Free Exile's Return (Book 1) by Kate Jacoby Page A

did five hundred years ago when the crumbling empire destroyed the last of the sorcerers. Back then, when the goddess helped the empire, they built a shrine to her in Alusia – so you can imagine how much people hope she is coming back now.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Finnlay interrupted, ‘but do we come to the Guilde somewhere in here – or is this just a history lesson?’
    Jenn turned her head until she faced him squarely. ‘A pity it’s not a lesson in good manners.’
    Robert burst out laughing. And while Micah chuckled, Finnlay just looked sour.
    ‘Never interrupt a storyteller, brother! Please, Jenn, go on.’
    ‘Well,’ she began again, ‘I was working at the tavern in Westmay, near the monastery. Those Guildesmen came in and started giving the innkeeper a lot of trouble. He’s a friend of mine, you see, but he couldn’t do anything to stop them. So I just told them that perhaps this dark angel in the hermit’s vision was not an angel at all, but the Guilde itself!’
    Micah’s eyes widened and even Finnlay choked.
    Robert shook his head in wonder. ‘By the gods my girl, but you do live dangerously!’
    Jenn shrugged. ‘They’re so sour these days. I just got annoyed. I couldn’t help it.’
    ‘Obviously not! Were they stationed in your village? Will they be waiting for you when you go home?’
    ‘Oh, it’s not my home. I was just staying there for a while before I moved on. I don’t really have a home.’
    Micah looked up at this. ‘No home? What about your family?’
    In answer, she just raised her shoulders.
    Robert frowned slightly then shot Micah a warning glance. ‘I think it’s time we all got some sleep. It’s late and I want to get moving by dawn.’
    *
    Bushes rustled against the cave mouth as a brisk wind whistled down the gully. It had started as a light breeze two hours before dawn but now, as the first glow touched the heavens, it warned of darker weather to come. From where he lay, he could see only a thin strip of sky still bleak with night, but on the western face of the gully opposite, he started to make out details by the light of the coming dawn. Thin, stringy plants clung tenaciously to the cliff face and draped their long roots towards the water far below as though desperate to drink.
    Slow and silent, Robert pulled his blankets back and rose from his bed. Behind him, the others slept on undisturbed. He moved carefully forward to the cave opening and looked up. It was still blissfully dark but there was just enough glowin the east to make out the shifting clouds tumbling across the sky. There would be rain later – a lot of rain.
    He glanced back inside the cave. The fire was little more than a glow, banked against the morning. Around it were three bundles of black, his sleeping companions. Beyond them, standing silently in ignorant peace, were the horses.
    Thus he returned in stealthy sorrow, quiet and black with the night. Unfinished and unending…
    The quote was ancient, from
The Chronicle of Banderic.
Six hundred and twenty-three years old. Amazing.
    Not so amazing, really. He must have read that book a dozen times by the age of fifteen. A sweeping tale of adventure and bravery, of exploration and discovery. Even now, some of those place names could conjure up a feathertouch of excitement, remind him of the boy he’d once been. What was the rest of the quote?
    Imperfect and eternal, the rage unquelled in his breast, there to die a forgotten peace. Untempered flame of unholy passion will guide his path though wisdom itself will fail him at the last…
    Was it really so long ago since that awful day when he’d stood before the Key, an innocent child of nine? Had the years passed so quickly that he’d not noticed? Within the age of the Enclave, it was a grain of time but to Robert, everything came down to that one moment. Those few seconds suspended at the edge of his childhood had changed his life and had brought him to where he was today, standing in a cave