Read Online Death of a Darklord by Laurell K. Hamilton - Free Book Online

will go back to Pegin’s village,” Blaine said.
    “Alone?” Thordin asked.
    A stubborn frown made Blaine’s face seem very young, like a child told he could not do something. “He died to save his village. We can’t let him have died for nothing.”
    Jonathan sighed. There were times when duty to the brotherhood and larger goals chafed in the face of more immediate needs. This was one of them.
    “What does Calum say in the letter?”
    Jonathan handed it over.
    Blaine stared at the floor, anger beginning to show through the pain and tiredness.
    Thordin looked up, an odd expression on his blunt face.
    “What is it?” Jonathan asked.
    “Cortton is the village Pegin Tallyrand came from.”
    Blaine looked up. “You mean the brotherhood is sending us to help Pegin’s village?”
    Thordin handed the letter to him. “It would seem so.”
    “Well, now we know what is wrong in Cortton,” Jonathan said.
    “A plague of the dead,” Thordin said in his deep, ruined voice.
    “When do we leave?” Blaine asked. Eagerness showed on his face. He sat straighter in the chair; even his wounds seemed to hurt less. They were going to save Pegin’s village, repay the debt that Blaine felt, assuage his guilt at the other man’s death.
    Jonathan understood all that. He could watch most of it dance across the younger man’s face. Blaine’s face was always like a mirror. Strangely, it was Elaine who was harder to read, more private.
    “A few days to gather supplies and pack, to let you heal. To try and determine what caused the great tree to come to life. If there is some evil magic coming so close to our home, we must know of it. I don’t want to leave the others behind in danger.”
    “If we cannot determine what happened, what then?” Blaine asked.
    Jonathan had to smile at his enthusiasm. “Then we leave for Cortton in three days’ time, with or without that particular mystery solved. If we huddled at home before we had deciphered every evil that befell us, we would never leave these walls.”
    Blaine grinned. “Good.”
    Jonathan looked at the younger man’s eager face. Had he ever been that young? No, he decided, he had not. There was an answering gleam in Thordin’s eyes. Looking forward to the next battle. Perhaps Thordin had been that young; perhaps he still was.
    Jonathan stared at the two warriors. Perhaps those who lived by steel, like those who lived by magic, suffered the same delusion, that their abilities could solve every problem. Come to think of it, once upon a time, there had been a certain mage-finder thatthought his abilities were proof against all evil. That had not been so long ago. Before Calum’s illness—a few months.
    He wanted to touch Thordin and Blaine, to shake them until the eager light died from their eyes. Didn’t they realize that steel was not always enough? Magic was not enough. Intelligence was not always enough. There were some horrors for which nothing was enough.
    They had fought the walking dead before and conquered. But a plague of the dead? Half a village brought to unholy life? Would they finally meet something they could not overcome? For the first time, a tiny worm of doubt began to gnaw at Jonathan Ambrose, mage-finder. Doubt … and fear.

t HE ma N’S BODY L a Y ON I t S B a CK , H a NDS at I t S SID e . He had been average: medium height, brown hair, an unremarkable face, neither handsome nor ugly. Perhaps, alive, there had been some humor that had animated that face, a divine spark that had brought beauty to ordinariness. Elaine had seen enough dead to know that was often the case. It was hard to recognize a friend, a loved one, in the face of the dead, even the newly dead.
    The shed was a mere lean-to, one wall missing, open to the winter night. Snow skittered across the body, sounding dry as sand as it gathered in the wrinkles of the dead man’s clothes. The back of the shed was filled to the ceiling with wood. The snow dusted the cut wood.
    Tereza stood over