Defiant Swords (Durlindrath #2) by Robert Ryan Read Free Book Online Page B

armies – or even
magic.”
    It disturbed Brand how much she knew of him, how much she
read from his mind. Some things were easy to guess, but
others were not. Hers was a peculiar magic, but all magics had strengths and
weaknesses. He would discover her weakness in due course, and to that end he
did not mind talking. It would give him time.
    She smiled at him. It was a smile for him alone as though no
one else in the world mattered.
    “I know what it is that you most want. A simple thing it is
too. You wish to inherit what should have been yours – the chieftainship
of the Duthenor. You already wear the helm on your head, and the sword of your
forefathers is always by your side. But an usurper
rules in your place, supported by men from other tribes, and he will not be
easy to dislodge. Yet it would be a small thing for me to accomplish. For you, I could do it. I could do it with ease. And you should
know this, also. The usurper will one day be usurped himself. The wild men that
he has brought in will turn on him, and in the end they will rule the Duthenor.
And they will be harsh masters.”
    Brand was troubled, and this time he could not disguise it.
Not that it would be worth the effort to try; Durletha seemed to know more
about him than he did himself. Worse, she seemed to know his very thoughts.
    “Begone!” he said again. “Temptation will not sway me, and
fate will be what it will be.”
    For the first time, the witch showed displeasure. And in
that Brand took hope, for it seemed to him the only reason she had to be
displeased was that her offers were rejected. Yet, if she truly knew his
innermost thoughts, she would have known from the beginning that it would be
so. He was loyal, if nothing else, and Gilhain, and now Kareste, were his
friends. No force on earth, and no temptation, would cause him to break trust
with them.
    Durletha hissed. It was a frightful sound, and it was all the stranger to now see open hatred on the mask of
Kareste’s face. That hurt him, even though he knew it was not her. Suddenly, he
realized that he could hear that same hiss in the tops of the trees all around
them, and then he understood that all the while that she had been talking her voice was also reflected in the
wood. The sound of it was in the hollows of tree trunks, in the whispering of
leaves, in the slow creak and mutter of tree roots. It was in the bubbling of
water in a rill somewhere further into the wood and out of sight, and it was even in the slow seeping of water though the earth.
    He understood now what had troubled him all along about her
voice, for there was power in it, and all the while that she spoke it was
gathering itself, building, forming some spell, and only at the last did his
instincts perceive it. At the last, and perhaps too late.
    There was a sudden noise. It was shrill. From all around
them it came, and Brand understood even as it drove into his ears, turning , twisting , piercing like a hot needle, what it was. All the sound for miles had
been turned into a weapon by the witch. Her magic had taken it, transformed it,
compressed it into a single thing and sent it tunnelling into their ears. It was unbearable.
    Kareste fell off her horse, yet she managed to hold onto
Shurilgar’s staff. Brand could not think. He was dizzy, and the pain drove him
like a madness. He wanted to act, to do something to relieve it, but it only
grew and scattered his thoughts to the wind.
    All the while he heard the voice of the witch beyond the
shrill sound that speared into him. She chanted, and though he did not
understand the words, he perceived that her power was growing as the need for
subterfuge was gone. Soon, she would kill them.
    Brand struggled to control his mount. The idea came to him
to ride the witch down, but he floundered in a sea of pain and confusion. It
took him some moments to realize that the horse’s reins were no longer in his
hand but had fallen and trailed between its legs.
    Durletha’s chanting