Read Destiny's Path for Free Online Page A

owl-girl’s voice. They come not to grind Garth Milain under their heel. They have other purposes. And see now what they intend! See what fate awaits those upon whom you would turn your back ….
    The world spun like a golden wheel, and Branwen found herself standing on a rocky seashore, a shrill north wind smarting in her eyes and a sickly, horrible smell in her nostrils. She stood among a host of fallen warriors. She winced at the sight of bloodied faces and hewn limbs, of butchered men and horses, of cracked shields and dented helmets and shattered swords. A young man stared unseeing into the sky, eyes wide and empty, blood matted thick in his hair.
    A slaughter had taken place here—and she could see from the emblems on the shields and the tattered remnants of once-proud banners that these were—that they had been —men of Powys.
    She smelled smoke and turned. A fortress lay on a cliff overlooking the pounding sea, its high wall of drystone washed to ash-gray in the pitiless sunlight.Its gates were broken apart. Fire raged in the open heart of the fortress, consuming the thatched roofs of hut and hall, blackening the timbers and flooding the sky with thick dark smoke. Saxon pennants flew in the wind. Saxon ships clove the sea.
    A black-bearded Saxon chieftain sat in the saddle of a great black stallion, his arm raised, a grisly trophy hanging from his fingers.
    A severed head.
    The Saxon fist clutched the head by its light brown hair, which was clotted with blood. Branwen tried to look away, wanting rid of this abominable vision. But against her will she was drawn closer, and she found that her eyes would not close.
    Her mind fought to deny what she was seeing—to break the dreadful power of the images searing her mind.
    She knew that face—those blank, dead eyes had once flashed with wit and intelligence. The slender, handsome face, now bruised and beaten. The hanging jaw where a knowing smile had once played.
    It was Iwan ap Madoc, from the court of Prince Llew—a charming, intriguing, but untrustworthy young man whom Branwen had met in Doeth Palas.
    Iwan’s lifeless eyes turned to her, and an eerie light came into them.
    The dead lips moved. “So, here you are at last, Branwen.” The voice was Iwan’s, but it was toneless, hollow, dead. “You have arrived too late, as you cansee—the west is lost. You cheated your destiny well, my friend—the war is played out and the Saxons are in the ascendancy. All is done.” The voice sighed like the sea. “All…is…done….”
    â€œNo!” Branwen shouted. “I never wanted this! I didn’t know! Forgive me, Iwan—I didn’t know!”
    But Iwan’s face was lost in a vortex of golden light.

6
    T HE WHEEL OF burning light divided and pulled back, and suddenly Branwen was staring up into Blodwedd’s two golden eyes. She felt the owl-girl’s weight on her chest, stifling her breath—the sharp points of Blodwedd’s knees on her arms, the cruel grip on either side of her face.
    â€œGet off me!” Branwen heaved, and Blodwedd sprang away, bounding feather-light onto a boulder. She crouched there, watching Branwen through the curtain of her hair, her fingers gripping the boulder’s edge like claws.
    Branwen struggled to stand. She managed to get to her knees, but a wave of dizziness pinned her there. She knelt, panting, and waited for her head to stop spinning.
    â€œWhat did you do to me?” she shouted as theworld slithered and writhed around her.
    â€œI showed you the future that will be forged if you forswear your true calling,” said Blodwedd. She angled her mouth in a sharp grin. “Did you like what you saw?”
    â€œLies!” shouted Branwen, pulling herself upright again. “It was all lies!”
    A look of disdain crossed Blodwedd’s face. “I do not lie,” she said. “I fly. I hunt. I eat. I watch. I sleep. I do