Easy Betrayals Read Online Free PDF Page B

arena. The tower’s floor was choked with rough rubble; its stone walls rose only twenty or thirty feet before ending in a jagged stump. The walls above them glowed orange with the last rays of the sunset. One Miltiades stumbled but parried the other’s attack and drove his reflection back toward Rings. “Think, lad, think!” Belgin muttered to himself. “Which one’s real?”
    The dwarf raised his axe but held his blow, cursing. “I don’t know which one to hit!”
    “I know a way to find out,” Belgin said, smiling grimly. “Miltiades, don’t say anything. Eidola? Which one are you?”
    “I am,” said the Miltiades with his back to Rings.
    Instantly the dwarf swung his axe in a low, vicious cut, but Miltiades-Eidola leaped over the blow and quickly grappled with the real Miltiades, spinning around. Belgin slashed at the imposter as the two reeled close to him and was rewarded with a hiss of pain. Dark blood stained his sword blade, and the battling paladins moved away again, locked in their deadly embrace.
    From the doorway, Jacob surged forward. “I’ve got her!” he cried. He raised his mighty war blade for a monstrous stroke certain to cut the doppelganger in two.
    “No, Jacob! That’s the wrong one!” Belgin shouted in alarm.
    Undeterred, the Tyrian warrior lashed out, the blade flashing like a gleam of doom in the dusk. At the last instant, the Miltiades he struck dropped to one knee and used his hammer to turn the blade aside, though not before the tip of Jacob’s sword cut a long, shallow gash down his face. Bright red human blood splashed the sand.
    “Jacob!” Miltiades cried. “You almost killed me!” Miltiades-Eidola stepped forward to strike at her foe’s back, but Belgin and Rings moved in from the flank, driving her back. Suddenly they faced the gray doppelganger again as she abandoned her imitation of the paladin. She bared her fangs in a fierce snarl, then whirled and leaped high into the air, catching hold of the worn stone of the tower’s wall. Like a great insect she scuttled upward, fashioning hooks and loops from her hands to speed her climb. In the blink of an eye she’d vanished over the wall’s broken parapet, thirty feet above.
    “She’s fled outside!” Belgin called. “Come on! She’s wounded!”
    Shaken, the real Miltiades rose, one hand pressed to his bleeding face. He glared at Jacob, then pushed past the fighter without saying a word. He paused in the tower’s door and scanned the darkening city. “She’s moving,” he stated flatly, then vanished into the street beyond.
    Belgin quickly followed, keeping Miltiades in sight. Behind him, Rings caught Jacob’s arm and spun the fighter to face him. Despite the difference in their stature, the dwarf forced the fighter to meet his eyes. “You idiot,” he snapped. “We had her! Have you got rocks between your ears?”
    Jacob’s face whitened, and the warrior tore out of Rings’s grasp. He angrily slammed his mailed fist against the ancient wall, flailing at his own mistake. “I know what I did,” he retorted. Then he bolted out the door after the other two. Rings lowered his head and charged in pursuit, refusing to be left behind.
    They ran through the dusty streets, following the silver gleam of Miltiades. The paladin halted in a stone plaza before an old palace, closing his eyes to sense the magical lariat. Belgin skidded to a stop beside him, scanning the plaza with his eyes. There! A dark shape slipped up the weathered stairs of the palace.
    “Forget your divination,” the sharper said, catching Miltiades’s arm and pointing. “She’s gone in there!”
    “After her!” Miltiades sprinted across the plaza and up the steps. Belgin loped after him. Jacob and Rings, a short distance behind, altered their course and ran toward the palace.
    On the horizon, the red crescent of the sun slid beneath the earth. In that moment, everything changed. The wind, quiet and sad, instantly returned with a screaming,