The Crystal Chalice (Book 1) by R.J. Grieve Read Free Book Online Page B

- with disastrous results for someone who never looked where he
was sitting before he did so. Occasionally she lost her temper with the old
Sage’s slovenly habits and threw books and any other easily portable object at
him. Elorin entered his study one day to find him hiding under the table while
books and glass phials whizzed across the room, apparently of their own
volition.
     “I spilt red dye on the table she had just
polished,” wailed Relisar from beneath the table. He clapped his hands over his
ears as a jar hit the wall with a deafening crash. “It’s only lucky for me she
is such a terrible shot.”
     “Keesha!” Elorin cried. “Keesha, don’t be angry with
him. He doesn’t mean to provoke you, you know. Indeed he holds you in the
highest regard, as do we all. I will clean up the dye he spilt.”
     Silence fell. Relisar cautiously eased his head up above
the table.
     “Do you think that’s done it?” he asked.
     A small book flew across the room and hit him on the
nose. 
     
     After such enlivening sessions, Elorin enjoyed
escaping for her daily ride in the country. Sometimes, to her delight, the
Prince accompanied her, but as the date for his departure drew nearer, she more
often went alone. She grew to know and love the rich countryside around the
capital. The quiet lanes edged by golden trees, their leaves falling like an
unclaimed fortune to the ground. The hedgerows still laden with glowing red
berries and the well-tended fields, sometimes dusted with ground-mist as
ephemeral as spiders’ webs, from which the farmhouses arose as if enchanted.
The only thing that marred her pleasure in these lovely afternoons was the
hostile looks and muttering that followed her passage through the city. Each
day it seemed to get worse, although she tried her best to be discreet. It
finally came to a head the day before the Prince’s departure.
      She was returning from her ride a little later than
usual. Darkness was falling by the time she crossed the bridge to the city gate
and began to ascend the streets. She reached a square where a market was held
during the daytime, expecting it to be empty, but many of the stalls were just
beginning to pack up and there was still quite a crowd milling around them. The
inns and shops around the square all had their doors and windows open, allowing
light to spill out over the cobbles to mingle with the torches that some of the
stall owners had lit. Elorin began to guide her horse through the edge of the
crowd. She had become almost accustomed to receiving hard looks, so that she
saw nothing amiss when those she passed glared at her. She guessed it was
mainly disappointment about Relisar’s failure to produce the Champion and
persuaded herself that it was nothing personal. But tonight was different.
Something in the atmosphere was not right. Something in the attitude of the
crowd was making her uneasy. Her feelings were transmitted to her horse, which
began to sidle and become difficult to manage. The crowd ahead was so dense
that she feared trying to force her way through. So she turned in the saddle,
thinking of retreat, only to find that the throng had closed behind her.
     “There she is,” said someone, louder than the rest.
“The one with no name. The one with no past.”
     “Relisar’s mistake!” scoffed another.
     “She brings us ill-fortune at a time when our Prince
goes to face that beast in the mountains.”
     “Perhaps she is a demon, summoned by mistake by the
old fool.”
     “Everyone knows demons have no past, they spring
ready-formed from the mouth of the Destroyer.”
     Elorin’s unease was rapidly turning to fear. “I’m
just a person like yourselves,” she said to the man nearest her. “I don’t know
what Relisar got wrong but I’m just a human being.”
     She would have been better to have held her peace.
     “The Terrible One has sent her to spy on us, to
betray our Prince and send him to his death.”
     “No!” she