Read Valor of the Healer for Free Online

pinpoint of flame on the candle’s wick.
    Stoically ignoring his own abandoned bed, Kestar pocketed his tinderbox and pulled on his uniform shirt. As he tugged the russet-hued linen into place and tied the black-and-white laces at his throat, he shot Celoren a small rueful grin. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”
    “Then why in blazes are we not sleeping?”
    Kestar’s grin faded as he dressed. This was the part Celoren wouldn’t like. “It happened again, Cel.” Next came the leather doublet that proclaimed him, via the hawk symbol stamped into the left breast, a Knight of the Hawk. Only as he was buckling on his sword belt did he pause, conscious of wisps of dream still tugging at his awareness, the touch of a pure wind, the clarion warmth of sunlight. “It was more intense this time. I won’t get back to sleep, so I’m going out to look for what caused it. You don’t have to come.”
    Celoren groaned, rolling onto his side to glare at him. “You know, it wouldn’t be any great sin if you had these little premonitions of yours during a civilized hour of the day.”
    “I do, not that civilized hours occur for you any time before noon. And you don’t have to come.”
    “If I don’t, my cloud-headed partner will get himself waylaid by gods only know what in the night. And I can’t have that.” Celoren yawned, rubbed his eyes, then hauled himself to his feet to get himself clothed and armed. More soberly he added, “Has your amulet spoken?”
    Kestar frowned at his quiescent amulet, once more rubbing his thumb over it before slipping it beneath his shirt. “Nothing.” He made a frustrated face. “Just like all the previous times.”
    Celoren stepped over, taking him by the shoulders and turning him about. “You’re sure of what you sensed?”
    “No. But so far I’ve never been wrong.”
    “So far,” Celoren agreed. Then, his mouth quirking, he shot his forefinger out to point at Kestar. “But an unholy hour of the night isn’t a proper time to start, so there’d damned well better be something out there that requires Hawks’ eyes. If there isn’t, Holy Father and Mother help me, I’ll get the first priest I can find to excommunicate you so fast your head’ll spin.”
    “There will be.” Kestar fought back a grin. Celoren’s bluster carried no real pique, and in fact had become a kind of ritual between them over the two years they’d ridden together as full-fledged Hawks. Cel would search with him. He merely needed to channel his bemusement into action, and Kestar knew how he felt. The premonitions bemused him too. “I’ve no idea what, but there’ll be something.”
    It took little time to prepare themselves, with church-issue greatcoats over their uniforms, swords at their sides, the candle blown out and left on the table with a note explaining their absence in case they didn’t return by morning. They didn’t bother to lock the door. The innkeeper had sworn he kept a safe establishment, and they had nothing worth stealing except their amulets, weapons and Kestar’s mandolin—and at any rate, no one would be bold enough to steal from Hawks on patrol. Once their eyes readjusted to the darkness, they slipped down to the inn’s back entrance and from there out into the night.
    “Where are we headed?” Celoren said once they reached the inn’s little stable.
    Kestar paused at the stable door, glancing westward. “The mountains,” he murmured. The gloom of night and foul weather hid the jagged peaks of the Garmbinn Range, but he knew they were there. They traversed most of Kilmerry Province from northeast to southwest, and the ride down to Camden through the nearest pass had caused much of his and Celoren’s exhaustion on this leg of the journey. What drew his eyes, though, wasn’t the memory of the day’s travel. Sunlight coming down the mountain . “Due west of here.”
    “The peak right by the town? Are you sure?”
    “As much as I can be.” Kestar thought hard,