Feast of Souls by C. S. Friedman Read Free Book Online Page B

weaker students through Transition safely, but it cannot make them fit for what comes after.
    Forgive me, my fierce little whore. And forgive the gods, who have decreed that all birth must be agony.
    And then—
    He can sense it in her. A sudden awareness of something outside herself. Beyond the clouds, beyond the wind, beyond the parts of the earth that man has given names to. A source of power outside herself, like but unlike the athra whose flow trickles to a stop within her soul. She grasps at it but it eludes her. No ! she screams. I will not fail ! Another spark takes its place and she focuses her will upon it, desperate to lay claim to it before her flesh expires. Ethanus can taste her determination on his tongue, the sudden elation of understanding. This, this is what she was meant to discover—this foreign spark that is not soulfire, but might be bound and made to take its place. Why did Ethanus not simply tell her that? Why has he not taught her the tricks she needs to tame it? Now she must wrestle with Death even as she races to weave a link between herself and this distant power, so strong that no force wielded by man or god can ever sever it.
    And he knows it before she does, when she has won. He knows because he has watched other apprentices expire at this point, consumed at the very threshold of immortality. In them the final sparks within their own souls had died before they could claim this new power, and Death had dragged them screaming into oblivion. In her… the ice within her veins cracks… the strangled heart dares a new beat… the breath that has been all but choked off by the force of her trials draws inward once again, bringing warmth to her lungs. He knows before she does because he knows what signs to watch for. She… she knows only that awareness of a foreign power throbs within her now like a second heartbeat, and that her flesh draws strength from it, easier with each passing breath.
    When she is sure of what she has done, and sure it cannot be undone, she looks at him. There are tears in her eyes, red tears, for her body has squeezed forth blood in its exertions. How appropriate , he thinks. There were tears in his own but he wiped them away before she could notice. He does not want her thinking to question what emotions spawned them.
    “I live,” she says, and in that phrase are captured a thousand things unsaid. A thousand questions.
    “Yes,” he responds. Answering them all.
    “I am… Magister?”
    He gazes at her for a moment. Loving her, as he had not expected ever to love. Look one last time upon her in her innocence , told himself, for you are about to destroy that innocence forever.
    “You may use the power as you will,” he says quietly to her, “for whatever purpose you like. You will not die. You have learned to draw your athra from other places, other sources. So it shall always be for you. When one source fails, you will find another. No Magister who truly desires life has ever failed to do so.”
    “Then what?” she said. “What’s wrong? You spoke of a trial. Is that over?”
    For a long moment he just looks at her. Fixing in his mind the picture of what she is now, before (the Truth makes her into something else. A creature of legend, by virtue of her sex. A creature of darkness, by virtue of her choice.
    “But one more thing,” he says. “One final lesson.”
    She waits.
    “Know this, Kamala: that there is no source of athra in all the universe which can sustain you, save that which is contained within the souls of living men.”
    The distant clouds move across the face of the moon. The clearing is dark and silent.
    “Now,” he says, “you are a Magister.”

Chapter Five
    “So” Ramirus said. His voice echoed in the vast chamber like a ghost’s cry in a crypt. “Prince Ando-van is dying. And a Magister is responsible.” He spread his hands broadly to indicate the room, its occupants, and all that their presence implied. “You see now why I have