Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

a warleader to hurt a friend when he had to take him by force. Hokino was just as wise. They would not have let Geras fight them. Certainly not Suyet.

Also, Aras would not have let anyone fight. If Geras would not take his orders in the matter, as I knew he would not, then Aras surely have prevented any kind of struggle by means of deceit. Or by sorcery, if he felt he had no choice.

He did not flinch at that. He met my eyes. “Ryo, I’m sorry.”

I said, speaking in a curt, hard tone, “Do not apologize for something you do not regret and would do again.”

He bowed his head. But he said, “I regret the necessity very much, Ryo. That was one of the worst things I’ve ever done. It was certainly the worst thing I’ve ever done with sorcery.”

I almost hit him. But I restrained myself. Holding out the flask, I said harshly, “It will make you sleep.”

“I know,” he said. He took the flask, removed the stopper, and drank the liquid inside. He tried to put the stopper back into the mouth of the flask, but his hand missed the opening. Then he dropped the flask, stumbled, caught himself, stumbled again, and folded softly toward the earth.

The drug had taken Aras quickly, much more quickly than I had expected. I let the flask fall and caught him, easing him down to lie on the mosses that covered the ground, careful of his injured arm. I could have carried him into the house, but then I looked up at the sky, clear now, and decided I preferred to stay outside. I only straightened his limbs so that he lay in a more comfortable position. Then I sat beside him.

Finally, I let go of everything I had held in my mind for the past hands of time.

At first, the freedom to look at Aras and yet think of anything I wished made it oddly difficult to think at all. I drew my knife and turned it over in my hands, blade and hilt and blade again, studying the play of light across the steel.

The only good time to kill a sorcerer is while he sleeps. Every child knows that.

I looked down at Aras as he slept. The tension that had tightened his mouth and drawn new lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth had smoothed away. His breath came slow and quiet. His right hand lay at his side, relaxed. His left hand, tucked against his chest by the sling, had opened. He looked less like a warleader now, and not at all like a scepter-holder. He carried no knife at his belt, no sword at his back. Of course, he held other weapons that he could not lay aside.

Except he had laid those weapons aside. He had laid aside every defense. He had not hesitated to drink the wine I gave him. He had known exactly what I gave him to drink. I had made certain he knew.

I put my knife away and leaned against the bole of the tree, thinking about oaths and oathbreaking, and the gods. This was not the first time I had had occasion to think about such matters. But this was different. I realized now, for the first time, that some of my fury at what Aras had done to me was actually terror and rage at what he had done to himself.

As a man cannot take back a spoken word or an exhaled breath, so he cannot take back a broken oath. The gods despise oathbreakers. However deceitful they may be in many ways, Lau agree with Ugaro that this is so.

The stars above us paced through their slow, orderly measures. The Moon, her face still turned mostly away, passed below the edge of the world. The Dawn Sisters descended slowly to touch the tips of the mountains, then began their climb upward again, north, toward the vault of the heavens. Day had come to the starlit lands, so far as day ever came here. The light was the same, soft and gentle. I heard nothing but the soft wind rippling through the leaves in the branches above me, but I imagined I might hear the endless song of the stars.

Aras drew a deeper breath, and then another. He opened his eyes. His forehead creased in puzzlement as he realized he was lying outdoors, on the ground ... then he drew a different kind of breath and turned his head to look at me, pushing himself up on one elbow. “Ryo,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to be here when I woke up.” He added, after another moment, “I really did not expect to wake up.”

I asked him, “What would happen to a Lau who died here, where the Sun does not come into the sky?”

“I ... have no idea. Perhaps it would be best to take the body of such an unfortunate person to some land where the Sun might look down and see the pyre.”

“You broke your oath to me,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. For a moment, he said nothing else. Then he said, “It might actually be better for me to die here, out of the Sun’s sight. But despite everything, I can’t find that an inviting prospect.” He moved to sit up. He pressed a hand to his forehead and then to his eyes, then dropped his hand and looked at me, meeting my eyes. “I won’t ask you to forgive me—”

“It was the right decision.”

That made him stop. He had not realized I meant to say that. I had spoken without thinking much of what I meant to say. I went on more slowly, thinking now of every word. “It was a wrong decision for you and bitterly wrong for me, but it was the only possible way to give Inhejeriel