Soul of Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) Read Online Free Page B

now.
    Two days had passed since Lance clawed his way back to consciousness and found himself a guest in the other man’s home. Since then Julen had grown increasingly clipped with him. Now that his infected scratches had begun to heal and his tumour had shrunk to only half its former size, Julen had apparently decided it was time to take him to task.
    “You bastard!” Anger turned Julen’s eyes greener. “What in Vez’s Malice did you do to Sara?”
    How to answer that? Lance didn’t know where to start.
    “It’s all over the village,” Julen said, his breathing rough with anger. “How you cut off her head. I can guess what happened. You tried to heal her afterward and bungled it. And now she’s simple.”
    Julen slammed him up against the outside wall of the small stone house—and Lance let the slighter man do it. Because deep down he thought he deserved to be punished. Even if Sara hadn’t been injured the way Julen thought.
    “She trusted you.” Julen spat out the words.
    Lance closed his eyes.
    More than trusted, she’d loved him.
    The pain from that knowledge cut so deep he welcomed the purely physical agony of the elbow Julen dug into his gut.
    After he’d had enough self-punishment, he opened his eyes—and saw Sara about to drive a knife into Julen’s back. “Sara, no! Stop!”
    Julen spun around and saw the knife. His mouth dropped open. “Sara?”
    Her eyes remained blank, and she kept the knife pointed towards Julen.
    “She doesn’t understand.” Lance stepped between them. “Sara, put down the knife. Julen is just angry. He’s not going to hurt me.”
    “He was hurting you,” Sara said dispassionately.
    Lance corrected himself. “He wasn’t going to hurt me much .”
    A snort from Julen. “Care to wager on that?”
    Lance glared at him. “Do you want her to stab you? Sara, put down the knife. Go back inside. Everything’s fine.”
    Eyes still blank, Sara dropped her belt knife on the ground and walked indoors. Lance watched her hips sway, his heart aching. She still moved with the same wild grace of the woman he’d fallen in love with.
    His gut insisted his Sara was hidden in there somewhere, if he could just draw her forth—but that was false thinking.
    Julen let out a breath. “She wouldn’t really have—?”
    “Gutted you like a pig? Oh, yes.”
    Julen looked unsettled, but only for a moment. “She doesn’t remember me.”
    Lance disagreed. “No, she remembers you—or rather she would if she made the effort.” Strong memories were based on emotions, and Sara had none. At least that was Lance’s theory.
    Julen looked at him blankly.
    He and Julen had never gotten along well. Julen had actively spied for the Republic of Temboria when he first entered Kandrith as part of Lady Sarathena Remillus’s entourage. Only a twist of fate had seen Julen married to a Kandrithan woman. Nevertheless, Julen was genuinely fond of Sara. Lance owed Julen an explanation. “Her mind isn’t damaged. She can think just fine—sometimes I think she does so more clearly than I do.”
    Julen made a scoffing noise.
    Lance gave up tact for bluntness. “It isn’t her mind that’s gone, it’s her soul.”
    Julen stared at him as if he’d just said the sky was yellow. “And what, exactly, does that mean?”
    Julen probably thought he was being figurative. Lance only wished he were. He spelled it out as clearly as he could: “Sara no longer has a soul. She gave it up to save my life.”
    Pause. “How is that possible?”
    Lance methodically laid out the whole story. How Sara’s father, Primus Remillus, had invaded Kandrith. Under the terms of the Hostage Pact, Sara, as the Child of Peace, had been beheaded. How Lance had healed her and the two of them had flown to the Republic to rescue his sister, Wenda, the other Child of Peace, from Primus Remillus.
    Julen took the news that his former employer had been an acolyte of Vez, God of Malice, without too much surprise, though he winced when