A Threat of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

her interest, he began.
    Images flashed by, of him and Evangeline traveling south. How nervous she had been to meet with the king of Napon.
    His memories reached the evening on the sea cliffs.
    Did the Wellstone know that some of these memories were more worn than others? Pulled out more often and clung to?
    The moon sat low over the ocean, embodying every bit of poetry ever written about such a moment. Evangeline held his hands while the local holy man spoke the wedding pledges.
    The image shifted.
    The two of them pulled the unwieldy rowboat up onto the lakeshore and collapsed on the sand, half laughing, half groaning. Alaric could barely move his arms, and his back ached. The wind that had risen, making the water so choppy, blew across the beach, cooling him off so quickly he began to shiver.
    “That is the worst rowboat ever made,” she said, panting.
    “With the world’s smallest oars,” he added. So much for a relaxing afternoon of fishing.
    “If we find that obnoxious woman who was yelling, ‘Row! Row!’ from the shore, can you turn her into a rock?”
    Alaric laughed. “I’m not good at messing with the boundary between the living and the non-living.”
    “A frog, then?”
    “A frog is a possibility.”
    Alaric loosened his grip, letting images flow past faster, like water through his fingers. Images of walking a forested road with Evangeline, talking about everything and nothing. Sitting around a bonfire, watching village children dance. Scenes of easy happiness.
    But then he caught a glimpse of the Lumen Greenwood in the distance, and a small village. The village that had been terrorized by an enormous fire lizard, which had been preying on their flocks and killed a child.
    Alaric’s heart faltered, and he grabbed at the flow of memories to stop them, but the Wellstone pulled him on.
    Alaric set out with the three villagers to find and kill the fire lizard. Evangeline hadn’t wanted to stay behind, but he’d gotten her to agree at last.
    The dull orange lizard attacked them when they were barely out of the village.
    Alaric drew vitalle out from it, slowing the lizard, but it was still so fast. The men shot arrows at it, most of them missing wildly as the creature darted around them, spitting burning liquid, raking the men with its claws.
    The beast was finally brought down, its body prickling with black-fletched arrows. Alaric stumbled over to the men strewn on the ground. Not one had survived.
    There was a noise behind him, and he spun around. Evangeline staggered toward him, a black-fletched arrow lodged in her thigh. His heart faltered.
    “No,” he cried, catching her as she fell. “I thought you were in the village.”
    She clutched at him, her face white with pain.
    Alaric set her down gently. The arrow wasn’t deep. A simple, clean wound like this would heal relatively quickly.
    He gave her a moment to brace for the pain before he pulled it out.
    She screamed.
    Alaric clawed at the memories, frantically trying to stop them, to change them, to block the arrow, to change the story.
    The wound had been simple, but it had not been clean. Of course the villagers had poisoned the arrows. But in their terror, they had poisoned them with things they didn’t even have an antidote for.
    Alaric climbed the stone steps of the small mountain keep, carrying her in his arms. Her breath came in shallow gasps. Her face was gaunt and pale.
    The blanket he had wrapped her in slid off her black, swollen leg. Lines of dark red snaked up her thigh, tracing the poison’s path. He tried to carry her gently, but she shuddered in pain with each step.
    Alaric reeled away from the memory, but the Wellstone dragged him relentlessly on.
    Alaric stood in the Stronghold council chamber trying not to crush the red scroll in his fist. Sixteen Keepers in black robes were seated at the long, map-strewn table, looking at him with troubled faces.
    The Shield smiled warmly. “Brother Alaric, you have a request for the