Path of Honor by Diana Pharaoh Francis Read Free Book Online Page A

maggots and flies. Reisil swallowed, her tongue dry and feeling too large for her mouth. How could she hope to defeat this devastation with crippled magic?
    Reisil remembered the wizard circle, the tremendous surge of power, of knowing she could call lightning. The blistering power that had filled her then, the glorious, rich fullness when she had grown back Reimon’s arm in that little grass hut on the Vorshtar plain. That power could pinch out the plague like a blown candle.
    But she didn’t have it anymore. Maybe she never did. Then the Lady’s hand had guided her. That hand was gone now. Reisil stopped, staring around her at the bodies scattered like tortured dolls. Most people, the ones who didn’t blame her, said the wizards had done this. And she knew, down to the soles of her feet, that it was true. The plague suited the wizards’ style perfectly. It did their dirty work for them, efficiently, with no wasted energy.
    They will pay, Reisil promised herself. I will make them pay.
    Halfway down the line of tables, Reisil found a girl still alive. She lay sprawled half on one side as if she’d tried to curl into a ball. Her hands were black halfway to her elbows, and her feet were black where they protruded from her skirts. Her breath came in wheezing gasps, and she jerked and twitched in agony. Reisil could hear a soft, crackling sound, like crumpling paper, and realized that it came from the blackened limbs, the gases within bubbling and popping. The girl gave a little groan, her mouth moving, her eyes closed.
    “Here,” Reisil called to Sodur, who dropped down beside her.
    “By the Lady,” he whispered.
    “I’m going to try to heal her.”
    Reisil reached down inside herself. To her astonishment, the magic answered immediately, roaring up ferociously to engulf her with volcanic heat. Power crackled over her skin and snapped in the air around her. Reisil snatched her hands up to her chest. Sodur grunted and scuttled aside as the searing heat licked at him.
    Reisil struggled against the rising power. Either it came too fast and hard or it came not at all. What use was magic if she couldn’t control it? Long moments passed, her mouth growing parched, her skin feeling stretched and tight as the heat grew more intense.
    At last she managed to contain the magic, but it pulled at her like a chained animal, snapping and growling.
    She laid tentative fingers on the girl’s chest, her light touch making the girl twitch and moan. Reisil closed her eyes, concentrating, moving inside. The girl’s body was as bloated and rotten as a corpse floating in a river. Reisil shuddered as she explored the damage. Collapsed blood-ways; pulpy, bruised organs; putrid, decaying flesh. Reisil couldn’t imagine how the girl still clung to life.
    She slid inside on a thick tendril of magic, wincing at the girl’s pained cry of protest, the way her body twitched and flinched. Reisil tried to thin the magic, but to no avail. She pushed further along, determined to do what she had to do quickly. Elation rolled through her as she went deeper. It was working!
    How long she sat over the girl, she didn’t know. Over and over again she repaired tattered nets of veins and arteries, restored putrid flesh, swallowed poisons and corrosion. But corruption returned, sliding unabashedly in behind her as she moved on to the next repair. She was besieged on all sides. Over and over she sought the epicenter of the body’s disaster, the source of the spreading horror. Over and over.
    The girl died.
    Reisil reeled back, feeling the child’s life fleeing away, trying to catch it with spectral hands. But the girl was gone, her body a patchwork of healed flesh and voracious rot. Reisil sobbed, the heels of her hands pressed hard against her eyes, her fingers curling hard into her scalp. She felt Sodur’s hands on her shoulders, pulling her against him in a rough embrace. Dry, racking sobs shook her like a sapling in a rough wind.
    “Next time, next