Blood of the Emperor by Tracy Hickman Read Free Book Online Page A

a warrior by training and had marched their army northward around the Mistral Peninsula as a matter of basic tactics. He wanted to insure that the elves of Port Glorious would not threaten the families and support in the rear of their column.
    Mostly, however, he had simply not cared what Belag did with the Army of the Prophet. The manticores were flush with their victory over the Legion of the Northern Fist and were itching for another fight. The elf Soen had also been insistent about taking control of an Aether Well and Ethis suggested Port Glorious as the most likely place to take one. It was Ethis who had negotiated with the dragons, bringing them south across the Desolation and ultimately across the Straits of Erebus. It was largely his doing that the dragons had joined them in defeating the Cohort in Port Glorious.
    All of this had been accomplished in Drakis’ name.
    He didn’t give a damn for any of it. None of it mattered because it did not change the fact that Mala was gone and he did not know how to fill the well of his grief.
    Drakis stepped down one of the paths. The blooms on either side were fragrant, their clean, sweet scent taking him back to House Timuran and the garden that was now a ruin but had once been so beautiful. He stepped up to the reflecting pool around the Aether Well
    What have I done but destroy anything that I thought was worthwhile?
Drakis mused.
    “If you’ve come for a bath, you’re too late,” Mala said, her shoulders just above the surface as she moved her arms back and forth through the water. Drakis could still smell the dense foliage and the dark earth mixed with the damp mists from the waterfall.
    Her short red hair was wet and pushed back from her high forehead. Her emerald eyes had a playful look.
    “I claimed this pool and it is mine by right. I will not share my private little paradise with anyone else—no matter how badly they need bathing—and you, most certainly, are desperately in need of a bath.”
    “It was all I wanted,” Drakis smiled at the memory, pain playing at the corners of his eyes. “A life of my own to share…”
    A cloud passed over the subatria, casting a shadow across the garden.
    Drakis closed his eyes again but the sound filled his mind. Mala’s voice again, now pleading in agony, not with him but with unseen demons. Her words scarred his soul. “You promised to keep me awayfrom him most of all! The demons are nothing next to his pain! He loved me! He hurt me! I want him! I hate him!” Her voice dropped to a whimper. “Please take me home! I cannot live with what he feels. I cannot live with what
I
feel. I want to never know that pain again. I want to forget.”
    “Drakis?”
    He opened his eyes to the sound of another voice. He lacked the will to turn and face the intruder into the garden of his despair. “What is it?”
    “You are needed,” she said simply.
    Drakis turned and tried to focus his eyes on the figure that had addressed him. Urulani, daughter of the Sondau Clan and former captain of the
Cydron
appeared inside the main gates to the garden, the long fingers of her hands resting impatiently on her hips. Her tall, slender body stood casually, arms akimbo, as she looked back at him from large, brown eyes set above her pronounced cheekbones. Her skin was a deep black—as deep a black as the middle of the night and as smooth and unblemished as pure silk. Her thick, black hair was pulled back from the high forehead of her oval face and gathered into an explosion of curls at the back of her head. Her lips were thick and plump around her generous mouth—drawn slightly up at one corner as though being amused by some secret thought. She still wore the same buckskin breeches as when he had first met her but the vest had been replaced by a leather doublet more practical to her new status as a dragon-rider and now as Air Mistress.
    Drakis turned back to gaze into the still surface of the pool at his feet. “Who needs