Craig Saunders [Rythe 03] Rythe Falls (epub)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Knives and forks were Sybremreyen, the Kuh'taenium, and Arram.Grapes people, fat the Protectorate, cheese Rahken, and bread seafarers.She'd worried, for a time, that the bread would be too absorbent, for the sea.Obsessed, even, while she built this great map to chart the coming war.But it was just a bed, not the world.Rythe was more complex than a mere collection of rotten food.'Wake up, my love.wake up.'Tirielle sniffed, ignored the voice and shifted a grape from the Lianthran side of the bed to the hump in the middle.The wizard's ship, moving.Hope and aid from Lianthre, the wizards trained by the rahken, coming fast as the sea would move beneath their boat, fast as the winds in their sails.'Time has caught us.'It was a woman's voice she heard.She imagined, if she were to go mad, that she might hear the echoes of her murdered father, or her friend Roth, or j'ark, the lover she was perhaps never meant to have.But always a woman's voice.Deep and powerful.Could anyone else hear it? She thought not.'Time is on us, love.Wake.'Often, the same thing.Sometimes, other words, but never the sense that the owner of the voice was speaking to anyone but the sleeper.Conversational, sometimes, sometimes chiding, but always this one-sided conversation and little else beside.Tirielle moved another grape closer to a silver fork, tarnished from use a few days ago.The Seer, and her companions.she picked up a piece of cheese for the Rahken.moving to Sybremreyen.How did she know this? The wizard ship, Sia and her companions? She knew because it seemed that not only could Tirielle hear the mysterious voice of the woman in her mind, but from time to time she caught thoughts and words from the Seer, too.Once, connected, it seemed that connection could not be broken.But you're not insane, Tirielle, are you? Not really.She couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought not.Desperately, perhaps, no more than hoping this to be true, because there was something in Sia's thoughts that she picked up on, and from the other woman's thoughts, too.The other woman she merely thought of as The Waker, though she knew the woman must be more to project her words to Tirielle.There was a sense, in both these stolen missives, that Sia and the woman both knew more than Drun and Caeus and perhaps the rest of Rythe together.A sense that time had not just caught The Sleeper, but caught them all.*Chapter Nine'There are fast ways.all across the land,' the old Rahken said.She had not lied.The suns had barely moved since Reih and Perr and their new companion had set out across the swamplands for the temple Sybremreyen.Their horses seemed tireless, the Rahken loping easily alongside, behind, ahead.The Rahken were almost as many as the sly, sharp grasses of the swamps, or the heavy fronds that grew, it seemed, on the murky water itself.The two shining paladins who accompanied the seer rode beautiful horses that seemed bred for war, rather than speed, but they kept pace just as easily as the Rahken.The girl-child, Sia, rode with the paladin named Yuthran, side-saddle across the man's lap.The other warrior, face hidden deep in the shadow of his helm, rode alone.That one never spoke, but Yuthran was nearly garrulous.though compared to Perr a dead man would have seemed talkative.Through the swamp for what seemed like hours they rode hard and fast, did not tire or hunger.'How long have we been riding?' she asked of the Rahken beside her mount at one point.'Minutes, only,' said the beast.But it seemed like hours to her.Magic pathways, strange creatures, plants and trees and beast-song that was all alien to her, knowing only the north.No sense of great speed, but a hint of something otherworldly.Almost as though there was a constant buzz in her ear, like an insect spoke to her in a tiny voice she could not understand.It could be that they had only been riding minutes, as the Rahken told her, though her mind was convinced it should now be late in the day, near the first sun's setting.She looked for the suns, but both were still high and seemed not to move.Time, outside this path, standing still?She didn't know.Nor could she gain any sense of their direction.If the fabled Sybremreyen was hidden, as it was rumoured, in the deepest part of the southern lands, then it was deep in the swamp indeed.Far as the southern-most coast, maybe.The maps would have Reih believe that the swamps of the south bled their rot into the sea where it reached the end of Lianthran lands.But Reih was learning that you could not trust maps.Maps lied.Cartographers made mistakes - deliberate or accidental, it didn't matter.The fact was, should they be abandoned on this odd path that took them unhindered through the murk of the swamp, she and Perr would most likely breathe their last here.No one would ever find them.The thought gave Reih a moment's pause, but as she glanced around at the swamp, her companions (hardly needing to steer her horse at all - she let the mare have her head and the mare was happy enough to run), then, up to the sky, she realised that the suns were.dim.Not because of foliage - trees here tended to be short things, it seemed - but because they were.setting?A younger Rahken noted her skyward glance, and nodded to her.Seemed the creature grinned, though it was so full of teeth and fur, you couldn't really call it a grin or a smile, even.'Yes,' said the Rahken, in answer to her unspoken question, 'the suns are setting.A day passed.Close your eyes if you wish - your mount will not tire, nor can she stray.The pathways hold us, still and true.''A day?'The Rahken nodded.Reih shook her head.How could anyone be expected to fall asleep on a galloping horse?She should be hungry, or tired, or even perhaps a little scared.but she was not.So thinking, she rode on as the skies darkened and somehow, she knew not how, opened her eyes but a moment later to see bright light yet again, to find her behind sore and chaffed from riding, and herself atop her horse.Perr was beside her, holding her horse's reins in one hand, his helm on the pommel of his saddle.He grinned.She could tell a grin on his face, if not a Rahken's.'Seems we're here,' he said.'Sleep well?'She slid, uncomfortably, from the saddle.'Oddly, I did,' she told him.'Leave the horses, the packs.Not like they can go anywhere, right?'She turned full-circle, then back to Perr.For what might be as wide as two or three miles around them were long, lush grasslands.A high, ancient wall enclosed them against the ravages of the swamp, though she could see the swamp's attempts to scale the walls, like some invading army.Vines broke the walls in places, and in some the walls had been speared by the roots of some hardy trees.As she looked across the grass, she noted pools, trees.Heard birdsong and other, stranger noises, like groaning, but on a small scale.Walls around, grass within.A world within a world, almost.And far in the distance from them, at the centre of this strange enclave, was Sybremreyen herself.*Chapter TenAs she came closer to Sybremreyen, Reih began to understand why the builder, descendant of the temple's creators whom she knew only as Sventhan, had described this temple as the Kuh'taenium's sister-building.The similarities were obvious, like giant children made by the same architects mad imagination.The place was large - overly so, considering only eleven men had called it home.It was far from grand.More.disquieting, truth be told [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne