The Path of Flames (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 1) by Phil Tucker Read Free Book Online Page A

Half his face was discolored with bruising, and his long hair was spiky with dried sweat and dirt. His horse looked blown, with its head hanging low and its hooves almost dragging across the boards.
    The young man’s expression was haunted, and Kethe felt the crowd harden around her. Almost every castle servant here was an Ennoian, and none of them appreciated the sight of the upstart Bythian squire.
    Asho rode through the gatehouse, the sound of his horse’s hooves echoing loudly in the silence until he emerged once more into the weak afternoon sunlight.
    “It’s Lord Kyferin’s squire,” muttered somebody to her left.
    Asho gazed about the quiet crowd with his pale silver-green eyes, unabashed and disconcertingly direct for a Bythian. As always she felt that prick of annoyance that was just shy of anger at his insolence. He’d not the wit to realize how a little natural deference would ameliorate the anger his arrogance provoked. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a pang. His delicate, almost elfin features were terribly aged. The last she’d seen of him he’d appeared but fourteen years old, a fresh-faced youth with large silver eyes and a quiet manner. Now he looked almost a man, harrowed by some experience she couldn’t guess at.
    Asho slid from the saddle. He was so exhausted his knees buckled as he landed, and were it not for his grip on pommel he might have fallen. Nobody moved forward to assist him, though murmurs of alarm flickered through the crowd. Raising her chin and pushing back her shoulders, Kethe stepped forth, fearing his news but knowing in her core that there was no hiding from the bleakness in his eyes.
    “My Lady,” said Asho, his voice barely more than a whisper. He straightened with a wince, and she realized he was not only exhausted but wounded too; his hauberk was torn along his ribs, and dirt was deeply ingrained in the links over his shoulder as if he’d fallen hard to the ground.
    “Squire Asho.” Her nerves made her speak more coldly than she’d meant to.
    “I bring grave news, my Lady.” He spoke as if they were standing alone, a terrible kindness in his eyes that she wanted to dash away with a slap. He hesitated, the moment come. The moment, Kethe realized, that he must have been dreading even as he fought to get here with all his might. “We were defeated in battle. Lord Kyferin and all his Black Wolves are dead.”
    The crowd erupted into exclamations of horror, and Kethe closed her eyes and rocked back on her heels, feeling her whole body grow numb. With those words her world had suddenly and irrevocably changed. People were calling out angrily, shouting questions, but when she managed to open her eyes again she saw that Asho was standing silently, ignoring everyone but her.
    She had to do something. Control the crowd. Give commands. But all she could do was hold Asho’s gaze. No words came to her lips. No thoughts beyond the one terrible and impossible fact: her father was dead. What would she tell Roddick?
    “Yet you survived.” Her voice came from a far distance. She could barely hear herself over the rushing in her ears. She wanted to hurt him. How dare he look at her with pity? “Did you flee the battle?”
    “No,” Asho said. He was holding on to the saddle as if it were a branch that was keeping him from drowning. “I only left after the Ascendant’s Grace and his Virtues quit the field.”
    “Then come,” she said. “The Lady Kyferin will want to hear your news at once.”
    The curtain walls seemed impossibly high, the barbican receding into the distance. She felt a moment of vertigo as she turned away, and tears pricked her eyes. She’d show him no weakness. She was Lord Enderl Kyferin’s daughter. She would show him only strength. Almost blind with tears she refused to wipe away, she wheeled and strode toward the barbican, sending people scattering as they stumbled out of her way. She didn’t care. Memory guided her footsteps. She strode up the