Lodestone Book One: The Sea of Storms Read Online Free PDF Page A

who had
changed her life and ultimately become her mentor. What will be the future for this one, she
reflected, this “other
me ”?
    She reached into the canvas sack
at her waist and tossed the mother a flatbread and a skin of water,
registering the surprised look on the woman’s face. Without waiting
for response, Keris turned away from the image of her past and
began running to meet the escort where the path to her future lay.
Behind her she heard a woman’s voice.
    “Blessings of the Three to you,
Lady! May Ail-Gan guide your steps…”
    Keris resisted the temptation to
laugh.
    ~
    Running into open country, Keris
leaped upward and flared her cloak, feeling for the pressure from
any latent lodestone in the rocky landscape. A deposit to her left.
She pivoted in the air, fully retracting the bronze shield in her
cloak and exposing the upper layer of tempered lodestone. The
repulsive force pushed Keris higher and to the right. As she flew,
she sought to feel pressure from any other naturally occurring
source. Finding none, she allowed her flight to bring her down to
earth in a low trajectory arc. She hit the ground and continued at
a loping pace.
    Sensing a deposit ahead of her,
she angled towards it until she felt it passing under her, and then
leaped and flared once more.
    The landscape was rough and
uneven, as if a giant hand had grasped it at one end and shaken it
like a sheet. Boulders were strewn about beneath her like the
giant’s discarded playthings. Here and there, a stunted tree or a
tangled bush clung stubbornly to a patch of miserly soil. The sky
was bright, with all three suns shining forth, broken only by a few
wisps of cloud. Keris began to feel hot from her exertions. She
landed gracefully on a shelf of red-brown sandstone and reached for
a sip of water.
    The ground was starting to rise
upward to meet the plateau on which Chalimar stood. Far behind her
now, the road she had left disappeared into the narrow rift which
would convey the tributes and their escort to higher ground. She
only needed to bear a little to the right, and negotiate the
escarpment to reach the place where the road widened out onto flat
terrain. She moved off again, blipping her neck control and
scanning for the nearest deposit that would allow her to take to
the air once more.
    A short while later she stood
atop the escarpment. A sudden breeze had sprung up, causing her
flying cloak to flutter restlessly, and stirring her long raven
hair. She brushed her hair back from her eyes. There seemed to be
no sign of the escort. A pair of mylar birds wheeled lazily
overhead, searching out rising thermals. Ail-Gan was near to
Ail-Mazzoth, washing out its colour to a pale red. Ail-Kar was well
above the western horizon.
    Running forward once again, she
leaped, adjusting her shoulder control until she felt the familiar
repulsive push of a lodestone deposit, and then opened up her
cloak, as she sailed through the light gravity on a wide arc. She
angled toward a low rise in the barren terrain, letting herself
descend to the ground gracefully, and walked the few steps to the
crest.
    Keris could see
the road now, only a few hundred feet away, but there was still no
sign of the escort. Finally, after looking around, she glimpsed
them some distance ahead. But there was something very wrong. The
escort was not moving, the soldiers standing in a knot before it.
Then all of a sudden, Keris saw a movement out of the corner of her
eye to her right–a darker shape moving erratically away across the
landscape. One of the tributes had made a break for it. Why were the soldiers not in pursuit ? Then, another movement from
near where the carts stood. A small shape arced up and through the
air towards the running figure. She watched, transfixed, as the
projectile followed its trajectory and then impacted noiselessly.
The figure dropped and lay motionless.
    Keris was running now, down the
other slope and towards where the fallen figure lay. She flared her
cloak