At the Gates of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

can tell you this much, my friend: no one left here is without some power and ability, despite appearances to the contrary. Pug ensured all the students were safely away within a day of…”
    “The attack,” finished Jim.
    “I was going to say the death of his wife and son.” Amirantha sighed. “Never having children, I can only imagine a bit of what he’s going through. I certainly had nothing to fairly compare what he was like before that, scant hours really, but…” He shrugged.
    “There’s been a change,” said Jim. He looked to the west where somewhere behind the clouds the sun was lowering toward the horizon. “He knew I was about some business of consequence, yet there’s apparently no means for contact; that is unlike him. It’s as if he’s…” Jim shrugged.
    “Distracted?” offered Amirantha.
    “More,” said Jim. “Distant in a way that troubles me.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Jim smiled slightly. “I don’t expect you to. I hardly know the man well, despite our somewhat tenuous kinship.”
    “Kinship?”
    Jim said, “My great-grandmother was his foster daughter.”
    Amirantha’s eyebrows went up slightly as his expression indicated surprise. “Tenuous by blood, yes, but otherwise?”
    “We are not close. It is a long story, a family matter, and really not pertinent to the discussion at hand.”
    Amirantha shrugged, to convey that if Jim didn’t think it important enough to speak of, that was enough. “Perhaps, but apparently we have ample time. Enlighten me.”
    Jim stared off into the darkening afternoon gloom and said, “While Pug and I may not be close, I do know a great deal about him, for his role in Kingdom politics has been significant, since long before I was born.”
    “Obviously,” agreed Amirantha. “Given the rank andstatus of those who have been to visit since I was first made aware of the Conclave’s existence.”
    “So in my…other duties, to the Crown, I’ve been required to read a great deal of history, much of it penned by my own forebears.
    “Pug is, if anything, a man of strong convictions and he pays attention to details. He is not the sort to let important things slip by. Yet lately…” Jim took a deep breath. “…this is unlike him.”
    “By this, I expect you mean this, ” Amirantha said, indicating the cold, nearly empty castle with a wave of his hand.
    “I would have expected the man I knew, the one I studied, to have begun reconstruction on the villa at once, almost defiantly, as if telling his enemies that they would not prevail.”
    Amirantha nodded, pursing his lips as if thinking, and remained quiet for a moment, then asked, “How much time do you think his enemies spend studying him?”
    Jim inclined his head slightly as if conceding the point.
    “Would it not seem, given what has happened here, that Pug also realizes he’s under a great deal of scrutiny? By all reports, in one form or another, these enemies of his have been coming at him for years.”
    “If you assume that there is one intelligence behind a series of assaults on this world going back more than a century and a half, yes. But that is an assumption.”
    “A better one to make,” observed the Warlock, “than thinking this land is merely beset by a string of coincidental afflictions.
    “I may not be the master of magic on Pug’s scale, but I know enough about the other realms to know this is not a series of odd happenings.” He paused, and Brandos recognized his expression. Amirantha was frustrated. “Over the last year I’ve heard enough references to things such as the Pantathian Serpent Priests—with whom I am familiar—andthe Riftwar, and the Great Uprising, and all the rest of it to believe there is one intelligence behind all of this, one agency that has targeted this world, perhaps this nation, even perhaps this island, for reasons known only to them, but irrespective of those reasons, the consequences for this entire world are dire.”
    “I