Lament (Scars of the Sundering Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

involved them in Almeria’s politics to begin with.
    Kali cleared her throat. “We
should acquire mounts, I think.” She eyed Kale from across the table, her
burnt-orange scales flashing in the light from the room’s candles and lanterns.
    Edric grunted. “I hate horses.”
    Delilah squinted at her brother.
“We’ve never ridden them.”
    “I have an idea about that.” Kali
nodded at Pancras. “The Firescale village is a few days west of the city. They
have mounts that won’t be jittery around draks and minotaurs, and they’ll give
us a better price than anyone here will. With mounts, we’ll easily make up the
time it takes to detour.”
    Pancras scratched his chin and
nodded. “All right. I like that idea. Let’s spend a few days wrapping up our
affairs here and then resume our journey.”
    Kale raised his goblet. “Hear,
hear!” The others joined him in his toast.
    After dinner, he walked down to
the palace grounds with Kali. Since the gardens were soggy from melting snow,
they kept to the paved paths. The two draks walked arm in arm, through the
garden. Between the spongy grasses and bare flowerbeds, there wasn’t much to
see, but it was a diversion from being cooped up within their quarters.
    “It’ll be nice to get back on the
road.” As bored as he was hanging around the palace, Kale hoped for an uneventful
journey to Muncifer.
    “I’m nervous about returning to
the village. It’s been years.” Kali shook her head and kicked a rock off the
path. “I fear seeing the damage Reznik did.”
    Lord Reznik’s salt mine under the
city enslaved most of the draks from Kali’s home village. Having disrupted that
operation and freed the slaves were memories Kale could take away from Almeria
and be proud of. “I wish we could stay and help rebuild.”
    “Maybe you and your sister can
come back with me when all this business with the wizards is over.”
    “Yeah, maybe.” Kale wondered if
his sister would be interested in relocating to a village of draks and leaving
behind their friends in Drak-Anor. The thought appealed to him, but he would
have preferred for the Firescale village to be farther away from Almeria.
    “One thing’s for sure: I’ll be
glad to get away from all these humans.”
    Kali laughed in agreement.
     
    * * *
     
    Pancras kept to himself in the
weeks following his apparent resurrection. He didn’t eschew dining with his
friends or socializing when they approached him, but he did not seek out the
company of others. Instead, he reflected on his experience, despite having no
memory of death itself.
    That he had no memory of it
troubled him.
    His withered right arm and the
dark haze at the edges of his vision troubled him as well. While he attended
the Arcane University, Pancras learned that rites existed to resurrect the
dead, but the specific rituals associated with those rites were lost with The
Sundering, and all carried with them terrible costs. Pancras couldn’t recall
anything in those rituals that resembled what happened to him.
    On warmer days, he walked into
town and scoured book sellers and temple libraries for volumes that might hold
the answers he sought. It was clear after a few failures that Almeria was light
on resources and those educated about certain arcane matters. There were
temples aplenty, but none dedicated to the goddess of magic, Selene.
    “They don’t have an Arcane
University, though, do they?” Delilah glanced up from her grimoire as he
groused to her in front of the fire. “Why would they have a temple of Selene?”
    “She’s not an obscure or dead
god, Delilah. She’s the daughter of Tinian, sister of Apellon and Anetha.
They’re well-represented here.”
    “Yeah, well, they also say
they’re civilized; yet, they had a salt mine under the city staffed by slaves
that no one knew about.”
    “You make a good point.” Pancras
slumped in his chair and sighed, rubbing his right arm. The warmth of the fire crackling
in the hearth did not seem to