Read Online The Hidden Icon by Jillian Kuhlmann - Free Book Online

reaching for a prayer statue. My mother’s idols were nearly always depicted in this way, all but one, who offered neither salvation nor steady confession. I did not want to think of her, not now, but her hard face had been behind my eyes since Gannet had given me her name: Theba.
    The howling began again, or so it seemed at first. What I heard now was more like a chorus, individual pitches picked out of the dark. What could have been the wail of an infant, an old man, a nursing mother, all were strained together in a cry of centuries dormant misery suddenly and violently roused. With each footstep the voices in the choir grew more numerous, but I could not stop myself, kept moving, feeling, reaching into the dark. Tears sprang to my eyes but across my lips stole something like an expression of glee, a celebration of their pain. It wasn’t mine.
    I gasped and stumbled backwards over a broken cobble. Strange energy shot from my skin like cracks of lighting, and for a moment the square where I stood was illuminated and the smell of something burning, like hair, filled my nose. I saw nothing in the brief light, and nothing moved in the darkness that dropped heavy as hands clapped over my eyes. The cries were silenced and suddenly I heard movement, like many pairs of feet moving swiftly towards me.
    “Eiren!”
    I heard Gannet’s voice and then recognized his form, outlined in my mind as though in a reverse silhouette: he was bright where all else was dark. He was open to me; I could sense his urgency and his need to find me, his fear that he might not. The cries and howling had stopped, and I heard nothing but the huff of his breath and my own, and I was aware of how far I had come, how dark it was. I scrambled to my feet in an instant, and he didn’t hesitate, taking my hands and racing the both of us from that place.
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    Only the threat of being stranded in Re’Kether with a broken wheel or a lame beast kept the caravan from moving the instant Gannet had secured me aboard the barge. Delirious, bones chattering with fear, I couldn’t focus, didn’t recognize Morainn’s face hovering over mine. I had moved a sandaled foot in time with each of his booted ones, but now I stalled, my senses still not wholly mine.
    “What happened?” Morainn hissed, looking between Gannet and I. “Was she taken?”
    “She was tempted,” Gannet said, removing one of his hands from my shoulders to gesture that I have a seat. I felt as weak as I had during childhood fevers, but it was my spirit that was shaken, not my body. I sat down despite not wanting to.
    “If she tries to run again I recommend we restrain her, Dresha .”
    This was from Imke, who received sharp looks from Gannet and Morainn both for saying so. Words sprang to my lips: that I would run if I wished to, that I would go home to Re’Kether… but Re’Kether was not my home.
    “Triss, food and drink,” Morainn ordered, the light colors of her skirts distracting as she settled beside me. My sisters had worn such things. I had, too, when we had been meant to rule. But not now. I picked at the stitches in the hem of my tunic, loose folds hanging unbelted, stray threads like the hair’s light touches I had felt in the ruins. Gannet had come for me, but I had not been alone.
    “Eiren, will you eat?” Gannet’s eyes were the least guarded I had seen them, shades of the worry I had felt in him still visible in their depths. They were all sitting around me now as though it were I who held court here and not them, Gannet and Imke joining Morainn, Triss perching on a cushion only after she had brought warm tea and bread.
    I lifted a cup, and it was filled for me.
    “What happened?”
    The answers I wanted were not the same as those Morainn sought. She wanted to know how I had come to leave the caravan and why. I wanted to know what I had met in the ruins, and how I had driven it off.
    “There are unhappy spirits in Re’Kether, among other things.”