Read The Broken Sword for Free Online

had known all her life?
    A psychologist had once asked her to describe her dreams. They were typical blind person's dreams, amorphous, filled with touch and sound. The only unusual thing was that several of them were recurring.
    "There's a grove of oak trees," Beatrice explained. "It's around a circular clearing, with smoke rising up from the center of it."
    "Yes? And are you in this dream?" the therapist had prompted.
    Beatrice nodded. "I'm dressed in a long woolen robe. It's raining, and I can smell the damp. The fire has been banked to embers, but there's something in it." She heard the swift intake of her own breath. "It's the heart of a stag, sacrificed for the festival of Midsummer."
    The psychologist took notes in a leather-covered book. She looked up briefly. "What happened then, Beatrice?" she asked in a soprano singsong.
    "Then the magicians came."
    The therapist's pencil stopped in mid-air. "I beg your pardon?"
    "The magicians. The sorcerers. They came to Mona. They killed my priests while I was in prayer. They burned everything."
    The psychologist scribbled furiously, "Mona? Is that a place?"
    "It was our place. Our last refuge." Tears ran down her face.
    The therapist gave her a tissue. "Tell me, Beatrice," she asked, "do you sometimes feel that someone has taken your sight from you? The doctor who delivered you, perhaps, or your mother, or God himself?"
    Beatrice only wept.
    "Perhaps you'd like to think about that for next time," the therapist said, glancing at her watch.
    "Mona," Beatrice whispered now.
    Taliesin started. "What did you say?"
    She looked up, surprised to see him. She had been so absorbed in her own past that she had forgotten she wasn't alone. "I... I don't remember."
    The old man's lips tightened.
    "Yes?" Beatrice asked gently. "What is it?"
    "You said... That is, I thought you said..." He blinked. "Listen, child, you'd best get some rest while you can. Tomorrow we'll take you to the British Embassy in Tangier and see about getting you back home."
    She examined her hands. "I don't have a home," she said.
    "But surely your grandmother made some provision."
    She shrugged. "I'm to inherit the estate when I come of age. Until then, I'll probably be sent to a boarding school under the aegis of some law firm." She turned away from him and lay facing the fire. "But that's not your problem."
    "Well..." The old man cleared his throat. "We'll think of something."
    He sat silently in the thick stillness of night.
    "I really should be with you," Beatrice said sleepily, the flames dancing before her closed eyes.
    "In Tangier."
    "Yes."
    "Why, Beatrice?" he asked. "Why Tangier?"
    It took her a long time to answer. "Because the cycle is ending," she said at last.
    "The cycle?" His voice was barely audible.
    "The cycle that began on Mona."
    Taliesin felt his heart thudding. He had heard her correctly, then. She had spoken the name of a place which had not existed for a thousand years.
    Mona.
    It had been so long since he had thought of it. So long...
    This was the cup's doing, he knew that instinctively. The cup had come back, and whatever plans Hal and Arthur had made would mean nothing. The cup would do its work.
    For surely, he thought, studying the slumbering girl, that work had already begun.

Chapter Five
    Paris, France
    T he newspapers called him Thanatos, Greek for death.
    How they had come to the conclusion that he was Greek was uncertain. A dropped exclamation in his native language, perhaps, during his younger days before he had learned how to be silent.
    He was silent now, so silent that, in his other life, the life open to public scrutiny, he sometimes had to remind himself to walk so that others could hear him.
    He opened the morning's edition of Le Figaro . There on the front page was the story of how the American ex-President had been the target of a would-be assassin.
    Would-be , he thought, disgusted. This failure would ruin his reputation. He read on. By a seeming miracle, the story went on,