Legend of the Three Moons Read Online Free PDF

witch,' said Lem.
    `Folks like that be best avoided,' growled one of the bat men.
    `Do you have any water?' interrupted Chad, who was very single-minded. `We've not eaten nor drunk for days.'
    Again the guardians went into a huddle that ended with Emma Crowsclaw saying she and Bethy Bee would bring food, while three of the men fetched some bedding.
    As the five were leaving the hall Lyla, without thinking, asked if it was possible for them to sleep in Queen Hail's nursery?
    The six men and two women froze and the hall became so quiet that Swift could hear the scratching of mice nesting in the five thrones.
    At last Emma Crowsclaw answered, `That part of the palace be long destroyed. But how would you, a stranger to M'dgassy, know anything of Queen Hail's nursery?'
    Cursing herself for being so stupid Lyla searched for a believable explanation. `I saw it in a dream.'
    `You be a dream-rider then,' said one of the bat men. `Dream-riders are thought of as witches in these parts and witches be burned.'
    A second man nodded. `Aye. Best you not be a dream-rider, boy. Now come along Horris Beck, help me bring back the bedding. I've had enough of this dreary place and my own supper be beckoning.'
    While the men fetched the bedding and the women went for food, Lem asked the other three where they all lived and how they managed to find enough to eat. The men were not forthcoming, mumbling about living here and there, fishing here and there, having a small garden somewhere and a milk cow somewhere else. `Barely enough to keep skin and bones alive,' said a younger, ginger-haired man.
    `What about the Royals and their servants?'
    This time the men were silent for so long that it seemed as if they would never answer, then the ginger-haired one spoke up in a bitter voice. `The Royals disappeared a decade ago, all of them, adults, children and babies. They left us to the so-called mercy of the High Enchanter - Sender of Storms if you prefer that title - and his sadistic General Tulga.'
    `Now, now, Migan Crowbeak,' chided the ginger-haired man. `Truth be, General Tulga's Raiders were attacking the Ifraa Peninsula long before our Royals disappeared.'
    He turned to the children as he tried to explain. `Everywhere the Raiders went they burnt, looted and stole. Be that not so, Malcolm Leftfoot?
    Malcolm Leftfoot nodded. `Aye. I lost a good wife of forty summers. Carried off with the riches of the palace she was.'
    Lyla blinked at a memory from her dream palace as she recalled rows of guards lining this hall, and all the other corridors. She frowned. `Why didn't the palace guards stop them?'
    `All murdered!' said Malcolm Leftfoot. `No one could stop the Raiders. No one knew from one day to the next what sort of monsters they be riding, what hairy beasts would come flying out of the sky, or what unearthly weapons they'd be carrying.'
    He pointed to the hole in the throne room's roof. `That be made by General Tulga's Raiders throwing burning balls the size of my cart. Now I ask you, how could my pike and shovel combat that?'
    `No one's could,' agreed Migan Crowbeak. `But it not be a fireball that shattered my farm. It be those no-eyed stinking Goch and their misshapen Gochmasters. What say you young Bertrum?'
    `The Goch took my family and the girl I were about to wed,' answered the man called Bertrum. `And no oracle, fairy spinner or sand reader could tell me what happened to her. Not even old Edith, though I paid her with my last goat.'
    `Did I hear someone mention Edith the oracle?' demanded Emma, placing a tray containing five bowls of spicy stew, at the children's feet. `I heard lately she still be living in Wartstoe Village. And that be a miracle as I thought her long burned.'
    The children were so hungry that the stew was almost finished by the time the men returned with the bedding and the younger woman returned with a bowl of hot water. And they were more than half asleep by the time she'd bathed and bandaged Swift's foot and told him that it