Beyond The Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

side of the iron cauldron. He jerked, his flesh sizzling on the coals, but he didn’t roll away.
    “Torturer!” The legion’s gentler’s stomach opened.
    “Unclean! Unclean!” The Night Angel screamed, its whole figure glowing, burning blue. It killed left and right.
    “Kill it!” the underlord screamed.
    Wreathed in blue flames that whipped and crackled in long streams behind him, Kylar was already flipping clear of the circle.
     Staying visible and burning, he ran straight north, as if heading back to the “Khalidoran” camp. Men dove out of his path.
     Then Kylar extinguished the flames, went invisible, and came back to see if his trap had worked.
    “Form up!” the underlord shouted, his face purple with rage. “We march to the forest! It’s time to kill some wytches, men!
     Let’s go! Now!”
    6
    Eunuchs to the left,” Rugger the Khalidoran guard, said. He was so muscular he looked like a sack full of nuts, but the
     most noticeable lump was the wen bulging grotesquely from his forehead. “Hey, Halfman! That means you!”
    Dorian shuffled into the line on the left, tearing his eyes away from the guard. He knew the man: a bastard who’d been whelped
     on some slave girl by one of Dorian’s older brothers. The aethelings, the throne-worthy sons, had tormented Rugger unrelentingly.
     Dorian’s tutor, Neph Dada, encouraged it. There was just one rule: they couldn’t do harm to any slave that would keep him
     from performing his duties. Rugger’s wen had been little Dorian’s work.
    “You staring at something?” Rugger demanded, poking Dorian with his spear.
    Dorian looked resolutely at the floor and shook his head. He’d altered his appearance as much as he dared before coming to
     the Citadel to ask for work, but he couldn’t take any illusion too far. He would be beaten regularly. A guard or noble or
     aetheling would notice if a blow didn’t hit the proper resistance or if Dorian didn’t flinch appropriately. He’d experimented
     with altering the balance of his humors so that he might stop growing a man’s hair, too, but the results had been horrifying.
     He touched his chest—now mercifully back to male proportions—just thinking about it.
    Instead, he’d practiced until he could sweep his body with fire and air so as to be hairless. With the speed his beard came
     in, it would be a weave he would have to use twice a day. A slave’s life included little privacy, so speed was essential.
     Mercifully, slaves were beneath notice—as long as they didn’t draw attention to themselves by staring at guards as if they
     were freaks.
    Slouch or die, Dorian. Rugger smacked him again, but Dorian didn’t move, so Rugger moved down the line to harass others.
    They were standing outside the Bridge Keep. Two hundred men and women were at the keep’s west gate. Winter was coming, and
     even those who’d had good harvests had been beggared by the Godking’s armies. For the smallfolk, it hardly mattered if the
     army passing through was enemy or friend. One looted, the other scavenged, but each took what it wanted and killed anyone
     who resisted. With the Godking emptying the Citadel to send armies both south into Cenaria and north into the Freeze, the
     coming winter would be brutal. All the people in the line were hoping to sell themselves into slavery before winter arrived
     and the lines quadrupled.
    It was an icy clear autumn morning in the city of Khaliras, two hours before dawn. Dorian had forgotten the glory of the northern
     stars. In the city, few lamps burned—oil was too precious, so few terrestrial fires tried to compete with the ethereal flames
     burning like holes in the cloak of heaven.
    Despite himself, Dorian couldn’t help but feel a stirring of pride as he looked over the city that could have been his. Khaliras
     was laid out in an enormous ring around the chasm that surrounded Mount Thrall. Succeeding generations of Ursuul Godkings
     had walled in semicircles of the city to