Fire Star Read Online Free PDF Page B

ice into a ridge below his paw, feeling its wet bite soak around his claws. His mind had been dizzy with fragments of myth and legend all day. The ice, its texture, its coldness, its ubiquity was all that was keeping his sanity intact. The same could not be said of his patience. He trod the mound flat and swung his body sideways, limping back and forth along the jagged waterline, never taking his gaze off the lights.
    Thoran, watching him, stretched out his paws and allowed his body to sink to the ice. “Your injury is growing worse,” he said. “And still you are anxious to walk, not rest.” He yawned and looked across the water at Chamberlain. “For every light you see, thereare at least four men. It must take a quest of great importance to risk surrounding yourself with them.”
    Ingavar breathed in, tightening his jaw. Thus far on their journey, Thoran had not pressed him for information regarding his purpose in Chamberlain. To hear it voiced now, when they might be stranded for a number of days with only words and the wind for company, made Ingavar very uneasy. The old bear had cleverness wrapped around his tongue. No doubt he would have some reproving words to say about a settlement made with a changeling raven. But that trade was hidden in Ingavar’s heart, as sealed as a mother bear in her den. He dared not let it out, nor, despite Thoran’s kindness through the blizzard, drag him into potential danger. So, with a false air of severity, he said, “When we reach the town, we go our own ways.”
    Thoran responded with a courteous nod. “Do you know what they will do to you, when they catch you?”
    The young bear stared ahead in silence.
    “They will shoot you down again, Nanuk. This timewith a potion to make you sleep. Then they will cage you and ridicule you. If fortune is with you, they will use their machines to fly you back to beyond where we met. Or they may cage you for the rest of your days. Tell me, son of Ragnar, where would be the honor in that?”
    The wind coursed through Ingavar’s fur. He flexed his shoulder so the cream hairs rippled. “I will be stronger in the town,” he said.
    “You speak like a bear with vengeance in his heart.”
    “All bears have a score to settle with men.”
    “So you know the legend of Oomara?” said Thoran.
    But Ingavar fell into a brooding silence and Thoran decided he would press him no further. “Rest,” he said. “Before morning, the fire star will guide us across the water.”
    “How?” Ingavar demanded grumpily.
    But by then, Thoran was asleep once more.

8 A S PECIAL T REAT
     
    W ow,” said a voice. “So that’s what you get up to when you sneak in here …”
    “Thank
you,”
said David, clicking his mouse. The story of Thoran, Ingavar, and Chamberlain vanished to a box on the toolbar at the bottom of the computer screen.
    “It’s good,” said Zanna, looking over his shoulder. “Put it back up. Let me read some more. How much have you done?”
    “Four chapters — nearly enough, if I hadn’t been interrupted.” He closed the laptop shut. “I think my ice samples call.”
    “No, they don’t,” she said, and plopped herself in his lap.
    “Zanna, cut it out. This is Bergstrom’s office!”
    “Oh, getting picky now, are we?” She tossed her long black hair aside. “You didn’t complain when I came to keep you warm last night, author boy.”
    “That was different.
That
was private. Come on, Tootega might be in the lab.”
    Pouting, she reached out and pushed the door shut. It settled in the frame, displaying a poster of an Arctic landscape bathed in a dusky, purple light.
“Blurghh
to Mr. Inuit grumpy guts,” she said, sticking out her tongue and waggling it. “Have you seen that necklace he’s wearing today? It’s a shaman’s charm, full of bones and pouches and hanks of fur.”
    “I hear they’re all the rage up here.”
    “You can joke,” she said, “but it’s not funny for me. He thinks I’m an evil