Vengeance of the Hunter by Angela Highland Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t ask where the other two Hawks had gone; that was plain, given that her sister and Kirinil lived. Nor was there any question of their burying the ones they’d slain, though she had no idea what the elves—or the Adalons—did to honor the dead. There was no time for any such thing, and no time to ask.
    She had just enough time to catch Julian’s eye as he hauled himself onto Morrigh behind her, and to frown at the consternation in his face. For the tiniest instant he hesitated before slipping his arms around her waist; only then did he cling to her again, as tightly as before, as though contact with her was all that kept him conscious. That at least Faanshi knew how to address. She was young, with the strength of youth, and she was prepared to pour her power into Julian all the way back to Dolmerrath if she had to do so.
    But she didn’t know how to chase that trace of fear out of his expression. It didn’t suit him.
    And it troubled Faanshi deeply that he might be afraid of her.
    * * *
    Hours later, once they’d fled the place where they’d killed the Hawks, Faanshi prayed.
    She burned him. The knowledge haunted her, frail but clear beneath the moonlight as Morrigh pounded after the other horses, up into the hills. The Anreulag burned him from within.
    What did it mean, that she’d reversed the work of one who was practically a goddess?
    For that she had no answer. No wisdom from the Noonmother or the Crone of Night presented itself to her seeking, and her mind flinched from considering even the borders of that question, much less its heart. It was far safer, though no less disconcerting, to focus on the Rook at her back. He had no strength; therefore she’d hold him up. When he stirred and shivered behind her, murmuring broken syllables that never quite formed into proper words, she took a hand off the stallion’s reins long enough to clasp his arm. “Hang onto me, Julian.” The words seemed a mantra for him, and that was enough.
    When Alarrah called a halt, with dawn casting a feeble glimmer of light along the eastern horizon, that mantra got them both out of the saddle. Faanshi’s legs nearly pitched her to the rocky earth—but Kirinil appeared on Julian’s other side, bearing him up so that neither of them fell.
    “A few steps more,” he urged her. His voice was rougher than it should have been. He too was tired, Faanshi was sure.
    “Where are we?”
    “A stopping place. Our people have them all throughout these mountains. This one is small, but it’ll serve. Can you feel the Ward on it?”
    She nodded, though the magic was little more than a buzz of irritation on the edge of her senses. Julian, however, jerked between them.
    Her dismay must have escaped onto her face, for Kirinil went on, “Don’t worry, this Ward is no match for Dolmerrath’s. It must keep us safe for only a few hours. Time enough to rest the horses, and ourselves.”
    Rest sounded blissful beyond measure. A few steps more, she urged herself. When Julian could rest, then she would too.
    Kirinil led them up a slope studded with boulders that must have fallen from farther up the hillside, and with the scattered trunks of old, dead trees that had collapsed in the company of their living fellows. Tall conifers cast their shadows slantwise down upon them, blurring the hill’s face in Faanshi’s exhausted sight. Yet the elves seemed to know exactly where they were going. Alarrah coaxed her mount and Kirinil’s ahead of them, up over the crest of a dip in the earth—and to the girl’s surprise, the she-elf and the beasts she led abruptly vanished.
    But only for an instant. As Kirinil helped her haul the assassin along, the debris of boulders and ancient logs wavered and then coalesced into something entirely different: the mouth of a cave, low and narrow, barely large enough for one horse to enter.
    “Lady of Time,” Faanshi breathed.
    “This Ward hides rather than repels,” Kirinil said. “And I need to renew it. Come