The Light Within: A Winter's Tale by Grace Draven Read Free Book Online Page A

brought him to a halt.  The big
draught horse snorted his disapproval and tossed his head, eager to rejoin the
much smaller ponies in their procession toward the avastra .
    “Patience, you overgrown dog.”  Silhara patted him on the neck. 
“This will take only a moment.”
    Martise emerged from her woolen cocoon.  “What are you doing?”
    Silhara untangled her from around him and slid out of the
saddle.  He motioned to her to dismount.  “Turning you around.  We’re about to
enter the wind gap.  It opens to the avastra ; you don’t want to miss
that first sight.”
    They were remounted and back in the procession in moments,
Martise still in front of Silhara in the saddle but facing forward so she might
have a clear view of her surroundings.  They passed through a narrow wind gap
carved out of the mountain by an ancient stream that left its memory in the
rock’s rippled face.  Snow flurries faded to the occasional lazy drift of
flakes that found their way into the opening.  The peal of the bell grew louder
as they rode further into the gap.
    The gap widened and sheared away, opening onto a semicircular
space, protected from the wind on all sides by sheer rock walls but open to the
sky.  A bell mounted on an iron pole driven into the ground hung at the edge of
the wind gap.  A young boy stood next to it with a clapper.  Each time a rider
emerged from the gap, he’d strike the bell, announcing the arrival of another sehad participant.
    Silhara’s mouth curved up into a satisfied smile at Martise’s
gasp when they entered the avastra’s open space.  He had experienced the
same wonder when he first saw it years earlier.  Like the dry stream that had
cleaved both path and memory into the mountain, those who lived here long ago
had left their mark.
    A ruin as old as Neith, if not older, the only things remaining
were those bits of architecture carved directly into the mountain.  The stream
was the water source, the gap an easily defended access point.  What wooden
buildings might have existed had rotted away, leaving only dust.  The Kurmans
had appropriated the ruin as their fire temple generations before Silhara was
born and left clues of their occupation in the scorch patterns that blackened
the hard packed earth from the annual sehad bonfires.
    The avastra teemed with people—Kurmans of all nine tribes
in their colorful garb.  New arrivals called out to friends and relatives. 
Embraces were exchanged, cups of arkii passed around, invitations
extended to share the smaller camp fires built away from the colossal heap of
wood and silver thorn kindling set in the center of the avastra .  Nine
spirit torches, each representing a tribe, ringed the avastra’s inner
circle, waiting to be lit with the bonfire’s sacred flame and carried home to
share amongst the tribe’s hearth fires.  Silhara’s stomach rumbled at the
scents steaming from the various cooking pots tended by the women, and the
alluring perfume of matal tobacco drifting from long-stemmed pipes
teased his nostrils.
    Martise ignored all of it.  She squirmed in the saddle,
excitement obvious in her voice when she half turned to him.  “Guide Gnat to
that column.”  She pointed to one of the pillars hewn out of the rock. 
Tendrils of dead silver thorn covered most of its face, obscuring the symbols
carved from its capital to its base.
    Silhara steered Gnat to where she pointed.  Martise scraped away
the brittle vines with a gloved hand and leaned out of the saddle for a closer
look.  Her lips moved silently as she deciphered the symbols.
    “What do they say?”  Silhara was virtually unequaled in his
ability to invoke and wield magic, but he was no translator.  Such expertise fell
to his wife whose gift for languages never failed to amaze him.
    His eyebrows shot up when Martise held up a finger in silent
command to wait.  She climbed off Gnat to crouch at the column’s base and read
the remaining symbols.  She glanced up at