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

stone ramp to the drawbridge, passed quickly over it, and only once she had stepped into the darkness of the barbican did she shudder, a deep soul quake that almost undid her knees. She pressed her hand to the wall and paused, another pang causing her lungs and heart to spasm. She gasped for breath, the sound loud in the corridor. It felt like somebody had punched her right in the solar plexus.
    Father was dead. The strongest man she had ever known was gone. It was like learning that a mountain had suddenly disappeared. And all his Black Wolves with him? Thirty-three knights. Brutal, cruel men who had at once scared her and ensured her safety. Each with his own manse or fort in the countryside about the castle, each a minor lord of his own staff and servants. Dead. All of them. She stared blindly at a wall torch as names tumbled through her mind. Her mind reeled, and then she pushed away from the wall. She took a deep breath. Held it. If she was to be a knight, that she had to accustom herself to pain and loss. She had to be strong. Roddick would be looking to her for comfort. And yet the floor felt like it was slipping out from beneath her. Before more tears could come, she strode forth down the hall and turned right at the elbow. Out the gate and onto the second drawbridge, moving swiftly, head lowered.
    She passed through the drum towers and out onto the keep stairs. Lifting her dress, she ran up the steps, not caring for decorum, not caring who saw. She flitted up to the keep door and hauled it open. She turned quickly away from the large kitchen, ignoring the puzzled looks of the servants, and ran up the intramural staircase to the third floor.
    While the Great Hall down in the bailey could seat over a hundred and often did, the Lord’s Hall here on the third floor of the keep was more intimate, and her father tended to use it as an audience chamber in which to receive distinguished guests. A dais was set against the back wall, with her mother’s pale oaken seat set next to her father’s massive and beautifully carved cherry wood throne. Two long trestle tables ran down the length of the circular room, whose walls were hung with tapestries depicting her father’s favorite pastimes: war and the hunt. Wall candles complemented the light that filtered through the arrow slit windows.
    Their bard, Menczel, was sitting to one side, idly plucking a quiet melody from his lute and singing of the legendary trials of the Virtue Theletos. Her mother was seated on her pale chair, with the steward and his assistant standing before her.
    Kethe rushed into the hall and then caught herself and stopped, took a breath and pushed her shoulders back. Her mother had been leaning back in her chair, chin resting delicately on an extended finger, listening to Bertchold as he recounted some issue regarding their stocks. At Kethe’s entrance, however, her mother sat up, and both Menczel and Bertchold fell silent, turning to regard her.
    “Kethe?”
    Her mother was the most intelligent person she knew, and the most perceptive by far. Kethe’s whole life had been one long struggle to find privacy, to shield her thoughts, to not give everything away to her mother without realizing it. She had no hopes of doing so now.
    Lady Kyferin rose gracefully to her feet. In her mid-thirties, she was still a strikingly beautiful woman, her eyes the blue of stark winter midday skies, her skin as pale as fresh milk and her mien effortlessly noble. It was from her that Kethe had inherited her own auburn hair, a dark brown that the right angle of sunlight could set to smoldering like fireplace coals; but while Kethe tended to wear her hair in a rough braid thrown over one shoulder, her mother’s mane was luxurious and intricately braided. Born and raised in the august mountain peak cities of Sige, Lady Iskra Kyferin’s descent to Ennoia and her presence in the castle and by his side had been a source of great pride to Kethe’s father. Dressed today in white