Fire Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

Necromancer. You were the one who said the colossus were failing—”
    “Yes, Your Majesty. I did. And I believe that they are. But perhaps I chose the wrong word to describe what is happening to our colossus. The word may not be failure, Sire, but destruction. Deliberate destruction.”
    The king stares at me, then shakes his head. “Come, Edmund,” he says, motioning peremptorily to his son. “We will go see your mother.”
    The young man runs to join his father. The two start to walk away.
    “Sire,” I call out, the urgency in my voice bringing the king again to a halt. “I believe that somewhere, in realms that exist below Kairn Telest, someone wages a most insidious war on us. And they will defeat us utterly, unless we do something to stop them. Defeat us without so much as letting fly an arrow or tossing a spear. Someone, Sire, is stealing away the warmth and light that give us life!”
    “For what purpose, Baltazar? What is the motive for this nefarious scheme?”
    I ignore the king's sarcasm. “To use it for themselves, Sire. I thought long and hard on this problem during my journey home to Kairn Telest. What if Abarrach itself is dying? What if the magma heart is shrinking? A kingdom might consider it necessary to steal from its neighbors to protect its own.”
    “You're mad, Baltazar,” says the king. He has his hand on his son's thin shoulder, steering him away from me. But Edmund looks over his shoulder, his eyes large and frightened. I smile at him, reassuringly, and he seems relieved. My smile vanishes, the moment he can no longer see me.
    “No, Sire, I am not mad,” I say to the shadows. “I wish I were. It would be easier.” I rub my eyes, which burn from lack of sleep. “It would be far easier….”

CHAPTER3
KAIRN TELEST,
ABARRACH
    E DMUND APPEARS ALONE, AT THE DOOR TO THE LIBRARY, where I sit recording in my journal the conversation that recently took place between father and son, as well as my memories of a time now long past. I lay down the pen and rise respectfully from my desk.
    “Your Highness. Please, enter and welcome.”
    “I'm not interrupting your work?” He stands fidgeting nervously in the doorway. He is unhappy and wants to talk, yet the basis for his unhappiness is his refusal to listen to what he knows I am going to say.
    “I have just this moment concluded.”
    “My father's lying down,” Edmund says abruptly. “I am afraid he'll catch a chill, standing outdoors like that. I ordered his servant to prepare a hot posset.”
    “And what has your father decided?” I ask.
    Edmund's troubled face glimmers ghostly in the light of a gas lamp that, for the moment, drives away the darkness of Kairn Telest.
    “What can he decide?” he returns in bitter resignation. “There is no decision to be made. We will leave.”
    We are in my world, in my library. The prince glances around, notes that the books have been given a loving goodbye. The older and more fragile volumes have been packed away in sturdy boxes of woven kairn grass. Other, newer texts, many penned by myself and my apprentices, areneatly labeled, stored away in the deep recesses of dry rock shelves.
    Seeing Edmund's glance and reading his thoughts, I smile shamefacedly. “Foolish of me, isn't it?” My hand caresses the leather-bound cover of the volume that rests before me. It is one of the few that I will take with me: my description of the last days of Kairn Telest. “But I could not bear to leave them in disorder.”
    “It isn't foolish. Who knows but that someday you will return?” Edmund tries to speak cheerfully. He has become accustomed to speaking cheerfully, accustomed to doing what he can to lift the spirits of his people.
    “Who knows? / know, My Prince.” I shake my head ruefully. “You forget to whom you talk. I am not one of the council members.”
    “But there
is
a chance,” he persists.
    It hurts me to shatter his dream. Yet—for the good of all of us—he must be made to face the