Free The Grave Thief: Book Three of The Twilight Reign by Tom Lloyd Page A

other. She was trying to smile. His name on her lips was tinted by the heavy rolling sounds of the Yeetatchen dialect.
    ‘Xeliath,’ he replied softly, smiling down at the wan face below him. He eased her legs onto the bed and slid a hand under her body so he could pull the stretcher away. Her thin limbs reminded him of a pigeon he’d shot; lying dead in his hands, the bird had felt far too light, as though something was missing now it lacked life.
    Xeliath looked tiny, even bundled in her heavy woollen cloak. He raised her hand and placed a courtly kiss in her palm. He folded her fingers around it and said, ‘Sleep now, you need to rest. I’ll bring you some soup later.’
    ‘Wait, listen,’ Xeliath whispered, straining to form the unfamiliar words. Isak remembered his first meeting with her, on a featureless, rolling field in his dreams, where she’d told him she couldn’t even speak his language. That night, and every other time they’d met, she’d spoken directly into his mind. Now, as he strained to make out each syllable from her ravaged throat, he realised Mihn must have been teaching her Farlan as they travelled.
    Her right arm fought its way free of the folds of the blanket, and Mihn had taken a half-pace forward even before she beckoned him over. Isak, shifting slightly so that Mihn could take her hand, sensed a sudden flicker of power from her left hand which was obscured by the cloak. He pushed it back, and gasped when he saw the Crystal Skull fused into the palm of her hand, her long, thin fingers clawed around it, drawn a little way into the body of the Skull. Isak ran his finger down the side of her thumb: the skin was fused to the Skull, so perfectly bonded there was no seam between the two but a complete melding of materials.
    ‘ Take it, cut it from her flesh ,’ hissed a voice at the back of his mind.
    Isak bit back a growl and drove the spirit of Aryn Bwr from his thoughts. That was one blessing over the last few months: the voice had become quieter of late, cowed almost, and Aryn Bwr had been more willing to withdraw when pushed. It was a mixed blessing, though, for it served only to increase Isak’s suspicions that it was the Reapers lurking on the edges of reality.
    Again he felt a flicker of power from within the Skull. Isak withdrew his hand, an apologetic look on his face until he realised that it was not anger he felt. Xeliath was staring into space, her good eye looking past him, while erratic sparks of magic started to dance from one finger to another over the surface of the Skull. He sensed pulses of energy flowing up her arm.
    ‘What—what’s happening?’ he asked softly.
    ‘She’s drifting,’ Mihn replied quickly. ‘This has happened a few times - usually after she’s contacted you in her dreams. There’s nothing to worry about, it’s just the effect of being tied to your destiny.’
    ‘I remember,’ Isak said. ‘Her mind was almost broken when she was Chosen, when she was tied to a thousand destinies and to none, or something like that.’
    Mihn stroked her hand. ‘She still doesn’t understand it fully, but it has had some sort of prophetic effect on her, perhaps like the Seer of Ghorendt - not true foresight, but glimpses of the future, though they don’t make much sense. She doesn’t go into a trance, or anything like that - and sometimes she hasn’t even remembered it happening.’
    ‘Has she said anything that made sense to you?’
    The small man shrugged. ‘Once she said she saw you walking around a statue of a man holding a sword to his chest, made of obsidian. A man with two shadows, one tinted with blood and one with white eyes, was watching you. Her description put me in mind of the ranger, Tiniq.’
    ‘General Lahk’s brother?’ Isak said in surprise. ‘Well, I suppose he does rather live in the shadow of his white-eye twin.’
    ‘Isak,’ Xeliath croaked suddenly.
    The two men looked down, Mihn still with his hand wrapped around the young