode in silence back to the palace where they went to their separate rooms and spent the rest of the night staring sleeplessly in the direction of the forest.
    *   *   *
    The Grove was silver and shadow in the moonlight. Clothed in night, its beauty became sharp edges and satin blackness, drawing away from the world of mortals to that of an older time. Within the circle of birches, no nightbirds called, no