All the Paths of Shadow Read Online Free PDF

paused, shifted her bag from her left hand to her right, and waved back Kervis when he motioned to take the bag himself.
    “The Tower is not haunted,” she said. “It was not, is not, and shall never be. Is that clear?”
    The Bellringers nodded, slowly this time.
    Angis grinned at his ponies, but didn’t say a word.
    “Then let’s go,” said Meralda. “Follow me.”
    She turned and set foot on the cracked flagstones of Wizard’s Walk, which led through the park’s east gate and then wound toward the Tower. The walk was, according to local lore, another of Otrinvion’s legacies.
    The Bellringers, right hands on sword hilts, faces stern (except for Tervis, who kept wrinkling his forehead to push his helmet up), fell into step behind her.
    “Keep a sharp eye out, lads,” said Angis, after Meralda passed into the park. “Especially after dark. That’s when the haunts get mean.” Angis lifted his voice. “Not that I believe such, mind you.”
    Meralda listened to the steady tromp-tromp of newly soled guard boots and frowned. The Bellringers were marching, not walking. Fresh out of boot camp, she thought. I’m sure they’re not even aware they’re doing it. I’ll be hearing the sound of marching boots from now until the Accords. That’s eighteen more days, and every one of them my own small army dress parade.
    The walk turned suddenly, leaving the shade of the old oaks for the close-cropped green grass of the park proper.
    The Tower split the sky, no longer obscured by walls or oaks.
    “Here it is, gentlemen,” said Meralda, halting. “The Tower.”
    “It’s taller than the palace,” said Kervis.
    Meralda shook her head. She knew the highest spire of the palace to be ten feet taller than the blunt tip of the Tower. Old King Horoled, a century past, had nearly bankrupted Tirlin seeing to that. But the palace was more than twenty city blocks away. One had to squint just to make out the lofty spire, which peeked above the trees. The palace might be taller, thought Meralda, but here in the park, the Tower reigns.
    Reigns? No, Meralda decided. The Tower doesn’t reign. It looms. Looms above the Old Oaks. Looms above the park wall. Looms above Tirlin. Thick and tall and blunt, chipped and nicked by seven hundred years of determined attempts to pull it down, the Tower endures.
    “If a mountain had bones,” said Tervis, “that’s what they’d look like.”
    “Hush,” replied Kervis. “It’s just a pile of rocks.”
    A lumber wain rumbled up the Walk behind them. “Passing by,” shouted the driver. “Make way.”
    Meralda stepped onto the grass and motioned the Bellringers to follow.
    The lumber wain rattled past.
    Tervis pointed toward the hurried band of carpenters stacking lumber and erecting scaffolds at the base of the Tower.
    “What are they building?”
    Meralda frowned. “Seating,” she said. “For the Accords.”
    Meralda resumed her trek toward the Tower, which lay a goodly march ahead. “The king will give the commencement speech from there,” she said, pointing toward the tall, narrow framework jutting out from the base of the Tower. “The Eryans will be there, the Alons there, the Phendelits there, and the Vonats just in front of us,” she said, her hand indicating the skeletal frames arranged around and dwarfed by the Tower. “All this, for a ten minute speech no one will remember the next day.”
    “Kings will do what kings will do,” said Kervis, with the air of one repeating a time-honored truth. “At least that’s what Pop always says.”
    “Ma’am,” he added, after a jab in the ribs from Tervis.
    The Tower beckoned. Meralda fell into step with her soldiers and marched, humming, ahead.
     
     
    The Tower doors, each twenty feet high and nearly as wide, were open, but blocked by a drooping length of bright yellow ribbon and a faded Danger Public Works sign bolted to a rusty iron stand.
    Meralda waved to the Builder’s Guild foreman, lifted the yellow ribbon, and