Master of Crows by Grace Draven Read Free Book Online Page A

“You’ll have to do without her for a time.  I’ve delayed in teaching my new apprentice her lessons.  And I’m curious what Conclave taught her.”
    The giant glowered at him and rose abruptly from the bench.  Silhara wasn’t fast enough to stop him from snatching the teapot off the table and the cup out of his hand.  The servant stalked to the dry sink and dropped the dishes in with a clatter.
    Silhara might have reprimanded him had not Martise sat across from him.  She straightened to rigid attention, her pale features even more bloodless as she waited for his instructions.
    “Have Gurn take you to the great hall.  I’ll meet you there.  You’re Conclave-trained, yet powerless.  Let’s see what might awaken your magic.” 
    Guilt wormed a path into him.  He didn’t lie.  If she didn’t run screaming back to Asher as he hoped, he had every intention of finding her Gift and forcing it to manifest.  She just might not like his methods.
    He left her with Gurn in the sunlit kitchen and returned to his chamber to dress.  A part of him wished to stay, to bask in the morning warmth and savor the smell of rising dough as Gurn prepared his daily baking. The kitchen was a sanctuary of sorts, much like his bedroom once was.  With Corruption’s rise, his chamber was less a retreat and more a battleground between him and the fallen god.  He needed sleep, real sleep; not the brief catnaps in which he half-slumbered, braced for the god’s inevitable invasion into his dreams.
    Corruption’s touch was bewitching and lush, luring him with promises of immeasurable power, of respect, of revenge, even as it made him bleed and convulse.  He was no longer the bastard get of a wharf prostitute but a ruler of empires, an immortal mage.  With those promises came demands.  Complete subjugation to another’s will, absolute obeisance to the vilest whoremaster.  Could he revile the second enough to resist the temptation of the first?
    Silhara closed his door and strode to the open window.  The star pulsed in the distance.  “Still here?” he asked softly.  “Don’t you have something better to do?  Plagues to cast?  Cities to destroy?”
    A sharp burst of pain behind his eyes made him wince.  Corruption’s amusement jittered down his bones.  I only await you, Avatar .
    He slammed the shutters closed, plunging the room into darkness.  Fragile wood never kept out nightmares, but the illusion hid the god’s reality lurking on the horizon.
    “Not yet,” he muttered and cast a spell that flooded the chamber in witch light.  His fingers fluttered along the scar encircling his neck.  Ah, to return to simpler times.  At least then his executioner had been a dock council with no mercy for a starving thief.  Now he had Conclave in his kitchen and Corruption on his doorstep, each wanting to destroy him in their own unique and horrific way.
    He had no time for either annoyance.  There were oranges to harvest and get to market, bargains to negotiate with the Kurmans and buildings to repair.  An honest man’s work was never done—not that he was a particularly honest man.
    Martise was waiting for him near the hall’s cold hearth, surrounded by the flickering sparkle of dust motes.  She looked almost ethereal, standing so regal and poised—a pallid queen adorned in spider web and brown wool.
    She bowed. “Master.”
    Silhara half expected a complaint about his delay, but none was forthcoming, and her face remained serene as he circled her, breathing in her scent—sleep and spring mint. “What is the incantation for levitation?”
     “Which one?  Mysanthanese or Hourlis?”
    He halted in front of her, intrigued.  “Both.”
    Her invocations were flawless, her accents in perfect placement, voice intonation correct.  The Mysanthanese levitation should have lifted her above his head; the Hourlis one to the rafters, yet her feet remained planted firmly on the ground.  If not for Cael’s reaction to