Dawn of the Flame Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

see in their combined lifetimes; he would not be so careless. Deliberate, but not careless. Holding the glowing rod off to the side, Ban pointed at the fallen youth with his sword while the others stared wide-eyed at the crumpled figure, silent with fear.
    â€œHe still lives. You will take him, and yourselves, out of these caves. I might not spare the next to attack me. Your entire tribe is not great enough in numbers to stop me. I am Ban. I serve Taje Jintaya-ul. Be grateful she is willing to share these canyons with your people. She will not share these particular caves.
If
you behave and are polite, you may be invited to stay, rather than be told to leave this area. If you are rude and attack . . . you will be lucky if there are enough of you left to leave.”
    There was no inflection in his tone, aside from a point of emphasis on their choices in this matter. He did not stress their impending deaths if they chose unwisely. Ban didn’t bother because he did not care. It had hurt him more than enough to learn after all these years that he could still care for someone. For Jintaya.
    â€œPulek. Eruk,” the woman with the long spear ordered. “Grab Lutun. We will leave these caves alone. For now,” she added firmly, holding Ban’s gaze as if he were some sort of predator. “Taje Halek will decide whether or not we will come back to them.”
    Two of the men moved forward at her command. Ban recognized one of them, the older of the two, as the man who had first spied upon the Fae. He had a few scars here and there and was missing the tip of his third finger. He also eyed Ban warily, gaze flicking repeatedly to the blade that had nearly punctured him. The other fellow stooped and thriftily claimed the bronze spearhead, tucking it into his waistband before helping his companion grab the fallen hunter by his wrists and ankles.
    Waiting until the group had dragged the unconscious would-be warrior off, Ban paced slowly in their wake, making sure none were lingering to try to ambush him. Every so often, he glanced behind and saw the work of Éfan, sealing up cave after cave in his wake with what looked like blank walls sculpted and colored to match the rest of the wind-and-water-worn rock.
    I will have to remind Éfan to make the walls malleable enough that I can get through them at a touch
, he thought, sighing with a trace of impatience.
Otherwise there will come a day I will have to bash my way in and ruin whatever sculpting work they will be trying to do, reshaping these caves into a proper Fae home.
    ***
    Deep in the sand dunes to the south, Kuruk, the leader of the small warband tracking the refugees, scowled at the coarse grains around them. They bore no traces of footsteps, save the ones the five of them had made: Kuruk as leader, Charag and Tureg as fighters, Koro and his acolyte Pak. There should have been signs of the passage of over two hundred tribe members . . . but the winds of the desert, slow and sparse save at dawn and dusk, had erased all the marks. “Are you
sure
the anima can track them? We haven’t seen signs of their passage in three days now.”
    Koro, their middle-aged
animadj
, made a tsk noise. “You know as well as I that the anima can do many things if the will is strong and sharp. My will is trained by twice as many years as you have been alive, hunt leader.
And
 . . . what do I have in my hand?”
    â€œA torch,” Kuruk grunted, lifting his eyes to the sky. He did not care for the teacher-prompting-the-student tone of the older man but let it pass.
    â€œA torch,” Koro agreed, his tone bordering somewhere between chiding and pompous. The animadj had earned the right to be proud, however. “I draw my will from the fire that named our tribe. I draw my power from the encircling energies of the flame as it consumes all that it can eat. The torch flames point firmly north, while the wind, when it stirs, travels to