Eastward Dragons Read Online Free PDF Page A

imbalance.”
    Neasa shrugged, feigning indifference, shouldered her bag, and stepped onto the scale. It was of a variety that she had never before seen, with long strings of runes glowing up the length of a pole sunk into the floor beside the platform and no sign of balance weights, springs, or levers. As she stood at the center of the iron platform, the runes on the pole shifted and she recognized several of them as listing a number.  
    “Thank you, soldier. Now you can step over here and I’ll give you your transfer orders,” the clerk chirped as he scratched an entry into one of the many ledgers that lay upon his desk.
    “How will you be balancing the gateway?” Neasa asked. She pointed at the scale. “I have read of runic scales, but never seen one myself. It seems like a lot of effort just to balance the gates.”
    The clerk’s eyes widened in surprise. It was uncommon enough for individuals to be authorized for a one-way journey through the balance gates. For one to make such a journey and have even a rudimentary understanding of the powers at play, well, that was a true wonder to the old man. “Generally speaking you would be correct, but we are not speaking of a single balance gate being used for an emergency retreat. Look around you, soldier. We have over a dozen fully open balance gates in this chamber, and many more that are currently holding in their reduced state because we do not anticipate any need for them today. If the anima imbalance in all of these gates were to grow too strong, the results might be catastrophic.”
    Neasa nodded and glanced around at the ring of crackling gateways, each a window into a distant corner of the Commonwealth. She had once dreamed of traveling to all those places, perhaps at the side of her half brother as his personal guard, but fate had written for her a more obscure role, and a narrower path to walk.  
    The clerk held up a sheet of flimsy paper and waved it at Neasa, catching her attention again. “Your orders. Do you know your way through the castle?”
    Neasa took the paper and peered at the instructions written on it. Below the neatly curved lines of instructions, a single familiar rune glowed with a faint purple light. “Yes. I can find my way.”
    ⫛
    King Berech lounged on a purple velvet divan set below a wide window in his private chambers, perusing a hand-illustrated copy of T’Almark’s Theory of Fighting Forms , when his handmaid called to him from the door. “You have a visitor, your majesty. She is carrying one of your friendship runes and bears the marks of safe binding, but she is not familiar to me.”
    Berech closed the book and laid it on a marble end table beside the divan. He smiled and rested his hands behind his head as he said, “You sound concerned, Xi-Cuer. Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?”
    “Forgive me, master, but it is my duty to see that you are kept safe and well. I would not dare to judge my king if he told me to expect a private caller.”
    Berech laughed and raised one hand to wave Cuer away. “Go let her in, then give us some privacy.”
    Cuer bowed and returned to the doors of the king’s private chambers, where Neasa waited. Neasa had combed her hair and dressed in her formal black leader jerkin and a pair of loose brown leggings held up by a tooled leather belt. Cuer escorted Neasa to the king, bowed to both of them in turn, then slipped into an antechamber and pulled the door shut, bowing as she did.
    King Berech raised both of his arms in an expansive greeting and called out, “Welcome, Neasa Veatro. I trust your journey was short and not too uncomfortable.”
    “I have never traveled by balance gate before. That clerk you keep down in the basement could do with seeing daylight more frequently, if you ask my opinion.”
    “Ah, but nobody asked your opinion, Neasa, and yet you volunteer it. Is it any wonder that you found yourself exiled to a distant outpost?”
    Neasa shrugged her shoulders, glanced around