KNIGHT OF SHADOWS Read Online Free PDF

overly communicative then.   But how was I to know she was making mental notes and probably formulating a plan? I’d felt her too cowed to entertain such thoughts.   I must admit she was a pretty good actress.”
    “I read Victor’s diary,” I said.   “I take it you were masked or hooded and possibly using some sort of voice-distorting spell the whole time?”
    “Yes, but rather than awe Julia into submission, I think I roused her cupidity for things magical.   I believe she picked up one of my tragoliths-the blue stones-at that time.   The rest is history.”
    “Not for me.”
    A bowl of totally unfamiliar but delicious-smelling vegetables appeared, steaming, before me.
    “Think about it.”
    “You took her to the Broken Pattern and conducted her initiation...” I began.
    “Yes.”
    “The first chance she had,” I continued, “she used the...tragolith to return to the Keep and learn some of your other secrets.”
    Jasra applauded softly, sampled the veggies, quickly ate more.   Mandor smiled.
    “Beyond that I draw a blank,” I admitted.
    “Be a good boy and eat your vegetables,” she said.
    I obeyed.
    “Basing my conclusions concerning this remarkable tale solely upon my experience of human nature,” Mandor suddenly observed, “I would say that she wished to test her talons as well as her wings.   I’d guess she went back and challenged her former master-this Victor Melman-and fought a sorcerous duel with him.”
    I heard Jasra’s intake of breath.
    “Is that truly only a guess?” she asked.
    “Truly,” he answered, swirling his wine in his goblet.
    “And I would guess further that you had once done something similar with your own teacher.”
    “What devil told you that?” she asked.
    “It is only a guess that Sharu was your teacher-and perhaps more than that,” he said.   “But it would explain both your acquisition of this place and your ability to catch its former lord off guard.   He might even have had a stray moment before his defeat for a wishful curse that the same fate attend you one day.   And even if not, these things do sometimes have a way of running full circle with people in our trade.”
    She chuckled.
    “The devil called Reason, then,” she said, a note of admiration in her voice.   “Yet you summon him by intuition, which makes it an art.”
    “It is good to know he still comes when I call.   I take it Julia was surprised, however, by Victor’s ability to thwart her.”
    “True.   She did not anticipate that we tend to wrap apprentices in a layer or two of protection.”
    “Yet her own defenses obviously proved adequate-at least.”
    “True.   Though that, of course, was tantamount to defeat.   For she knew that I would learn of her rebellion and come soon to discipline her.”
    “Oh,” I observed:
    “Yes,” she stated.   “That is why she faked her death, which I must admit had me completely fooled for a long while.”
    I recalled the day I had visited Julia’s apartment, found the body, been attacked by the beast.   The corpse’s face had been partly destroyed, the remaining features gory.   But the lady had been the right size, and general resemblances had jibed.   And she had been in the right place.   And then I had become the object of the lurking doglike creature’s attention, which had distracted me more than a little from the minutiae of identity.   By the time my struggle for my life was concluded, to the accompaniment of approaching sirens, I was more interested in flight than in further investigation.   Thereafter, whenever I had returned in memory to that scene, it was Julia dead whom I beheld.
    “Incredible,” I said.   “Then whose body was it that I found?”
    “I’ve no idea,” she replied.   “It could have been one of her own shadow selves or some stranger off the street.   Or a corpse stolen from the morgue.   I’ve no way of knowing.”
    “It was wearing one of your blue stones.”
    “Yes.   And its