Read Duality for Free Online

always.”
    The “Kahn Androcles” name again stirred to sluggish life some hidden memory that refused to come forward. “Knowledge of Her is forbidden humans, by your own priests of the One Truth.”
    “I don’t follow a ‘forbidding’ that makes no sense. I’m not good at obeying men’s rules. Asides, my mother followed the Lady.”
    “What of your blood father?”
    Dara shrugged and sipped her water. Discomfort enveloped her like an almost tangible shroud. “Mother never told me his name.” Her gaze challenged his. “Does that bother you? Who knows what my lineage might be?”
    Loren could not imagine such a gap. Family and lineage were sacred to the eastdawn elves. Each of them traced their parentage back to the very founding of the lands.
    “When Mother died, Rufus and Fanny raised me as their own.”
    “Rufus taught you to fight.” A matriarchal family in a patriarchal land. Rufus must have been an extraordinary man, like Hengist. Not so hidebound by tradition as to be blind to what was right and not necessarily proper.
    She nodded. “Rufus taught me to be expert with knives. Fanny taught me healing. My mother Sheena taught me the old lore. She would’ve loved meeting you. Mother said Grandmother Lena told the most fascinating stories about Cymry Hall. Grandmother met High King Pari ta Lir afore my mother was born. Your grandfather must’ve been named for him.”
    Loren choked. His grandfather Pari had not been high king in five hundred years. Cedric ta Pari was the current high king. That would make Lena Kahn Androcles…but that was impossible. Dara felt entirely mortal. “Dara, when was your grandmother east?”
    “Many years ago. Mother didn’t say.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Nineteen. I’ll be twenty on the first day of the new year. Maybe someday I’ll visit. Wouldn’t you be surprised to see me walking out of the Great Marsh of the Wyldes?”
    So young. She must have begun fight training young indeed to be so skilled now. He wondered what in her past necessitated training a woman to fight in a land where such a thing was not permitted under the harshest of penalties. He knew of but one other woman with such a capability. Moira, an archer without mortal equal. He frowned. “The Wyldes are dangerous.”
    “I can take care of myself.”
    “I am not disputing that, but—”
    “I did all right by you, didn’t I?”
    “Granted.” Loren ran a hand through his hair. “I would be honored.” What would Granther make of Lena’s granddaughter? Why had he never mentioned a prior visit?
    “Have you ever seen the king?”
    Spoon in his mouth, Loren choked on his soup. “Once,” he wheezed. “From a very great distance.”
    “I’ll bet he’s all-powerful, good and kind.”
    “He is known as a fair and just ruler.”
    “Good thing you have never been exposed to the crown,” Hani`ena commented. “Truth would never let you get through this little fabrication.”
    “Thank the Lady that is Deane’s headache, not mine. Justice is enough to handle.” Loren shuddered in horror at the chains attached to that crown: Truth. Justice. Mercy. He would take wings every time: freedom over power. If only Alani understood. They had grown up together, but she knew him not at all.
    He leaned over and changed the subject. “So. What is for dessert?” He stiffened. “Someone comes. From the south.”

Chapter Three
     
    Dara sense-cast. The acrid scent of violence clung to blood-still-living about an hour’s brisk walk away. “More injured,” she observed, puzzled.
    Loren shook his head, frowning. “This is something else.”
    She laid her instruments and medicines across the table. ’Twas nice to be surrounded by the familiar scents and trappings of Fanny’s legacy. For all her skill as a warrior, she took solace in other abilities. After the death and destruction of the last few days, any healing was a victory.
    Loren pulled his weapons from beneath the table and strapped them on with