The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One Read Free Page A

There, kings cravedsons, and looked to their wives to breed. No one cared much about royal sisters or nieces there.
    She sighed and rolled on to her side, watching the sparks of the hearth through the wicker screen around her bedplace. If only she’d been born into a fisher family, or to farmers …
    Stop thinking , she told herself. Just sleep .
    Sleep would not bring peace, though, not on this night. As a healer, she should have known that this new grief would conjure the old; the pain that had stalked her this past year, wasting her flesh. She should have given herself a special draught to take away the visions in the night.
    But she forgot.
    And so, in the darkest hour before dawn, she began to dream. First came swirling visions of her uncle on his horse. She was hanging on his bridle, pleading with him to take her up before him. But his cold helm was over his eyes, and he kicked up his steed and raced away, the horse becoming a gull as it ran.
    She tried to follow him, for something was chasing her, bearing down on her … but her legs were caught as if in mud, and she stumbled, sobbing, in a marsh … Then there was Linnet before a fire, spinning, endlessly spinning, her wool a pool of scarlet at her feet … and the skein reached out tentacles to tangle around Rhiann’s legs …
    And then, with shocking suddenness, the confusion cleared. There was a doorway in the air, and the taste of a salt breeze blew through it. It was the air of the Sacred Isle. She was back there.
    And part of her realized what lay on the other side of the door, and frantically tried to wake itself. Yet it was far too late. The memories took hold of her limbs and drew her through, eager to live again …
    … Her feet crunch on shells .
    Spray hangs thick on the shore, and through it swim red sails and sharp prows that are black against the sun. The acrid smell of smoke is on the wind.
    Sounds drift closer. A clang as sword bites sword. The hissing whine of spears. The thud of iron points in warm flesh …
    There stands her foster-father Kell, shield raised against a tide of north-men with fierce eyes. And there, his head rolls bloody in the spume, one eye cast back to its home.
    There, little brother Talen stumbles, clutching his belly as pale guts spill between his fingers, his first sword fallen on the sands. And there, a screaming woman flings herself on the boy; her foster-mother Elavra, peal of anguish cut short by burly hands around her slim throat …
    And there … right there … her gentle sister Marda is splayed beneath a grunting man, copper hair tangled in seaweed …
    Then she sees no more, dear Goddess, no more. Nothing but her own hands, pale as dead fish on the dark rocks as she scrambles away,sobbing. Run, Rhiann! Away from the iron-hot smell of blood, and the crackling of flames, away from the harsh shout behind …
    In the bed, Rhiann’s eyelids fluttered as she tried to wrench herself out of the dream. That shout! She groped for consciousness, a cry on her lips, until at last her eyes opened and she desperately blinked away sleep.
    The dazzling brightness of the dream was gone, and in its place, shifting fire-shadows on a mud wall. She couldn’t move her legs, the sheet held her down, stifling her … she would be sick. A burning rose in her gullet, like it did that day on the beach.
    The day of the raid … yes … a year ago this night …
    She clapped a hand to her mouth, gagging. The wave of nausea surged and peaked, and then subsided, until at last she lay, gasping for breath. Her family … her beloved foster-family … was torn from her heart one year ago. By day, it felt like a lifetime; in her dreams, only yesterday.
    All noble children were fostered out young, to strengthen the kin bonds, and foster-kin were therefore held dearer than blood-kin. But as Rhiann only had Linnet, they had meant even more to her. Kell and Elavra had sheltered her as she began her Sacred Isle training, and taught her how to be a royal