Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown Read Online Free

She couldn't touch him. She could
not.
    He stared at her, his eyes narrowed, his lips a slender line
in his pale face. Then he smiled, and this smile, unlike the other,
was, if not friendly, benign. "Let us," he said, withdrawing his arm,
"walk. I have so little experience of the healer-born."
    She swallowed, took a step forward, stood near enough that he
might actually catch her in the circle of his arms. But he did not
touch her; instead, he smiled more deeply. "Your fear," he whispered,
"is so strong. I am almost surprised that you remember how to walk."
    So was Askeyia.
    He did not wish to injure her, but he could not quite bring
himself to say this; there was no gentleness in his nature, nor could
there be. He was First-born, he had Chosen, and he resided in a place
of power among his kin: Kinlord. Demon.
Kialli
.
Isladar.
    Months had gone into the careful watching and studying of the
houses of healing on the isle. The healing houses were notable for the
security of their walls, the profusion of guards that protected the
students within them, and the personalities of the people who claimed
to own them. He studied them, but always at a distance, he would cause
an injury, pay for its correction, and then take the information from
the mind of the man or woman so healed. Time-consuming.
    Yet in the end, he had settled upon the house of healing owned
by a man named Levec. Healer Levec. Taciturn, sharp-tongued, and more
possessive by half than the next man who undertook the running of a
house of healing, he had caught Isladar's attention. If he had a family
name— as most of the mortals did—it was not one that Isladar could find
easily, and the various records of the Authorities were open for his
inspection. In all of his dealings, he was simply Healer Levec, and he
was known to any man of power who made his home on the Holy Isle.
    That isle was no home to him, and he did not cross the bridge
that separated
Averalaan Aramarelas
from the rest
of Averalaan happily, but he knew what he sought when he left his
Lord's side, and knew further that it was upon the isle, and nowhere
else, that it could be found.
    He chose Levee's House, and from there, his intense personal
scrutiny began. Levec, of course, was not useful in the grand
scheme—but Isladar believed that a man of Levee's temperament was prone
to foster those who were. He was not completely certain; the younger
healer-born students did not have a
Kialli's
way
of measuring the depth of mortal affection, and they took his words,
often, as words that held all of his many meanings.
    His smile folded into a line; his face grew remote, as it
often did when he contemplated the plans that lay, stone by carefully
placed stone, ahead. Always ahead. If he was honest, and in the silence
of his own thoughts, he could afford to be little else, he had chosen
the House of Levec for one other reason: Levec was a man who would be…
injured by the loss of one of his students. Even one.
    And so we prove ourselves, again and again, true to
our nature.
    There were many healers who fit the kinlord's needs in a
purely emotional way, but they were more often than not young men, and
for his particular plan, a young man was out of the question. Yet in
the case of a house such as the house Levec ran, the young women were
often more guarded—in both senses of the word—and it was not until he
found Askeyia a'Narin that he knew, with as much certainty as it could
be known, that he had found the one.
    Narrowing the scope of his search had been simple, and
following her had proved instructive, although what he said remained
true: healers were almost beyond his ken.
    "Askeyia a'Narin," he said, as he brought her to one of the
standing rings. "I have been waiting many months for this opportunity."
He reached up, caught the underside of a leaf, and followed its veins
up to the thin stem that fixed it to a branch. With a quiet snap he
pulled it free, turning it over in his palm as if that, and