Revelation (Rai Kirah) Read Online Free

filled with jasnyr leaves. Accompanied by a proper enchantment, jasnyr would make the neatly laid fire in the pit burn long and true, and prevent its smoke from stinging the eyes. Too, the Scroll of the Rai-kirah said that jasnyr was abhorrent to demons. In the preparation room—an empty, unadorned room in the center of the stone building—the aide would have set out a pitcher of water for drinking, a basin of water for washing, a clean drying cloth, a set of clean clothes made to fit me, my dark blue Warden’s cloak, and the wooden box with the knife and the mirror.
    I had to wait for Fiona before beginning my preparation. She needed to tell me more about the victim, and I would be unable to speak to her once I was prepared. So I sat on the temple steps and watched the sun settle beyond the trees. I almost laughed. If Ysanne had never been with child, then why was Fiona my partner for this battle?
    “Are you ready to fight again so soon, Master Seyonne?” Fiona arrived more quickly than I had expected. She stood in front of me, her whole posture a reproach, as if my sitting down were just another of my crimes.
    She was not unpleasant to look on, small, slim, her dark, straight hair kept short—unusual for Ezzarian women, who favored single braids or long falls of hair caught with flowers or woven ribbons. She disdained skirts and dresses in favor of full-sleeved shirts and breeches, but one could not say she dressed like a man, for there was no mistaking the womanly aspect to her slender figure. The costume looked natural on her. Ysanne had told me that many of the young women who had spent the years of Derzhi occupation hiding in the forest preferred to dress in that fashion. They’d had no materials to make clothes, and so they had taken what they could find on the fallen bodies of our countrymen and in the abandoned cottages they passed as they fell back deep into the trees. They had become accustomed to the freedom of movement men’s clothes afforded them.
    “Catrin told me this is a slave merchant,” I said.
    “Yes. He’s recently begun specializing in young girls, selling them to Derzhi nobles . . .”
    The disgust in her voice when she spoke of the Derzhi was a continuing indictment of me, who dared call one of the despised conquerors my friend. She proceeded to tell me of the horrors the merchant had committed, and of what the Searcher had found out about his life. Clearly he was no innocent taken by a hungering demon to be devoured quickly, but rather one who was a source of longtime sustenance for his resident rai-kirah. Such long-nurtured demons were the most difficult to root out.
    “You seem distracted, Master Seyonne. Perhaps we should call this off.”
    “And leave this rai-kirah to its work?”
    “We cannot right every wrong in the world.”
    “If you had lived in the world, you could not say that so easily. Let’s get on with it.”
    She nodded, gazing reproachfully at the scar on my face—the royal falcon and lion that had been burned into my left cheekbone on the day I was sold to Aleksander. “As you say. You’ll not forget the purification in your preparation?”
    I forced myself patient. “I have never forgotten the purification, Fiona.”
    “Hammard found the towel dry yesterday. If you had washed—”
    “I need no teaching in how to wash myself, nor do I have to justify the weather. If you remember, the afternoon was hot. I did not use the towel. Has Hammard nothing better to do than examine my towels?”
    Fiona glared at me. “You skip steps in the rites. They are there for a reason. If you were sincere in your intent, you’d do things correctly.”
    I would not get into an argument with her over my sincerity. If two hundred demon encounters in a year were not sincere enough, then no words were going to convince her. I needed to be at peace. “If there’s nothing else. . . .”
    “I had to clean the knife again after you left last night.”
    My irritation bristled into