Debt of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

has it already cost us? How many of our men will die to bleed them on their own land—land we don’t know as they do?”
    “And how many of our people will die if we don’t eliminate their ability to come back at us another day! We must pursue them. Panis Rahl will never rest. He’ll be working to conjure up something else to gut us all in our sleep. We must hunt them down and kill every last one!”
    “I’m working on that,” the First Wizard said cryptically.
    The old man twisted his beard and made a sarcastic face. “Yes, he thinks he can unleash the underworld itself on them.”
    Several officers, two of the sorceresses, and a couple of the men in robes paused to stare in open disbelief.
    The sorceress who had brought Abby to the audience leaned close. “You wanted to talk to the First Wizard. Talk. If you have lost your nerve, then I will see you out.”
    Abby wet her lips. She didn’t know how she could talk into the middle of such a roundabout conversation, but she knew she must, so she just started back in.
    “Sir, I don’t know anything about what my homeland of Pendisan Reach has done. I know little of the king. I don’t know anything about the council, or the war, or any of it. I’m from a small place, and I only know that the people there are in grave trouble. Our defenders were overrun by the enemy. There is an army of Midlands men who drive toward the D’Harans.”
    She felt foolish talking to a man who was carrying on a half dozen conversations all at once. Mostly, though, she felt anger and frustration. Those people were going to die if she couldn’t convince him to help.
    “How many D’Harans?” the wizard asked.
    Abby opened her mouth, but an officer spoke in her place. “We’re not sure how many are left in Anargo’s legion. They may be wounded, but they’re an enraged wounded bull. Now they’re in sight of their homeland. They can only come back at us, or escape us. We’ve got Sanderson sweeping down from the north and Mardale cutting up from the southwest. Anargo made a mistake going into the Crossing; in there he must fight us or run for home. We have to finish them. This may be our only chance.”
    The First Wizard drew a finger and thumb down his smooth jaw. “Still, we aren’t sure of their numbers. The scouts were dependable, but they never returned. We can only assume they’re dead. And why would Anargo do such a thing?”
    “Well,” the officer said, “it’s the shortest escape route back to D’Hara.”
    The First Wizard turned to a sorceress to answer a question she had just finished. “I can’t see how we can afford it. Tell them I said no. I’ll not cast that kind of web for them and I’ll not give them the means to it for no more offered than a ‘maybe.’”
    The sorceress nodded before rushing off.
    Abby knew that a web was the spell cast by a sorceress. Apparently the spell cast by a wizard was called the same.
    “Well, if such a thing is possible,” the bearded man was saying, “then I’d like to see your exegesis of the text. A three-thousand-year-old book is a lot of risk. We’ve no clue as to how the wizards of that time could do most of what they did.”
    The First Wizard, for the first time, cast a hot glare toward the man. “Thomas, do you want to see exactly what I’m talking about? The spell-form?”
    Some of the people had fallen silent at the tone in his voice. The First Wizard threw open his arms, urging everyone back out of his way. The Mother Confessor stayed close behind his left shoulder. The sorceress beside Abby pulled her back a step.
    The First Wizard motioned. A man snatched a small sack off the table and handed it to him. Abby noticed that some of the sand on the tables wasn’t simply spilled, but had been used to draw symbols. Abby’s mother had occasionally drawn spells with sand, but mostly used a variety of other things, from ground bone to dried herbs. Abby’s mother used sand for practice; spells, real spells, had to