Mystic Warrior Read Online Free Page A

by a stroke, the island’s solidarity had cracked. People fought over who would best lead them from disaster.
    â€œPraise Aelynn,” the dying Oracle whispered from her bed on the sacred altar. An instant later, Dylys’s life-affirming grip on Lissandra’s hand fell loose.
    Tears rolling down her cheeks, cries of protest choking her breath, Lissandra repeated the Oracle’s final words, “Praise Aelynn.”
    The temple swelled with glorious sound from a hymn written for the occasion, sung by the choir led by Chantal.
    Lissandra’s tears dampened her folded hands. She prayed for a cloak of authority to fall upon her, to give her the strength her mother had possessed to lead the island back to health and happiness. But Lissandra felt nothing except soul-deep grief.
    Ian hugged her, but Lissandra fastened her gaze on the still figure of their mother, unable to grasp that the holy woman who had been central in her life was gone. Never again would she hear her mother’s praise or ad monishments, see her bathe a newborn or lead a crowd in worship. Never again would her mother speak words of wisdom to remind her of her duties.
    She didn’t need any reminders of her duty now. She simply didn’t wish to do it—to close her mother’s eyes for the final time.
    Lissandra blinked, disbelieving, as a shimmer of blue flame rose from the Oracle’s lifeless figure. The crowd gasped, and the choir faded into silence as the illusion flickered and coalesced into a solid core over the late Oracle’s heart.
    Finally grasping the miracle, Lissandra gulped and stepped away from Ian. She straightened, standing ready. Perhaps this was the moment when she would be granted the confirmation from the gods that she needed to carry on. Neither she nor Ian had ever been present at the death of an Oracle, but they had been forewarned by the legends telling of the blue spirit flame.
    The gods were about to choose the next Oracle.
    Beside her, Ian tensed. Lissandra knew he didn’t want the task. He’d rejected it by marrying Chantal and moving off the island. Yet, if the flame chose him, he could not deny the gods. He would have to return and take up their mother’s role.
    Selfishly, Lissandra almost prayed that would happen.
    The blue flame gathered and formed a ball. Silence grew as the crowd focused on the translucent radiance, praying a true leader would be appointed to guide them to prosperity again.
    The blue spirit flame rose steadily from the altar, then hovered, before shooting forward to circle Ian’s head.
    Lissandra gasped as the flame darted upward in rejection, and Ian’s shoulders slumped in relief. She stood alone and accepting as the flame grazed her hair. She could actually feel a beneficent wave of energy as it descended. Even so, she felt resignation rather than anticipation as the mist of Seeing spilled across her sight, revealing other places, other times—
    A flash of silvered swords. A roar of smoking cannon. Soldiers—so many colors, red, and blue, and green. White splattered with blood. A battle-hardened Murdoch, there, raising a terrified stallion on its hind legs, leading the charge . . . his saber slashed downward, disarming a ragged peasant who charged at him with a wooden pike. Using his muscled thighs to bring the horse under control, he leaned forward with fury to drive his rapier into the throat of a man raising a musket.
    The battle re-formed and became a wooded forest, the vision blurred at the edges. In the thunderclouds hovering above the woods, her spirit guide pointed urgently at a cart progressing toward a village in the distance. There, on the same white stallion, rode Murdoch.
    The bucolic scene burst with an explosion of thunder, gunfire, and flames.
    Abruptly, the illusion dissipated. Above her hair, the ball hovered. Lissandra felt it grow cold, leaving an emptiness inside her. She almost touched the top of her head, but the ball