The Lesser Kindred (ttolk-2) by Elizabeth Kerner Read Free Book Online Page B

Akor, if Jamie could but know it.
    "I tried for years to walk upright," said Varien, "but our legs simply are not shaped for it. My joints ached for days every time I tried, and I finally gave it up." He had calmed down a little and stood now before the fire, warming his hands.
    "How old were you then?" I asked, teasing him. "You told me you had practiced landing on two feet, but you never said I word about this."
    He paused a moment, smiling at old folly. "I was past my majority, but not long past, when I first tried. I was in my sixth kell that first time, and just over a hundred years from my ceat when I admitted defeat." He turned and smiled at inc. "It was hard to surrender such a desire, my heart, but I was nearly my full size by then and hard-pressed to explain to Shikrar why I found it so difficult to walk for a month. It hurt terribly, I was an idiot to try."
     
    "What's a ceat?" I asked.
    "For that matter, what's a kell?" asked Jamie.
    "A kell is a hundred winters," said Varien, gazing now at the flames, his voice calm and peaceful in the firelit darkness, "and a ceat is the halfway point in the lives of the Kantri, when we have lived twice the time of our majority and half the full span of our lives. It is a time for celebration, for noting the prime of one's life and rejoicing in it. A ceat is ten kells, a thousand winters. My own ceat passed just twelve—no, thirteen winters gone now."
    Jamie swore vigorously, and though the firelight obscured his face I heard the strange note in his voice as he spoke. "Are you seriously trying to tell me you're more than a thousand years old?" I couldn't tell if it was fear or disbelief or anger, or some mixture of the three.
    Varien, unmoved, said, "I speak only the truth in this, Jameth of Arinoc. I have seen a thousand and thirteen winters, and were I still of the Kantri I should hope to see yet a thousand more. We are a very long-lived people; if nothing hurries it, many of us can hope to see the turn of our second ceat ere death comes to claim us."
    "Damnation!" cried Jamie. He could sit no longer; he sprang from his chair and began to pace the room—away from the fire and Varien—then all in a moment turned and , came straight to me, ignoring Varien altogether. He stood before me, his face to my amazement a mask of hurt. "La-nen, damn it, what has come over you? Why are you two doing this? You know there is nothing I would condemn, nothing I could ever deny you. Why invent so mad a tale? Do you not trust me to love you after all these years?" His voice thickened. "Have you gone so far from me, lass, in so short a time?"
    I stood to face him, put my hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. Well, looked down. I have been taller than Jamie since I was twelve, but suddenly he seemed small and fragile. That came as a shock.
    "Jamie, my hand on my heart and my soul to the Lady, I swear, I give you my solemn oath this is not a tale. It is the exact truth," I said. The look of doubt and betrayal in his eyes was terrible to bear. "Do you think I don't know it sounds insane?" I said angrily. "I haven't gone mad, and you know me too well for me to ever try to lie to you. It's all true, Jamie. All of it. If I hadn't been there I wouldn't believe it either, but I swear on my soul it's true. I first met Varien when he was Akor, the Lord of the Kantri, the True Dragons. I loved him even then, knowing that nothing could ever come of such a love. I saw him fight a demon master and I saw the terrible wounds that tore him apart. Sweet Lady, I saw bone through one of them." I shuddered and passed my hand over my face, trying to dismiss the vision of Akor so horribly wounded by my own father, Marik. "Shikrar, Kedra and Idai carried him to his chambers, and there he—well, we thought he died, and with his friends I mourned him. I myself found Varien, as he is now, mere hours after the death of my beloved Akor, naked as a newborn and lying on the ashes of the dragon he had