Deepwood: Karavans # 2 Read Online Free PDF

answers.”
     
    The dimples were gone, as was the irony in his tone. He looked away from her a moment, glancing into the forest depths, then met her eyes again. “I will answer you as best I may. Always. I will keep you and the child as safe as I can. Always. But this is Alisanos. Very often, what once had answers may now have none.”
     
    Abruptly, she was tired. Strength had run out in the aftermath of childbirth, of fear, of terrible anxiety. Her mind felt slow, sluggish, distant. Even the weight of a newborn taxed her. She let the sling take more of the baby’s weight. “But you know this place. You said you were born here.”
     
    “I do, and I was. But Alisanos is … capricious. At present I don’t know where the borders are, where the heart of the wood—the Kiba—is. There are no maps of Alisanos, not even here.” He touched his head. “All that you have heard about Alisanos, all of those things that seem impossible and thus not to be believed, aretrue. I will do my best for you. But I have been in your world for four human years. Here time is reckoned differently.” His tone intensified. “Audrun, you must understand—Alisanos is chaos. Is maelstrom. There are no such things here as roads, tracks, or pathways. The wood is wild. Things change overnight… or even by the moment, as human time is reckoned.”
     
    “And this—Kiba?”
     
    “My people are there, much of the time. We may find safety among them.”
     
    Her tone was sharp. “‘May’?”
     
    “May,” he repeated, with simple emphasis. “I can give you no certainties, Audrun. Not here.”
     
    She found the correct term. “But you’re
dioscuri
.”
     
    “I have some advantages,” he said carefully, “in some circumstances, against some of the inhabitants.”
     
    Some, some, some. Tears formed unexpectedly. To Audrun,
some
was simply not enough. Angrily, she dashed the tears away. She looked at her fingertips, where moisture glinted. And recalled the words of the karavan diviner: blood, grief, loss.
     
    She looked up and found calm brown eyes watching her. “The son of a god,” she began, “should know many things.”
     
    “He does,” Rhuan said. “He just may not know the
right
things.”
     
    It made no sense. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but froze. In the near distance, slicing through the forest, came a high, shrill, ululating scream.
     
    “The baby,” Rhuan said, and before she could protest he had relieved her of sling and infant. “Go before me.” He turned her, pushed her into motion, even as he slipped the sling over his shoulders. “Run, Audrun.
Run
.”
     

Chapter 3
     
    B RODHI WAS BROUGHT up short when he came upon the battered collection of surviving karavan wagons amid a storm-sundered grove. He looked upon the young woman kneeling before a small fire ring beside a huge elderling oak. He knew Bethid better than any of the assortment of humans he had met as a courier, but that did not necessarily explain her values to him, her thought processes, the motivations for her behavior. Now, as she worked, her thin face was strained, freedom of movement somewhat impeded by wet, sticky clothing. That she didn’t know he was present was obvious.
    Though his eyes were now clear of the red membrane, and his flesh freed of the blood engorgement that deepened its hue, Brodhi could not stem the tide of anger rushing back as Bethid petitioned the Mother of Moons. Nor could he control the trace of bitter desperation threading his words, though she wouldn’t recognize it. No one had heard that tone inhis voice before, so none could interpret its meaning. “Your Mother of Moons has nothing to do with this, Bethid. It’s Alisanos you should concern yourself with.”
     
    She looked up sharply, clearly startled. “Brodhi!”
     
    She had built a sad little pyramid of carved wooden rune sticks within the modest rock ring atop a flat stone to keep it free of mud and puddled water. He recognized the