Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy Read Online Free PDF

courtesy of the Puppet Death he had endured at the age of eighteen, culminated in tiny deformed feet that barely afforded him a shuffling gait; at the other extreme, his taffy-like, limb-thin face resembled layers of melted plastic. In the midst of this visage his organs of sight, odor, and hearing were compressed to little more than slits. His mouth was an oval, vertical hole.
    From portions of Quog’s naked body, his disfigured three-fingered hands, his chest, his thighs, his neck, dripped a thickly viscous substance, dark brown in color, which slowly collected in a pan beneath the old man’s head. Its dripping made a sound like oil into a pool.
    “As you said, Quog,” Wrath-Pei said, fully enjoying the sight of the old man’s body, a disfigurement of the human form that left Wrath-Pei in awe of Nature, his only rival, “all men are politicians. What is your affiliation?”
    “Me?” Quog said dreamily, weakly, from deep within his own memories. “Why, if pressed to admit it, Wrath-Pei”—and now his voice broke into a rasping, coughing laugh—”I would have to say I belong to anywhere but now.”
     

Chapter 5
     
    F or Co-Prime Minister Besh, things had gone from bad to worse.
    Through the window of his office, spring was turning to summer. It would be warm and dry, according to the forecasts; already a drought was under way in the western provinces, and the governor of India was fairly begging for wheat.
    That which was not to be had.
    Too bad Labor Minister Rere had chosen to stand with the King, Dalin Shar, three years ago; they could have used his expertise now.
    This was not the way Besh had imagined hegemony. Even as a young boy, watching the struggles during Sarat Shar’s long consolidation of power, he knew that the intricacies, the Machiavellian subtleties, of rule were something that he wanted to devote his life to. Always an avid chess player, he still kept the same two books at his bedside that had been there since he was thirteen: The Prince, and Argmon Fei’s Chess: The Eternal Struggle. And still, every night before retiring, he read a chapter from each, though he long since had memorized both.
    In his pride, he had thought that such traits as these would one day make his biography (or autobiography, since he also fancied himself a writer and had also, since the age of thirteen, kept a meticulous diary) required reading for all citizens of Earth; perhaps, even, all the Worlds.
    Now he knew that he should have spent less of his time playing chess and learning tactics, and more time learning how to use a dagger.
    What had begun as an enterprise of (in Co-Prime Minister Besh’s mind, at least) patriotism had lately turned into a nightmare.
    Co-Prime Minister Acron, of course, was the problem.
    But what a problem! How best to rid oneself of a street thug? None of the subtle ways had worked. On half a dozen occasions in the last thirty-six months, Besh had tried to legally oust Acron from his position; on each occasion, the stout bully had remained, at the end of the maneuver, exactly where he had been to begin with. He was like some horrible toy, an air-filled, bobbing thing that, when pressed underwater, comes right back to the surface, smiling and bobbing once more.
    Even the High Leader, whose efforts on Besh’s behalf had, admittedly, been tepid, had been unable to shift the balance of power Besh’s way. But then, that was Cornelian’s style, to divide and dominate. It had been the High Leader’s will to let Acron rule alongside Besh, had it not? Not that it had done much good in the long run, with the entirety of Earth now on the brink of outright rebellion and the fragile alliances and subtle balances Besh had spent the last half decade forming were crumbling around them all.
    The plans Besh had had in his head for Earth! The delicate levers he had yearned to pull, ever since those teenage years of dreaming! He had known since then that he had greatness in him—and had planned, since