Free Vengeance of the Hunter by Angela Highland Page A

Riniel’s blood and his face. But do you have his heart?”
    What sort of question was this? In no mood to bear haranguing from a woman he barely knew, whether or not she was his own kin, Kestar snapped, “If you mean to call my honor into question, I don’t have the time—”
    “Nor do I,” Darlana retorted, cutting him short. Her hand lifted a few inches from her bed, writhing in the ghost of an imperious dismissal, one that clearly cost her strength. What little color her wrinkled visage held drained away. Force drained from her voice along with it, and her hand fell down again to the woolen blanket that covered her. Her eyes, however, remained alert. “I’m about to die. Before I go to my love’s side at last, you’ll hear this from me whether you wish it or not.”
    “I’m listening.”
    He should have spoken with better grace; Darlana’s age alone, never mind what ranks she’d once held, commanded at least that respect. But Kestar couldn’t muster any further civility, and oddly, his great-grandmother didn’t seem to care. If anything, his pique seemed to give her fuel for her own. “Only one course open to you, boy.” She jabbed a gnarled finger toward him. “Honor the blood my Riniel gave you, and those who share it with you.”
    “I’ve already—” The words escaped the young Hawk in a shout, and only a sudden clasp of Abbot Grenham’s hand upon his shoulder made Kestar recall the need to contain himself. He hadn’t even seen the abbot slip into the room behind him. Blushing crimson, he pulled his voice back down to a more deferential volume. “I’ve already let Faanshi go. What more would you have me do?”
    Something must have escaped into his countenance, or perhaps there was a roughness to his tone as he uttered the healer girl’s name. Darlana fixed far too shrewd a gaze for Kestar’s liking upon him, just before she issued a contemptuous snort. “That’s only a start.” Her milky eyes shuddered closed on a long and wheezing inhalation. Kestar’s own breath stopped within him, and didn’t resume until she added in a fainter whisper, “We’ve done them so great an injustice. It must be set right...”
    “I’m only one man,” he protested, even as the old woman’s words sent a chill spilling through him. “I swear to you, I’m doing all that I can!”
    She slit open first one eye and then the other; that shrewd gaze never left his face. For a fleeting instant regret and the faintest trace of sympathy gentled her features. But neither dimmed a last lingering gleam of challenge in her expression.
    “Are you?”
    Indignation and denial flared in Kestar, and he stepped closer to the bed, forgetting Darlana’s venerable age and frail health. “What would you have me do? Overthrow the Church? Kill the Anreulag?”
    “As long as you’re asking, boy, yes. Finish what Riniel started. Save his people. They’re your people too.”
    That stopped him in his tracks. The faraway look that came into her eyes might have made him dismiss her as a raving old woman on her deathbed, save for the utter seriousness in her face—and the words he heard her murmur now that he was close enough to hear.
    “He was going to find it, you know. The sword. Only thing that can kill Her, and they’ve probably buried it so deep in the palace now that it’d take an army to reach...”
    Then she fell silent, and in that pause all Kestar could think to say was “What sword?”
    No other words would come, nothing to make Darlana understand that his hands were tied—that there was nothing more he could do. Once more Abbot Grenham’s hands upon his shoulders stopped him. He shook off the older man’s grasp, but he couldn’t elude his somber words.
    “She’s gone, my son. Let it go.”
    Kestar jolted, then realized what Grenham meant. Milky eyes still open but unseeing, Darlana lay motionless now upon her bed, without even a rise or fall of her chest to show that she yet lived. He didn’t believe