The Saints of the Sword Read Free Page A

desperate but afraid to touch him. “But you can find out in Nar City.”
    “All right,” agreed Alazrian. “I’ll look when I get there. Now rest. Please, you’re getting weaker.”
    “I
am
weaker. Weaker by the moment.” Calida’s face betrayed the painful battle going on inside her. She was perspiring now, and the scar on her forehead flushed ruby red. “I want to touch you,” she said. “I want you to look into my heart. Do that for me, so you never forget how much you mean to me. But do not heal me, you hear?”
    Alazrian didn’t know how to respond. His touch could bring her back to life, and if he felt her love for him he might not be able to resist the urge to heal.
    Lady Calida put out her hand. It was frail and bony, a crone’s hand. Alazrian couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe. Her fingers twitched as she reached out. Their eyes locked, and there was so much strength in her stare that Alazrian’s conviction faltered. Slowly he took up her hand, cradling it in his palm. At once the power seized him. The magic bathed him in its warmth, and for the strangest moment he
was
Calida. Her heart and mind were his, like a book open for reading. Lady Calida was the purest thing he had ever experienced, and her love for him was boundless; it rocked him like a baby. But he went deeper still, closing his eyes and not moving, finding things he had never expected to find. He felt Elrad Leth’s rage and a fist flying out to strike her, and then he felt forgiveness of a kind only saints possess.
    Then, suddenly, there was a shift in the feelings. Anticipating something great, Alazrian held fast to his mother’s hand. He opened his eyes and saw that she had closed herown, thinking of something special, something she desperately wanted to convey. In the mirror of his mind Alazrian saw a young woman who was his mother, beautiful and not much older than Alazrian himself. She was with a man, also young, with shocking white hair and a gentle face. A Triin.
    Jakiras.
    Alazrian locked on the image of his father. His mother’s love for this stranger poured into him, and he felt profoundly sorry for her, that she had not stayed with the stranger from Lucel-Lor, and that her father had given her to Elrad Leth.
    Then the image of the young lovers vanished, and in its place came an anguished yearning for death. Alazrian swayed, sickened by his mother’s pain. But he didn’t release her hand. He held it, lost in his empathic fugue, and let time slip into something meaningless. His mother was dying, here in the castle they had usurped from Richius Vantran, in a place she hated because it wasn’t home. Her hand went from burning hot to vaguely warm, and there was no death rattle or visions of God. There was only emptiness.
    His mother was dead.
    Alazrian carefully laid down her hand, then wiped his tears with his shirt sleeve.
    “I’ll go to the Black City,” he promised. “I’ll find out what I am.”

ONE
    D akel the Inquisitor danced across the marble floor, his satin robes alive with candlelight. A dozen candelabra tossed shadows around him, making him look taller than his six feet. In his hand was a gilded scroll, which he declined to read until the most dramatic moment. His ebony hair writhed around his shoulders as he moved with practiced grace before the hundred gathered eyes, and his voice filled the chamber. The crowd was silent as he spoke, their gazes alternating between his compelling countenance and the man on the dais. Dakel pointed an accusing finger at the man as he spoke.
    “I have charges, citizens of Nar,” he declared. “Appalling evidence of the duke’s crimes.” He held up the scroll for effect. “Enough to shock you good people, I’m sure.”
    From his chair atop the marble dais, Duke Angoris of Dragon’s Beak stared in horror at the Inquisitor, his face a sickly white. He had already endured half an hour of Dakel’s rhetoric, and the barrage was taking its toll. He licked his lips