Elves: Rise of the TaiGethen Read Online Free PDF Page A

ruined rainforest beyond the River Ix. The sun was bright for the moment, bathing the long airy room with glorious light. It was a fresh and bright scene quite at odds with the room’s single occupant.
    Ystormun was sitting in a high-backed black leather chair behind a huge polished wooden desk. Paperweights held piles of documents in place and the remains of a meal were scattered across three plates in front of Calaius’ lord and master. Ystormun didn’t have a great deal of flesh and his skin was stretched so tightly over his frame that every bone of his face and hands was visible. He was a walking skeleton wearing the loose light-weave robes favoured by those seeking relief from the relentless humidity. It was a matter of debate which one of them looked worse.
    ‘Your stench precedes you, Garan,’ said Ystormun. ‘Sit.’
    Ystormun wafted a hand at a deep and comfortable chair to his left. Garan ignored it and sat in a straight-backed wooden chair to the right, one he had half a chance of getting back out of following this meeting.
    ‘And yours surrounds you like a mobile cesspit,’ said Garan. ‘My stench is your fault. What’s your excuse?’
    Ystormun’s dark eyes flashed but he managed a thin smile.
    ‘How old are you now?’ Ystormun rasped, his voice echoing in the largely empty space of the room.
    ‘A hundred and seventy-six,’ said Garan, and the numbers sounded unreal as they always did.
    ‘And in all that time you have failed to bait me as you desire.’
    ‘There is always hope. More than that, there is satisfaction in trying. Who else could sit here and tell you that you look worse than a forty-day-old corpse strung up on the Ultan bridge and that you smell worse than panther shit, and expect to live?’
    ‘Even you have a limit to your leash, Garan.’
    ‘And I am so enjoying finding out where that limit lies. The thought of exceeding it is what sweeps me to the bliss of dreams every night.’
    Ystormun snorted and shuffled briefly through a sheaf of papers, plucking one from a fat leather file.
    ‘To business. Your eyesight. Improved? Keener?’
    ‘I can almost see right through your skin to that shrivelled black organ you probably still call your heart. Does that help?’
    Ystormun growled, and the guttural sound was more suited to the rainforest than the room. Garan felt a frisson of fear and felt suitably alive as a result.
    ‘Your kidneys returned to full function ten days ago. Have you had any negative reaction to the treatment?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Garan. ‘I am still alive.’
    Ystormun tensed and the sinews in his jaws and neck stood taut under his yellow, brown-spotted skin.
    ‘Your stomach,’ he said, speaking slowly and with a deliberate measure designed to convey menace but raising nothing but hope in Garan. ‘Three days of a new treatment. Has the swelling reduced and your capacity to retain nourishment increased?’
    Garan met Ystormun’s stare without flinching, without the terror so obvious in the mage lord’s lieutenants.
    ‘My stomach remains agonising and as such is my brightest hope for death despite your inhuman meddling with my body. Your experiment is, and has always been, an abject failure.’
    Ystormun was quick, and his height, when he chose to use it, was intimidating. His hands slapped onto the desk top and he loomed high over Garan, whose shrivelled form hunched reflexively, though his eyes never deviated from the mage lord’s. In his peripheral vision he could see the desk crackling and smouldering beneath Ystormun’s hands. Almost. Almost.
    ‘Nothing I touch is ever a failure.’ Ystormun’s voice ground out like rock grating on rock. ‘And it is time you understood that even if you expired right now you still represent a triumph.’
    Garan’s jaw dropped and he was aware of a line of drool dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
    ‘Look at me,’ he whispered then raised his voice as loud as he could muster. ‘ Look at me! My skin splits if I