High The Vanes (The Change Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

touched the bench on which I was sitting. That was real enough. I put my hand out towards the fire. It was hot.

    “Where is this lady, then?”

    “She is preparing the next stage of our journey, my lady. You will not see her again.”

    “What? Why not?”

    “There is much for her to do. When it is morning, we must continue our journey. Time is short.”

    “So how do we get out of this place if it’s so well-hidden?”

    “Soon we will leave, my lady.” She handed me a cup made of silver. “Drink, my lady. This will give you strength for the journey.”

    I held the cup to my lips, then hesitated.

    “Where are we going, then?”

    “To Uricon. Two days hence.”

    “So this is not Uricon?”

    “No, my lady. Uricon is beyond the dyke. Nearer to your world. Please, drink.”

    I lifted the cup to my lips and drained its contents. My head swam and everything went dark.

    When I awoke I was lying on my blanket. The sun shone down on me. Eluned was busy rolling up her blanket.

    “We must be going, my lady.” She smiled at me. “Your questions can wait.”

Chapter 9

    So, blankets rolled, bags hitched, we set off across rough ground, soon encountering a road, rather than a path, wide and laid with stones.

    Looking around, I said, “But where is the ...” I stopped. Looking back along the road, I could see the bank, high and green, looming up a short distance away. We were now on the other side of it.

    “That woman’s ‘hall’, as you called it, where is it?”

    “No longer to be seen, my lady.” Eluned’s voice sounded weak. When I turned around, she was already some distance ahead of me. I ran to catch up.

    What would we meet on this part of the journey I wondered as we raced onwards. For the first few hours the road ran straight as an arrow before us, rising and falling over a series of low hills. On either side fields covered in wild green foliage stretched as far as the eye could see. Perhaps once these had been fields. There was something about them, particularly seen at a distance, which suggested a kind of order that had not existed on the other side of the bank. There was a faint patchwork effect as the many different kinds of green all seemed to be growing in what had once been neat squares and rectangles.

    Now and again I spotted strange black objects in the fields, some distance from the road, but clear enough to see. One that was closer than the others looked as if it had burned. Burned furiously. It was blacker than the others and there was still the slightest hint of the smell of smoke in the air as we passed it. I could not make out what these objects were. I assumed that they were something that belonged to the people who must have once cultivated these fields.

    As the sun rose towards midday we came, almost without warning, in sight of a wide river. We had been toiling up the side of a hill that was steeper than the others for some time, but when we reached the top it was to see that the road ran straight down to this river. There had once been a bridge across it. It no longer existed. The central spans had gone, leaving a gap too wide to cross. Rather than head down to this useless bridge, Eluned paused and looked up and down the river.

    “There,” she said, pointing up river. “The ferry.”

    “The what?” I said.

    “Your people destroyed the bridge long since, my lady. We must now cross by means of the ferry man. I must warn you. He will say many strange things to you. You must not listen to him. They say he was driven mad by what he saw happening here.”

    “Why? What happened here?”

    “A terrible battle, my lady. Your people defeated those who lived in the country we have come through today. They killed them all. Except one. He lives on. He is now the ferry man.”

    “Why do you keep saying ‘my people’, Eluned? I know nothing of these things you speak of. My world is a world of peace and harmony, where people live together. They do not fight or kill