Aloren Read Online Free

shirt to his chest.
    “Father.”  I knelt close and touched it with shaking fingers.  “Father, what happened?”
    “Bandits, I––”  I grabbed hold of the shaft and snapped it.  He tore at his lip, and I eased the broken bit out through the cloth.  The blood had spread through the shirt; my hands were slick with it. 
    “I don’t know how to help.”  I lifted my head, and glanced around.  “I have to find someone, somebody, please––”
      “Don’t be silly, girl,” he said.  “No one here.  There were eight, about eight of them––”  He coughed and dark stuff wet his lips.  I tore his shirt at the amigaut.  “No.”  He stopped me with a hand.  “You shouldn’t see it.”
    “I don’t know how to help.”  I stood and dug my toes into the floor.  “I don’t know how to help.”  I began crying softy, and he looked behind me. 
    “I’m here to tell you how,” he said.  “You see them?”  He lifted his hand to point, and I looked over my shoulder.  “She’s cursed their Marione.” 
    The sparrow, perched on a windowsill, was the only real bird.  The ones on the floor had been too well hidden for me to notice before.  They were black, semi-transparent like shadows or smoke, and the sun shone darkly through them: an egret, a raven, a swan and a dove. My brothers.
    I don’t know how I knew, but I did.  They felt like my brothers.  An egret, a raven, a swan, and a dove. My skin pricked, and the air thickened in the tower, and I struggled to draw breath.  One breath, and then another.  My spirit quailed and I stopped breathing altogether––one puff of wind might blow them away like dust.
    “She’s cursed their Marione,” said Father.  “Birth flowers. I haven’t much time to explain.”
    “Who’s she?” I said.  “How did she know where they are? We don’t even know.” 
    “Doesn’t matter,” said Father.  “It’s already been done.  You must undo it.”
    He cried out and hacked blood on his shirt.  I pulled away.
    “I know where they are,” he said.  “They’re growing at the crest of the hill with the standing-stone, just north of here.  The red staring out from the green.” 
    I knew the place.  A strange place, where the wind breathed down the back of your neck.  We stayed well clear of it.  Mother must have seen the place in her mind––sometimes new mothers could.  We’d been raised here for a reason.  “They’re growing behind the towers?” I said. 
    “Yes,” Father said.  “You must pull them from the ground.”
    I stared at him, and the tower darkened around me.  Pulling someone’s Marionin was more terrible than murder. Pulling your own was inconceivable. 
    “Why––” I swallowed.  “Why should I want to do that?”
    His voice shook.  “The Cam Belnech.   If you break the spirits, the curse will no longer take effect.”
    “What?”  I shook my head and wrung my wet skirts. 
    “Reyna,” he said, “Reyna, you must listen to me.  They’re dying––you see?”  He nodded at the birds––my brothers.  “All smoke and dust.  Because they touched the red flowers, they say.  I can hear them.  I’ve heard of these red flowers–– Cam Belnech , they’re called.  They kill Gralde.  I don’t know how to explain. You’re much too young.”  He was silent for a moment, thinking.  He said, finally,  “The flowers cause suicidal thoughts in Gralde.  If you touch the flowers, you desire death.  You want to die.”
    “They want to die?”
    “Yes.  Something is holding them here.”  He shook his head.  “I don’t know what.  Something has changed their shape, made them birds.”
    Had I done that?  I thought of the black-eyed girl, the albatross. 
    “I don’t understand it,” he said.  “And it’s not enough.  They’re still fading.  You can see right through them.  You must weaken them so they do themselves no more damage. You must pull the plants.  All of them.