Path of Honor by Diana Pharaoh Francis Read Free Book Online

but it’s more than just show. We’re going to become what we appear to be.
    And she winced as she remembered the advice from her mentor Elutark, the advice that had carried her through becoming ahalad-kaaslane : You are who you pretend to be . She thought of the way Sodur seemed to put on and remove masks in the last day. Maybe Elutark was wrong. Maybe you weren’t who you pretended to be.
    She was wrenched back to Veneston as the stench wafting from the shearing sheds overwhelmed her. She coughed, pressing her hand to her lips.
    No time for self-pity, she scolded herself. People are dying .
    She stopped outside the latched door of the main shed. Stacked beside the wall were charred logs. The side of the building was scorched. Someone had tried to burn the place with the sick inside.
    “If you can’t cure them, burn them. After all, they’re only friends and family,” she said acidly. Sodur came to stand beside her, saying nothing.
    Reisil reached for the latch, a twist of wire securing it from the outside. She paused, her eyes streaming at the unrelenting smell. After a moment, she motioned Sodur to follow her around behind the sheds. A row of kitchen gardens stretched the length of the row, taking advantage of the ready fertilizer and sunny southern exposure. Now, however, most of the neat patches were withered and brown.
    Reisil walked along the row until she found a patch of lavender and rosemary growing in a green clump amidst the ruin of vegetables. She collected a handful of each and retreated to the cistern at the end of the garden row. She untied her scarf from her neck and dipped it in the tepid water before rubbing it thoroughly with the two herbs. The resulting odor was pungent and did much to cover the stench when she tied the scarf across her nose and mouth. Sodur followed suit.
    “Are you ready?” he asked, and the doubt in his voice made Reisil’s spine snap straight, glad now that she had not admitted her failure to summon her magic when the nokulas attacked.
    “I am a tark,” she replied, sidestepping him. She returned to the doorway, unfastening the wire and latch. An angled chute led up a ramp into the wide shearing area. The dimly lit oval stretched a hundred feet in length and was dominated by rows of shearing tables. The interior wall around the oval was lined with slatted wooden bins for the wool. Gates leading into the holding pens between the inner and outer wall interspersed the bins every ten feet. Each of these small enclosures was designed to hold a dozen sheep. No doubt the place doubled in winter as both a barn and a village gathering area for meetings and celebrations. A dusty red ribbon dangled limply from an overhead beam. No one was celebrating now.
    The dead and the sick littered the tables and dirt floors. It looked as if many had collapsed in their tracks while tending others. The miasma of death, putrefaction and feces made Reisil’s eyes burn and her stomach buck despite the masking scent of lavender and rosemary. Ignoring her discomfort, she marched resolutely to the closest table.
    The man was dead. He wore only a filthy loincloth around his hips. His arms and legs were black up to nearly the shoulders and hips and swollen to five times their normal size. Black scabs pocked the surface between yellow blisters. His legs and the table were thick with dried, bloody feces. His face was smeared with the blood that had trickled from his eyes, nose and mouth. His tongue protruded from between his lips. His skin, where it wasn’t black and swollen, was yellowed and covered with a purple rash. Flies crawled over him and clustered in his eyes and mouth.
    Reisil moved to the next table and the next, her jaw clenching tighter and tighter with every death until she thought her teeth would crack. She paused to kneel and check those lying on the floor. In some, the blackened arms and legs had ruptured from the pressure of the escaping gases within, the putrid inner flesh crawling with