Edge of Destiny Read Online Free PDF Page A

slinging their axe-rifles down and pointing them at the humans. Their leader shouted, “Fire!”
    The rifles roared, hurling out a barrage of smoke and lead.

LITTLE PEOPLE, BIG PROJECTS
    H el-looo? Hel-loooo?”
    The black dire wolf raised his head from the warm blanket and blinked at the workshop door-way.
    No one was there.
    “Hel-looo? Heeeel-looooooo?”
    Eir shifted on her bed, lifting a tangle of red hair to look toward the door. She didn’t see anyone, either.
    The voice spoke again. “Nobody’s home.”
    Another voice answered, “Maybe they’re sleeping in.”
    “Sleeping in? Are you crazy? The greatest norn artist of her generation isn’t sleeping in.”
    “Well, she’s probably working. Famous sculptor and all. She’s probably off carving something.”
    “She’s not working. This is her workshop, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, it is,” said Eir Stegalkin, rolling out of bed and standing, “ and her bedroom.” She looked toward the door and blinked. “Oh, there you are.”
    Garm quirked his eyebrows and stood also, seeing at last two little people standing in the doorway. They came up only to the belt of a norn, and they were gray, with giant ears swept back from their childlike faces. One was male, dressed in a greatcoat over a buttoned-up vest and brown trousers. He wore two large gauntlets with gems hovering over the backs of them. The other figure was female, decked in bluish body armor that looked jury-rigged, as if she changed its dimensions constantly. Despite their strange voices, they looked intently serious.
    “Oh, there you are,” said the slightly taller creature. “Eir Stegalkin, I presume. I’m Master Snaff of Rata Sum, asura genius. I’ve been told you’re the best.”
    “Told by whom?” Eir asked. Asura. Of course they would be asura. Short, smart, and irritating.
    Snaff smiled, bowing. “I cannot reveal my sources.” The younger asura shot him an annoyed look, as if he often revealed his sources. Unperturbed, Snaff continued, “This is my associate, Zojja, genius-in-training.”
    She also bowed, but her scowl only deepened.
    “We’ve come for a commission,” Snaff said.
    “I’m not accepting commissions,” Eir replied.
    The little man wandered into the workshop, glancing sidelong at the statues that towered all around. “Really? What are all these, then?”
    “I mean, I’m no longer accepting commissions.”
    Garm trotted up behind the male asura, who reached only his shoulders. The wolf snuffled the creature’s greatcoat, which smelled of swamp water and fern spores.
    Snaff seemed none too concerned with having a big black wolf hounding his steps. “Well, that’s a shame, an artist of your caliber no longer taking commissions. There are only three possible reasons: One, that you are retired, which clearly you cannot be, given your age and the bits of stone and wood all over your floor; two, that you’ve somehow gone haywire, which your hair does seem to indicate—”
    “I just got up!”
    “Or three, that you have found your subjects of late unworthy of your genius, which judging from this rogues’ gallery of puffed-up posers, I would guess to be the reason.”
    “You have guessed well, little master.” Eir stepped into a pair of trousers and drew them on beneath her nightshirt. “I am tired of watching fools go to their deaths.”
    Snaff smiled, spreading his hands. “We’re not fools.”
    “But she just said she liked fools,” said the apprentice.
    “I didn’t.”
    Zojja dragged a finger through a pile of shavings on the floor. “You said you are tired of watching fools go to their deaths. If you hated them, you would never tire of this. Ergo, you must like them.”
    “You may have something there,” Eir conceded.
    “Well, then I suppose,” Snaff replied, looking askance at his apprentice, “I would be wise to say that we are fools. Except that fools aren’t wise, in which case my apprentice’s inquisitiveness has once again landed us in a