The Traitor's Heir by Anna Thayer Read Free Book Online Page B

distilled into the innkeeper’s eyes, in some knowledge or hope that Eamon could not understand.
    Telo smiled at him. “The King!” he said, and though there were hundreds of men and women around them Eamon knew that the words were spoken to him.
    â€œLight the pyre!” Belaal commanded.
    A lieutenant bearing a torch walked between Eamon and the condemned men, releasing him from the innkeeper’s gaze. Suddenly Eamon felt scores of people pressing around him, carried ecstatically forward by the moving torch. The Gauntlet kept them distant from the pyres. The yells were deafening. It was as he took in those around him that Eamon realized that scarcely a pace away was a face he knew.
    Breaking from where he stood he pushed roughly through the crowd, reaching Aeryn’s side just as the first crack of kindling marked the air.
    The crowd pulsed with a screeching cry. At the same moment his friend started forward. Eamon reached her just in time to jerk her back.
    â€œNo!” he cried. Those around were oblivious to him as he hauled her backwards.
    â€œLet go of me!” Aeryn retorted. She seemed to neither see nor recognize him.
    â€œAeryn –”
    â€œFilthy Glove, let go! ”
    With a yell she twisted and turned hard to the side, nearly wrenching away from him; he strengthened his grip and tried to pull her farther back from the execution ring. Aeryn’s normally gentle hands clawed at him.
    â€œLet me go!”
    â€œYou don’t know what you’re doing –”
    A victorious squeal rent the air. The next scream that Eamon heard was Aeryn’s.
    â€œ Father! ”
    It was the worst possible time for her to advertise her kinship. There was no alternative. Eamon threw his arm about his friend’s neck, stunning her, and jammed his other hand over her mouth. Shouts of primal violence rose from the crowd like flames. Eamon felt bile in his throat as he hauled Aeryn another pace backwards. There was another scream from the ring – long, high, agonized. Eamon found a sob on his own lips.
    It was that sound which stopped Aeryn from struggling. At last she saw him clearly.
    She tensed in his grip, as though she wasn’t sure whether to strike him or collapse in his arms. Her face was haggard in the horrid light.
    â€œLet go of me.” Her voice shook and rage smouldered in fierce eyes. Though the scream and roar of the spectacle went on all around them, nothing was as clear to him then as her face and words, and nothing seemed more terrible than what she might do.
    â€œYou can’t go to him!” He shook her, so hard that he was afraid he would hurt her – she had to listen to him. “ Aeryn! ”
    There was a crack as a pile of kindling crumbled in the heat. The smoke in the square grew dense. Ash was cast through the crowd and the air filled with the horrendous smell that Eamon knew so vividly.
    His stomach turned. He staggered and turned to one side, retching.
    â€œDeath to the snakes!”
    Aeryn darted away from him into the crowd. He could not follow her: his throat was racked with bile, his eyes ran with the acrid sting of the smoke, and his ears boomed with the shouts of the crowd.
    A hand grasped his wheeling shoulder. “You all right, lad?”
    Eamon looked up dully to see a kind, weathered face above his: the smith’s. In that hideous moment it was a comfort to him.
    Coughing and spluttering, he wondered if he was going to vomit up his lungs as well as everything else. He staggered on to the support of the smith’s willingly offered arm. The man helped him to move some distance from the crowd.
    They reached the steps of the college and Eamon sat there, shivering. Away from the fire the air seemed clammy. He could see the crowd of men and women beating about the ring, creatures of shadow and smoke about a flaming heart.
    The smith sat down by him. “Quite a first day,” he commented. Eamon couldn’t answer;