Edge of Destiny Read Online Free PDF Page B

and determined. Now the lines had shifted to dubious and frustrated. “Well,” Eir replied, “could you try to get the old look back?”
    “What old look?”
    “The look that you are smarter than everyone else and that they will be shocked when they realize it.” Suddenly, the look was back, and Eir shifted to a smaller chisel to capture it.
    Nearby, Snaff idly sized up a floor-to-ceiling drake in alabaster. “It’s good to be immortalized, my dear. Most apprentices don’t make it, you know.” He turned toward Eir. “Maybe you didn’t realize that, but they’re always handling caustic substances, building precarious mechanisms. . . . Unless they’re clever, they just don’t make it.”
    “And Zojja, here, is clever?” Eir asked as she finished the little snarl beneath Zojja’s right nostril.
    “She’s here,” Snaff pointed out.
    Eir stepped back from her sculpture. “Yes. I suppose she is. In both ways. The likeness is complete. Come see.”
    The two asura walked toward the sculpture with the numb air of people who cannot believe what they see. Though the statue was five times the actual height of Zojja, it was dead-on. Eir had captured not only the young asura’s expression but also her personality.
    Zojja’s look of wonder slowly soured. “Why did you have to make me look so big?”
    “It’s five times actual height,” Eir replied.
    “Four times would have been enough,” Zojja snapped. “It’s fine. Fine.”
    “It’s perfect,” said Snaff. “Thank you very much! It was certainly worth the coin.” He turned to his apprentice and said, “All right, now. Let’s take this back with us.”
    Zojja scooted to the opposite side of the stone bust. She and her master set their fingers beneath the carving. “One, two, three!”
    The two asura struggled, trying to lift the five-hundred-pound block, but not moving it an inch.
    Eir stood above them, arms folded.
    Snaff looked up at her and tittered nervously. “I wish I had more coin to pay you to carry this.”
    Eir smiled. “You have more coin. You were about to pay me in silver before I asked for gold.”
    Snaff blushed around a tight-lipped smile. “Oh, all right—”
    “Never mind,” interrupted Eir, stepping between the two asura and wrapping her arms around the huge statue and hoisting it off the ground. “Where do you want it?”
    Snaff crooked a finger in her direction and said, “Follow me.”
    Garm looked up wonderingly at his alpha. She had never followed anyone. If ever she followed anyone, it would be a creature taller and more powerful and more clever than she, not some tiny thing. But Eir did follow him. Massive bust in hand, Eir followed, as did Zojja. Garm joined in, if only to see what this asura was up to.
    They paraded out of the courtyard and into the lane. “Hey, everybody,” called Snaff into the shops, “look at the new sculpture. Isn’t it a masterpiece?”
    “Where do you want it ?” Eir repeated as she struggled to carry the bust.
    “Just up here, my lady,” Snaff said.
    They passed into a plaza filled with market tents and tables loaded with fruits, scarves, iron implements, and goods of every other type. In the center of this trading den stood an ancient gate of gray stone, carved with strange runes. Just now, the arched gate flickered and, in that flicker, gave a vision of another marketplace in a port city.
    “Not going to Lion’s Arch today,” Snaff said to the gate attendant, another asura. Slipping him a coin, Snaff said, “Rata Sum, if you please.”
    The attendant crouched beside an array of powerstones, and a stone in his hand sent sparks leaping into the other crystals. The flickering scene in the arch changed to a rocky desert, a mountain lake, a golden meadow. At last, it showed a brief glimpse of what looked like three massive pyramids.
    “Thanks,” Snaff said, straightening up and stepping through the portal.
    Eir shrugged and followed, carrying her huge load. Garm came at her