First Test Read Online Free

what you can, and take your punishment in silence."
    Kel nodded. "I can do that, I think."
    Anders chuckled. "That's the strange thing—I believe you can. But, Kel—"
    Kel went to Chip's far side, looking at Anders over the pony's back. "What?"
    The young man absently rubbed his stiff leg. "Kel, all these things you learned in the Islands."
    "Yes?" she prodded when he fell silent again.
    "You might want to keep them to yourself. Otherwise, the pages might think you believe you're better than they are. You don't want to be different, all right? At least, not any more different than you already are."
    "Won't they want to learn new things?" she wanted to know. "I would."
    "Not everyone's like you, Kel. Do what they teach you, no more. You'll save yourself heartache that way."
    Kel smiled. "I'll try," she told him.
    Anders straightened with a wince. "Don't be out here too long," he reminded her. "You're up before dawn."
    Unlike normal dreams, in which time and places and people did strange things, this dream was completely true to Kel's memory. It began as she knelt before an altar and stared at the swords placed on it. The weapons were sheathed in pure gold rubbed as smooth and bright as glass. She was five years old again.
    "They are the swords given to the children of the fire goddess, Yama," a lady-in-waiting beside Kel said, awe in her soft voice. "The short sword is the sword of law. Without it, we are only animals. The long sword is the sword of duty. It is the terrible sword, the killing sword." Her words struck a chord in Kel that left the little girl breathless. She liked the idea that duty was a killing sword. "Without duty," the lady continued, "duty to our lords, to our families, and to the law, we are less than animals."
    Kel smelled burning wood. She looked around, curious. The large oil lamps that hung from the temple ceiling by thick cords smelled of perfume, not wood. Kel sniffed the air. She knew that fires were terrible on the Yamani Islands, where indoor walls were often paper screens and straw mats covered floors of polished wood.
    The lady-in-waiting got to her feet.
    The temple doors crashed open. There was Kel's mother, Ilane, her outer kimono flapping open, her thick pale hair falling out of its pins. In her hands she carried a staff capped with a broad, curved blade. Her blue-green eyes were huge in her bone-white face.
    "Please excuse me," she told the lady-in-waiting, as calm and polite as any Yamani in danger, "but we must get out of here and find help. Pirates have attacked the cove and are within the palace."
    There was a thunder of shod feet on polished wood floors. Swords and axes crashed through the paper screens that formed the wall behind the altar. Scanrans-men already covered in blood and grime—burst into the room, fighting their way clear of the screens and their wooden frames.
    An arm wrapped tight around Kel's ribs, yanking her from her feet. The lady-in-waiting had scooped her up in one arm and the swords in the other. Faster than the raiders she ran to Ilane of Mindelan.
    The lady tumbled to the ground. Kel slid out the door on her belly. Turning, too startled to cry, she saw the lady at her mother's feet. There was an arrow in the Yamani woman's back.
    Ilane bent over the dead woman and took the swords. Hoisting them in one hand, she swung her weapon to her right and to her left. It sheared through the heavy cords that suspended five large oil lamps. They fell and shattered, spilling a flood of burning oil. It raced across the temple in the path of the raiders who were running toward them. When their feet began to burn, they halted, trying to put the fire out.
    "Come on!" Kel's mother urged. "Hike up those skirts and run!"
    Kel yanked her kimono up and fled with Ilane. They skidded and slipped over the polished floors in their Yamani sock-shoes, then turned down one corridor and another. Far down one passage they saw a new group of Scanrans. Kel and her mother ran around a corner.