Hero in the Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

can understand why you would fear unwelcome advances. You do not know me. Why should I be trusted?”
    “I trust you,” she told him. “Can I ask you a question?”
    “Of course.”
    “If you have a palace, why are your clothes so old, and whydo you ride out alone to protect your lands? Think of all you could lose.”
    “Lose?” he countered.
    “All your wealth.”
    “Wealth is a small thing, Keeva, tiny like a grain of sand. It only seems large to those who do not possess it. You talk of ‘my’ palace. It is not mine. I built it, and I live within it. Yet one day I will die and the palace will have another owner. Then he will die. And so it goes on. A man ‘owns’ nothing but his life. He holds items briefly in his hand. If they are made of metal or stone, they will surely outlive him and be owned by someone else for a short time. If they are cloth, he will—with luck—outlive them. Look around you at the trees and the hills. According to Kydor law, they are mine. You think the trees care that they are mine? Or the hills, the same hills that were bathed in sunlight when my earliest ancestors walked the earth? The same hills that will still be covered in grass when the last man turns to dust?”
    “I see that,” said Keeva, “but with all your wealth you can have everything you want for the rest of your life. Every pleasure, every joy is available to you.”
    “There is not enough gold in all the world to supply what I want,” he said.
    “And what is that?”
    “A clean conscience,” he said. “Now, do you wish to return to the settlement to see your brother buried?”
    The conversation was obviously over. Keeva shook her head. “No. I don’t want to go there.”
    “Then we will push on. We should reach my home by dark.”
    Cresting a hill, they began the slow descent onto a wide plain. As far as the eye could see there were ruins everywhere. Keeva drew rein and stared out over the plain. In some places there were merely a few white stones; in others the shapes of buildings could still be seen. Toward the west,against a granite cliff face, there were the remains of two high towers that had crumbled at the base and crashed to the ground like felled trees.
    “What was this place?” she asked.
    The Gray Man gazed over the ruins. “An ancient city called Kuan Hador. No one knows who built it or why it fell. Its history is lost in the mists of time.” He looked at her and smiled. “I expect the people here once believed they owned the hills and the trees,” he said.
    They rode down onto the plain. Some way to the west Keeva saw a mist rolling between the jagged ruins. “Speaking of mists,” she said, pointing it out to her companion. Waylander halted his horse and glanced to the west. Keeva rode alongside. “Why are you loading your crossbow?” she asked him as his hands slid two bolts into the grooves in the small black weapon.
    “Habit,” he said, but his expression was stern, his dark eyes suddenly wary. Angling his horse toward the southeast, away from the mist, he rode away.
    Keeva followed him and swung in the saddle to stare back at the ruins. “How strange,” she said. “The mist is gone.”
    He, too, glanced back, then unloaded his weapon, slipping the bolts back into the quiver at his belt. He saw her looking at him.
    “I do not like this place,” she said. “It feels … dangerous,” she concluded lamely.
    “You have good instincts,” he told her.
    Matze Chai parted the painted silk curtains of his palanquin and gazed with undisguised malevolence at the mountains. Sunlight was filtering through the clouds and shining brightly on the snowcapped peaks. The elderly man sighed and pulled shut the curtains. As he did so, his dark almond-shaped eyes focused on the back of his slender hand, seeing again the brown liver spots of age staining the dry skin.
    The Chiatze merchant reached for a small, ornate wooden box and removed a tub of sweet-smelling lotion, which he applied