know how to think.”
She shot him a look laced with glass shards.
While Loren showed Rodge how to pad the ground with pine boughs under his greatcloak, Ari wandered one last time into the tree line. He almost stumbled into Dra Kai, and instantly felt remorse. Here he was acting the child, listening to stories and headed blithely to bed, when there were men in the dark and cold standing guard.
“ Uh, I’ll take a turn at watch…” he offered awkwardly, and then, as the silence stretched and the Dra said nothing, he began to wonder what in the world he was doing. Alone, in the dark, with a Dra. He seemed bigger up close, the whip-cord body radiating menace, the dark, steady, dangerous eyes suddenly more predator than human. Ari felt his mouth go dry.
“ There is little danger tonight,” Kai finally said, his low voice both chilling and oddly comforting. It was almost inconceivable at that moment to think of anything that the Dra couldn’t handle.
Ari wondered about him as he snuggled into the thick curls of sheepskin lining his greatcloak. What about the Drae? Where did they fit into the story of the Upheaval? Which of the Four Kings had they owed allegiance to… or had they? Which had they followed Out? All he knew about them was their reputation as mercs, assassins, the most treacherous race known to man. And what about these mysterious Addahites, hopefully hiding out somewhere in the surrounding vertical countryside? When had the cult of Il started?
He dreamed that night as he hadn ’t in years, vivid and sharp, of the garden of his childhood, of a rollicking happiness that was more sensed than pictured…of the carefree contentment of a life before life’s awareness.
CHAPTER 3
It may have been almost July, but you wouldn ’t have known it the next morning. It was a stiff, chilled group that moved out into the brilliant sunshine and back onto the path. Butterflies wandered among the wildflowers that lay in great swathes across the flanks of the hills, and the lacy green of the evergreens moved in a brisk morning breeze. Bare trunks rose around them like columns in a temple as they entered a thick stretch of forest, bright sunlight filtered by the sweeping, fragrant green boughs of cedar and pine. It was so exquisitely peaceful that Ari began to hope their search might keep them up here the whole summer. What a place.
They lunched sitting on a soft carpet of pine needles, and were still riding through forest that afternoon when a plume of smoke became visible through the thinning trees. Once they’d broken into the clear, they saw it was attached to a little log cabin, nestled a short distance away into the flank of a steep hill. Everybody sat up alertly, the desultory conversation ceasing. The dreamlike peace of the ride had lulled all of them but Kai (and probably Melkin, who didn’t seem the sort to notice flowers and butterflies unless he was pinning them to specimen boards).
There was something poignant about that little cabin all alone in the huge, silent, desolate wilderness. It seemed absolutely appropriate that a doddling, white-bearded mountain man would come out of the door as they approached, or perhaps a work-worn couple with gnarled hands and faces old before their time, taciturn and suspicious of visitors.
Instead, as they neared, they saw neat fencing, a modest herd of contained sheep, and a single—young—man kneeling busily on the ground in the center of the m. He raised his head at the sound of their horses’ hooves, released what turned out to be an extremely relieved lamb, and came over to them with a broad, welcoming smile. He couldn’t have been more than 17 or 18, and was not at all dirty, shaggy, or crawling with visible lice. His figure was clothed in rough homespun, but was well-formed, with the right number of appendages, and neither halt nor twitchy. And the warm brown eyes that greeted them
She shot him a look laced with glass shards.
While Loren showed Rodge how to pad the ground with pine boughs under his greatcloak, Ari wandered one last time into the tree line. He almost stumbled into Dra Kai, and instantly felt remorse. Here he was acting the child, listening to stories and headed blithely to bed, when there were men in the dark and cold standing guard.
“ Uh, I’ll take a turn at watch…” he offered awkwardly, and then, as the silence stretched and the Dra said nothing, he began to wonder what in the world he was doing. Alone, in the dark, with a Dra. He seemed bigger up close, the whip-cord body radiating menace, the dark, steady, dangerous eyes suddenly more predator than human. Ari felt his mouth go dry.
“ There is little danger tonight,” Kai finally said, his low voice both chilling and oddly comforting. It was almost inconceivable at that moment to think of anything that the Dra couldn’t handle.
Ari wondered about him as he snuggled into the thick curls of sheepskin lining his greatcloak. What about the Drae? Where did they fit into the story of the Upheaval? Which of the Four Kings had they owed allegiance to… or had they? Which had they followed Out? All he knew about them was their reputation as mercs, assassins, the most treacherous race known to man. And what about these mysterious Addahites, hopefully hiding out somewhere in the surrounding vertical countryside? When had the cult of Il started?
He dreamed that night as he hadn ’t in years, vivid and sharp, of the garden of his childhood, of a rollicking happiness that was more sensed than pictured…of the carefree contentment of a life before life’s awareness.
CHAPTER 3
It may have been almost July, but you wouldn ’t have known it the next morning. It was a stiff, chilled group that moved out into the brilliant sunshine and back onto the path. Butterflies wandered among the wildflowers that lay in great swathes across the flanks of the hills, and the lacy green of the evergreens moved in a brisk morning breeze. Bare trunks rose around them like columns in a temple as they entered a thick stretch of forest, bright sunlight filtered by the sweeping, fragrant green boughs of cedar and pine. It was so exquisitely peaceful that Ari began to hope their search might keep them up here the whole summer. What a place.
They lunched sitting on a soft carpet of pine needles, and were still riding through forest that afternoon when a plume of smoke became visible through the thinning trees. Once they’d broken into the clear, they saw it was attached to a little log cabin, nestled a short distance away into the flank of a steep hill. Everybody sat up alertly, the desultory conversation ceasing. The dreamlike peace of the ride had lulled all of them but Kai (and probably Melkin, who didn’t seem the sort to notice flowers and butterflies unless he was pinning them to specimen boards).
There was something poignant about that little cabin all alone in the huge, silent, desolate wilderness. It seemed absolutely appropriate that a doddling, white-bearded mountain man would come out of the door as they approached, or perhaps a work-worn couple with gnarled hands and faces old before their time, taciturn and suspicious of visitors.
Instead, as they neared, they saw neat fencing, a modest herd of contained sheep, and a single—young—man kneeling busily on the ground in the center of the m. He raised his head at the sound of their horses’ hooves, released what turned out to be an extremely relieved lamb, and came over to them with a broad, welcoming smile. He couldn’t have been more than 17 or 18, and was not at all dirty, shaggy, or crawling with visible lice. His figure was clothed in rough homespun, but was well-formed, with the right number of appendages, and neither halt nor twitchy. And the warm brown eyes that greeted them
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