Daughter of Ancients Read Free Page A

what was happening. Though Karon was scarcely past fifty, a tall and vigorous man with but a few threads of gray in his light hair, I had long laid away any expectation of our growing old together. He had cheated death too many times, even traveled beyond the Verges and glimpsed L’Tiere—the realm of the dead that his people called “the following life.” I feared the payment was coming due.
    The morning of the Feast of Vines was sunny and crisp, a nice change from our inordinately cold and wet spring. Though the sunlight woke me earlier than usual, Karon was already up. From the bedroom window I spotted him in the garden, walking on the path that overlooked the willow pond. Pulling a gown over my shift and sticking my feet in shoes, I hurried outdoors to join him.
    I sneaked up from behind and threw my arms around him in a fierce embrace. “Are you hiding feast gifts out here for me, good sir?”
    He groaned sharply and bent forward, as if I’d stabbed him in the gut.
    â€œHoly Annadis, Karon, you’re hurt! What is it?”
    Hunched over, he clutched his belly as if he were going to retch, his face gray, lips colorless. “Sorry . . .” He held his breath as long as he could in between short, labored gasps.
    I took his arm and led him across the damp grass to a stone bench surrounded by a bed of blue and yellow iris left soggy and bent by a late spring snowstorm. “Earth and sky! Is this what’s had you skipping meals and walking half the night?”
    He sank slowly onto the bench. “. . . was going to tell you . . . soon . . . I’m not sure . . .”
    â€œShhh.” My fingers smoothed away the tight, deep creases on his brow and stroked his broad shoulders, which were knotted and rigid. When his breathing eased a bit, I pressed one finger to his lips before he could speak. “Remember there is only truth between us.”
    He took my hand, kissed it, and pressed it to his brow before enfolding it in both of his. “I suspect it’s a growth in my stomach.” His bleak smile twisted the dagger in my heart. “I’ve tried to imagine it’s something else, but all the willing in the world hasn’t made it go away as yet. Not a pleasant prospect, I must say. When I’ve seen it in my patients, I’ve judged it best to leave nature have its will and use my power to . . . ease the way. Ah, gods, Seri, I’m so sorry.”
    Of course, Karon would not be able to ease his own way, for the enchantments of a Dar’Nethi sorcerer cannot be turned in upon the wielder for either good or ill. He’d given so much for all of us. It wasn’t fair. . . .
    Â 
    The disease devoured him. A fortnight after the Feast of Vines, Karon canceled his long-planned sojourn at the University, where he was to give the first lectures on the history of the Dar’Nethi sorcerers in the Four Realms, an enterprise dear to his heart. And as our frigid spring slogged toward an equally unseasonable summer, he relinquished his healing practice, growing weaker and so consumed by pain that he could not bear the lightest touch.
    All that our mundane world’s physicians could offer were blisterings and bleedings that would sap his remaining strength and hasten the end. And so I cursed the demands of fate, generosity, and politics that made it necessary for him to live so far from his own people, some of them Healers like himself—sorcerers who might have helped him. But only the Prince of Avonar, our old friend Ven’Dar, had the power to cross D’Arnath’s Bridge at will, and only once a year in autumn did he unbar the way between magical Gondai and our mundane world and come to exchange news and greetings. Autumn was months away. Karon would never last so long.
    Â 
    â€œSeri, come tell him you’re going to bed. He won’t take the ajuria until he’s sure you’re not coming back. He needs it badly.”
    The slim