Best Laid Plans Read Online Free PDF Page A

gonna be a priestess.’
    Thindamura hopped behind Sammy and began to circle him, his tongue whipping out to snare a fly.
    Huntsman closed his eyes and settled back in the spider’s embrace. Murgah Muggui’s eyes burned into Sammy.
    ‘Your sister is a Nousian?’
    ‘Uh huh,’ Sammy grunted whilst watching the toad-headed Thindamura stalking him.
    ‘And you still want to train him, Huntsman?’
    ‘I must,’ Huntsman said blearily. ‘I owe it to his sister. She sent Shader away at my bidding.’
    Mamba folded his bulging arms across his chest. ‘Yoursss or the philosssopher’sss?’
    Sammy frowned, trying to work out what they were saying. Huntsman knew Rhiannon? He’d told her to send Shader away? So he was the one who’d made her unhappy. ‘What’s a philosopher?’ he asked.
    Huntsman opened his eyes, but ignored Sammy’s question. ‘Aristodeus’s plan fails. All this sacrifice is for nothing. Eingana’s power has been misused and Sektis Gandaw has noticed.’
    ‘We too have sensed his eyes,’ Murgah Muggui said. ‘Everything is happening as it did before.’
    Thindamura leapt to a rock and perched there. ‘But this time we have Shader,’ he croaked.
    ‘Plucked from his true time,’ Baru said. ‘But how will it change the outcome? Aristodeus said—’
    ‘It is not for him to say.’ Murgah Muggui’s legs unfurled from Huntsman and she reared up. ‘Nothing like this has been tried before. In its way, what he’s done is as unnatural as what Sektis Gandaw plans to do.’
    ‘It’sss the lesser of two evilsss,’ Mamba said. ‘Tinkering with time or sssubmitting to the unravelling of the universsse. What choice does he have?’
    The great spider’s eight red eyes turned back to Sammy, making him feel like a piece of meat at the market. ‘We must offer the boy to the Archon.’
    Mamba gripped Sammy’s shoulders and held him tight.
    ‘But I have taken him for Sahul,’ Huntsman said. ‘I will teach him about Eingana. This Archon is nothing to us. He is a white-man’s god.’
    ‘He is Eingana’s brother, Huntsman,’ Murgah Muggui said. ‘He aided her birthing of the Cynocephalus and made possible the Dreaming. He is the law opposing the deceptions of the Demiurgos. There is too much at stake, old friend. If Aristodeus is failing for the second time, we must appeal to a higher power.’
    A spray of webbing shot from the body of the spider and smothered Sammy’s face. He tried to raise his arm, but Mamba held him firm. The web smelled of something sweet and sickly. His head grew suddenly heavy and dizziness overcame him. He felt himself falling, supported only by Mamba’s arms, and as he drifted into blackness he heard Murgah Muggui’s voice like a distant echo. ‘If Sammy has a part in all this, the Archon will know. The boy must go to him.’
     
     
     

TAJEN
     
    ‘D on’t be deceived, Deacon Shader. This is not Araboth.’ Tajen was a stocky man with a ruddy face. His wiry black hair had been cropped unevenly short, and his dark brown eyes brooded beneath thick brows. He was dressed in a grubby tunic of beige linen and sandals so caked in dried mud that they appeared fossilised. The other six Luminaries gathered around Shader were naked, clearly at ease with their finely proportioned physiques. They each exuded a soft glow in varying shades of white, rose, and gold.
    A tall man, bronzed and bearded, clapped Shader on the shoulder. ‘Do not heed Tajen, Frater. He has ever been the pessimist.’
    Shader studied him for a moment, noting the tears in his flesh, holes that seemed to suppurate bright light. He knew that this must be Milo, who had been flayed alive in the forests of Verusia by his own prior, the notorious Otto Blightey.
    Jarmin, now clothed in a brown habit, his body bent and wizened, sat stiffly in the shade of a silver monolith.
    One of the Luminaries, a beautiful youth with a golden radiance, shook his head and smiled benevolently. ‘You still resist the truth,