The Raven's Shadow Read Free Page B

was a complication he could have done without. There were pieces in play there key to the wider game, skirmishes whose significance could only be appreciated by one with the vision to see the entire board. His fingers drummed on the meticulous rendering of the Glass Hills. And what was the Leahn doing in Gimrael anyway? The last Savin had sensed of him he’d been on the Western Isles, still stewing in his misery. So why was he in the desert – and why now?
    Alderan must have found something, learned something that would justify him sending a novice gaeden into the middle of a bloody uprising. Some reward that was worth the risk . . . the starseed? Savin quickly dismissed that idea; he’d spent long enough in Gimrael to be sure the stone wasn’t there, so what could it be?
    ‘What are you up to, you old fox?’ he mused.
    His gaze fell on the book weighting the edge of the map nearest his hand, a broken-spined thing whose fraying cover had once been blocked in gold. His drumming fingers slowed, then stopped. Little gold leaf remained, barely enough to pick out the shapes of the letters that spelled out the title – Chronicles of the True Faith: A History of the Founding Wars .
    Was there a clue in St Saren’s book, some hint he had missed? He sat down in his chair and pulled the battered volume towards him, letting the map roll itself up again. He didn’t need it any more. Quickly he leafed through the worn pages to the section concerning the aftermath of Gwlach’s defeat and the repercussions of Fellbane’s confession. He’d read it so many times the pages were thickened with handling, and the merest glance at the words brought their meaning flowing up from his memory into the forefront of his mind, but he made himself read it again, searching for anything he might have overlooked.
    The Lector laid plans in secret to take Corlainn’s disciples into custody, so that the stain of magic could be forever removed from the Order’s cloth. However, he was betrayed by those deepest in his counsel and the guilty, thus forewarned, fled the Holy City before arrests could be made. As word spread, more and more Knights hid themselves away in fear rather than face due justice, and the Order’s wrath upon them was terrible to behold.
    A soft chattering sound interrupted his train of thought and he looked up. Perched on the seat of the stool in her cage, long toes curled to grip the edge, the firebird watched him from the shadows with jet-bead eyes. The string securing her lacquered paper mask had rotted through days ago, and all that remained of her fine plumage now was a few bruise-coloured streaks of paint on her pale skin. As he returned her stare she cocked her head to one side as if awaiting the answer to a question.
    ‘Later,’ Savin said. She repeated the chatter, punctuating it with clacks of her curved bill. ‘I said later !’
    He returned his focus to the book on the table in front of him. At the edge of his attention, he heard the firebird hop down from her perch but paid her scant mind.
    In every town heralds cried the news. Direst censure awaited the fugitives and all who harboured or abetted them, but their punishment on earth would be as nothing when set against the judgement of the Goddess, should they not repent and go to Her with their souls burned clean. And so inquisitors charged with the capture of the maleficents were dispatched to every corner of the land, east and west and south.
    Interesting. Back then, the Holy City of Dremen had marked the northern edge of the nascent Empire. Apart from Milanthor, the wilds of the an-Archen foothills had barely been explored – Belistha was still the haunt of trappers and backwoodsmen and would not become a province in its own right for another hundred and seventy years. To the east was Leah, scene of some of the worst witch-hunts in the Empire’s history, and in the west lay the Goddess-fearing heartlands where fugitive Knights in fear for their lives would