Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

some of the children began to cry.
    “I knew it! It’s true! We must flee! It’s the Kidnapper of Old, returned for vengeance!”
    “Shut up! Everyone, he is crazy! There is no proof!”
    “There is proof, I’ve seen the evil spirit with my own eyes.”
    “And have I!”
    “Liars! You’re all paranoid liars!”
    “Quiet, the mayor is not done!”
    The crowd finally quieted down after what felt like ten minutes of riotous debate. Pursaiones shot a glance to Taisle, who sat with a disgusted grimace on his face, feeling as though his community and his mayor were all losing their minds.
    “So, because there are too many eye-witness accounts, that can’t be ignored, we are forced to take action.” The crowd responded to the mayor’s proclamation with roars of approval.
    “First, we will have the eye witnesses come up and give their accounts of the ghost, as most of us have only piecemeal information about the sightings; only then can we make an informed deliberation on our course of action,” Mayor Doings presided.
    After several moments of disarray an old troll woman wandered up to the podium. Mayor Doings stepped to the side and fidgeted with his pipe, which still hadn’t lighted properly. She looked around nervously, then turned to Doings who merely nodded, urging her to start.
    “I don’t know quite how to say it clearer than I already have—I was picking Grainewind Herb from our precious store at the foothills of the Northerly Peaks. In all my years here, I have never experienced anything like I saw….” She grumbled in a low tone, hard for many to hear.
    “Speak up!”
    “Out with it!”
    “Well, as I finished my last collection of the day, and dusk was settling over the trees, I glimpsed something moving at terrible speed, up and away from me—away, deep into the forest.”
    “But the Northerly Peaks are inaccessible!”
    “Impossible!”
    “She lies!”
    “Quiet! Listen to her, let her finish!”
    Mayor Doings raised his arms and brought them down, up then down again, quieting the disruptive audience.
    “Well, he wore rags, they hung off his body—they were yellowed and stained, dirtied, as he was a man of the wild—and then, as I watched in fear, he darted up the mountain side, and I saw him disappear, straight into thin air!”
    An audible wave of shock ran through the crowd.
    “And that was it, the last I saw of him, but I felt his presence the whole way home! An awful, rotten presence, a pure evil spirit, it was!”
    “Kill it! We must kill it!” the crowd began chanting, and those who did not believe in the story were outnumbered greatly by the believers now. The troll woman was thanked by the mayor, and he stepped back up to the podium.
    “Alright, settle, settle! The evidence is irrefutable. Nonetheless we will hear more: next we have Crumpet Grames. C’mon up old friend.” Doings motioned to Crumpet, the elderly gnome who was leaning on both his canes. Crumpet began his long trek to the podium, stopping every few steps as his long white mane of hair would get caught on the ground underneath the canes.
    “Faster you old cripple!” shot out one of the gnome children in the front row.
    “Quiet!” Pursaiones scolded with the seriousness of an executioner. She kept her gaze on the children long after they took theirs off hers—the gnome children had decided to become patient and respectful after seeing the look in Pursaiones’s eyes.
    Mayor Doings helped Crumpet up the last two steps to reach the podium, and before Crumpet turned to the audience he took the mayor’s pipe, proceeding to take several quick puffs of the half-lit weed.
    “Alright then, here you have your second eye-witness account,” the mayor said, introducing the old gnome. He quickly tried to take his pipe back, but Crumpet would not let go of it, holding on as if for dear life.
    “Come on old timer, let’s have it…” the mayor visibly struggled in a tug-of-war with Crumpet, who seemed to possess vise