Griffin's Shadow by Leslie Ann Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

frighten you, but things are moving far too swiftly. I’m just so sorry that you will have this burden to carry along with everything else you’ll have to deal with.”
    “Whatever burdens I have to carry, I’ll have Ashinji to help me. As long as he’s by my side, I won’t be afraid,” Jelena replied, trying to sound as brave as she could, but realizing that Amara saw through her false courage.
    “There’s no shame in being afraid, Jelena. You are young, but I have faith in you. I believe you possess great strength—far more than you know—and you are going to need every bit it of it in the end. Now, listen carefully….”
    ~~~
    Later that night, Jelena lay awake in bed, awaiting Ashinji’s return and trying to make sense of Amara’s revelation. She turned it over and over in her mind, but from every angle, it seemed so unbelievable. Jelena had the utmost respect for Amara’s powers as a mage, and she felt certain that every one of her mother-in-law’s fellows in this mysterious Kirian Society were equally as Talented, but…
    Surely they’ve made a mistake! How can I possibly be this Key they’ve been awaiting? Shouldn’t the one chosen to carry such powerful magic be someone with the strength to control it?
    Tomorrow, Amara had promised to present her to the other members of the Kirian Society who lived in the capital, and then her training would begin in earnest.
    But what exactly am I being trained for?
    That was the one question Amara had refused to answer, saying only that, in time, Jelena would understand everything.
     

Chapter 5
    A Secret From The Past
    Raidan Onjara, Lord of Meizi, Crown Prince of Alasiri, was a troubled man.
    The cause of his disquiet lay on the desk before him, scribbled in a thin, spidery hand on two sheets of rumpled brown paper.
    Raidan re-read the report for the third time.
    Your Highness, I send you greetings.
    As an itinerant healer here in the borderlands , I have had the occasion to see many kinds of illnesses among our people, who, as you know, live in close proximity to human settlements. The folk here are largely of mixed blood, and they contract many of the same sicknesses that strike humans; however, their elven blood bestows upon them a certain resistance to diseases that would otherwise fell a human.
    Recently, I paid a visit to the farm of an okui family by the name of Lwenda. There, I saw something most peculiar and troubling. At the time of my first visit, only the father had fallen ill. According to his wife, he had complained first of a headache and sore throat. Soon afterward, he became feverish, and so weak he could not stand. Three days later, he developed hard swellings in his neck, armpits, and groin.
    When I examined him, I found the swellings to be firm, inflamed, and discolored. The patient’s wife and children were, quite naturally, terrified that he might die. I questioned the wife closely about her husband’s contacts with any humans that lived in the area. She readily admitted that both she and her husband had frequent dealings with the human folk of a certain village just across the border, as well as several human traders who traveled the area calling upon all of the farms thereabouts—human, hikui, and okui.
    She then told me a troubling tale of a sickness spreading rapidly among the humans, killing many of them. They called it the ‘black death’, because it apparently turns a human victim’s skin a mottled purple-black just before the unfortunate wretch meets a rather messy and painful end.
    In my readings, I have come across many references to the ‘black death’, so I am familiar with the symptom. Heretofore, it has been commonly believed that we elves could not contract this disease. Yet, there I stood over the sickbed of an elf, looking at a man with the unmistakable signs of the ‘black death’! I did what I could for the man, and tried to reassure his family, but I did not have much faith in my own mind that anything I did