Free CHOSEN by Jolea M. Harrison Page A

worse?” Maralt asked, a little afraid to find out it could be more. Dynan having the talisman in his possession was horrible enough.
    “Alurn is trapped at the Gate,” Gradyn said. “Maralt, he was the strongest telepath the world has ever known. If the Six have him, the balance of power could shift.”
    “They’ll have the strength to counter the Gods,” Maralt said.
    “They may gain the strength to destroy them if we can’t get Alurn back. You can’t imagine the kind of life we’ll be left with.”
    “Carryn’s vision,” Maralt said, standing to move to Gradyn’s side. “What would you have me do?”
    “It’s a terrible choice we must make, a horrible risk to take,” he said. “If I could send you after Alurn I would. It doesn’t matter your bravery or your strength, both which you have in ample supply. It isn’t possible. This place, the very gateway to hell, would break your mind, Maralt, and then they’d have you as well. There’s only one who can go and come back without taint.”
    “Dynan.”
    “Yes.”
    “But not Dain?”
    “We can’t let both of them be taken,” Gradyn said. “One of them, one of the Chosen has to go to them willingly.”
    “And Dain would go. If Dynan was in trouble, he’d go without thinking.”
    “We can't let him follow his brother.”
    Maralt nodded, wondering how they could stop him if it came to it. “You knew this would happen. It’s why you had Dynan go through the ceremony.”
    “The prophecy is never quite so clear or direct as to name a place or time or specific action. Alurn feared they would try to take Dynan, and meant to give him some protection.”
    “But the prophecy warns they have to have them both,” Maralt said. “The Six need them to open the gate.”
    “Yes, and they will try to do just that. I believe it will be today, in fact. They intend to take Dynan, and lure Dain after him.”
    “What?”
    “Some things can’t be stopped, Maralt. They can only be managed, and perhaps, with a large amount of luck they can be altered enough toward our purpose so that their purpose is thwarted.”
    “Dynan is going to be attacked and you’re saying it can’t be stopped?”
    Gradyn nodded. “It can’t, and now we don’t want to, but Maralt, there is a difference between them taking him and us sending him.”
    Gradyn explained then what he meant, and at first Maralt couldn’t believe it, or think he could do what was being asked of him, all for the nebulous reason of retrieving a man a thousand years dead. Maralt had a hard time believing he even existed or could possibly be worth the risk.
    Gradyn looked at him, and Maralt knew he’d heard the thought as clearly as if he’d said it out loud. “I need you to believe.”
    The High Bishop leaned back, using the window ledge to half sit on. The contours of his face started to change, the stance of his body straightening from stooped to upright. His hair darkened from gray to black and lengthened to his shoulders. Sagging skin tightened against the line of his jaw. His eyes sharpened to the acute blue quality his descendants all carried with them. Maralt found himself drawn in by them and the man who now leaned at his ease before him.
    The blue eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re very much like him,” Alurn Telaerin said, watching Maralt in a way that was direct and unsettling. Maralt didn’t know what he meant either. Was he like the High Bishop or someone else?
    “I thought you were missing.”
    “I’m the connection,” he said in a tone indicating Maralt should have known that and indeed, Gradyn had already told him. “I haven’t the time to explain it all. You should trust him. He trusts you.”
    “I do trust him.”
    “Then don’t doubt him.”
    Before Maralt could ask a single question, Alurn was gone, returning in quick reversal to the High Bishop of Cobalt, who swayed where he stood.
    Maralt lurched forward to catch him.
    “This thing I ask of you,” he said, his voice