Read Online Citadels of the Lost by Tracy Hickman - Free Book Online Page A

will of a slave even against her own interest. She was a Seinar —a beacon—and even as the avatria of House Timuran was falling to crush her beloved garden, she knew she would betray any of her fellow slaves just to keep the demons at bay that threatened to tear her mind apart.
    She saw the avatria collapsing over her. She wondered in that moment if perhaps it were best for the entire structure to fall upon her, crushing her into oblivion and ending her pain.
    It was just as these thoughts were coming together in her that Drakis had appeared before her.
    â€œCome with me . . . I’ll take you somewhere safe.”
    She had recoiled from his touch . . . longed for his touch. He was leaving the House. He was taking her with him.
    â€œTake me?” she had said and had begun to laugh hysterically.
    Laugh because it was so terribly funny! Here he was, the great hero of House Timuran and the man that she loved dragging her to safety as though she were some distressed elven princess and she knew— knew —that she would betray him to his captors. Who wouldn’t laugh, she thought, that the one person in the entire household who was willing—no, not just willing but compelled—to rob him of the very memories and life he had just won was the same woman that he loved and was trying to free. She’d been trained since she was fourteen years of age to do anything and everything that would ensure his capture—and for him to lose those same memories and that same life he had just won. Take everything from him he ever wanted in his life—including her.
    Wasn’t that funny, she thought, shaking in the corner as the dim pulse of distant lightning flickered into the room.
    The journey to peace and a purpose,
    Is never trodden alone
    When the heavens wake
    And your body breaks . . .
    â€œMala.”
    She blinked in the darkness, uncertain she had heard her name.
    â€œMala!” came the urgent whisper in her ear.
    She jumped at the sound, the closeness of the breathed whisper shifting the hairs at the back of her neck. She flinched, turning at once.
    The Lyric grinned back at her, her gaunt face filled with contrast from the cold light of the lightning outside.
    â€œCome on!” The Lyric grinned. “She’s waiting.”
    â€œWho?” Mala whispered.
    The Lyric was already moving to the back of the shop, picking her way carefully among their sleeping companions.
    â€œHurry!” she whispered.
    Mala stood carefully in the uncertain flashes coming through the doorway. She could see the Lyric standing against the back wall of the shop, her hands set against the stone. The darkness engulfed them for a moment, robbing her of her sight until the next flash.
    There was a doorway in the wall where before there had been none.
    And the Lyric was stepping through the opening.
    â€œNo!” Mala said, restraining her voice, fearful of waking the others. “Come back!”
    But the Lyric only grinned back at her and beckoned her on as she stepped through the portal, whispering as she left.
    â€œCome with me,” she said so quietly that Mala was not sure of the words beneath the rolling thunder. “I’ll take you somewhere safe.”
    In the next flash of light, the Lyric was gone.
    Mala stepped quickly between the sleeping bodies, desperate not to disturb them. She made her way to the doorway that had appeared in the previously solid wall at the back of the shop and stuck her head through the opening.
    Circular plates in the ceiling of a long hall glowed dimly overhead, pulsing slightly with each flash of lightning outside. They did not fade so quickly nor was their light so suddenly bright, as though they held the light for a time in their grasp before releasing it. They lit the way down its length, plunging directly back into the mountain. Arched portals lined the hall, ink black and forbidding. Yet the Lyric skipped past them, her strange giggle echoing back