Lunatic Read Online Free PDF Page B

wood-and-reed frame houses, then mud-brick ones. Out of the cleaner, prettier part of the city. Deeper into the trees. Past weeds that overran yards, swallowing the little huts alive. Enormous tree roots sometimes grew straight through the sides of the buildings. No fences between the yards.
    Mud squished where hard-packed dirt had been.
    The muddy lake lay directly ahead.
    "We've lost them!" Silvie cast a look over her shoulder as she ran for the lake by his side.
    "Into the water!"
    Johnis cut through a yard and down the steep bank. Tossed the Book of History into the grass. Leaped off the ledge like he used to when he was a boy and dove into warm, murky water.
    No burning, tingling sensation.
    No healing powers of Elyon's water.
    He swam deeper, submerged, feeling nothing.
    Then surfaced twenty yards from shore, sputtering and coughing. Johnis looked down. Silvie came up immediately after.
    The water was so brown he couldn't even see the two of them in it. Muddy droplets made rivulets down Silvie's light skin.
    Why?
    "It's not working," Silvie cried, eyes wide on him. "Now what?"
    Johnis set his jaw and started for the shore to his right. At least they were free of the guards. For the moment.
    johnis .. .

    "What?"
    Silvie eyed him. "I didn't say anything."
    johnis..
    Her mouth had not moved. Johnis shrugged it off. Retrieved the book and pocketed it.
    "Where now?"
    An image formed in his mind of something he'd forgotten. A pool, near the edge of the forest.
    `Drink .. .
    "Johnis?"
    "Nothing. Just an odd sensation. We can't stay here."
    "And Darsal?"
    Darsal. She would come looking soon. "Give me your knife."
    He carved a simple sign into the tree closest to him, then returned the knife.
    "Old hiding place of mine." Johnis's throat was even more parched now that he'd swallowed mud. "The bank winds around, and then a path heads south. Follow me!"

he cage door clanged shut. Darsal broke her fall with her palms. Her shackles clanked together and thumped against the hard-packed dirt floor.
    "Fool albino," muttered the guard. He turned the lock and left her, torchlight retreating with him. A second door thudded closed.
    A thin tendril of pale light came down the corridor. Dimly she noted her immediate surroundings. A six-by-six cell, probably not over six feet high.
    For a long time she merely lay there, drifting in and out of restless half-sleep. Her body slowly numbed itself to the beating, and the tears dried on her face. The metal bands around her wrists and ankles were cool against her skin.
    Elyon save me.
    She rolled to one side. More time elapsed, her limbs stiffening, joints beginning to ache. Her left side went numb from lying on it so long.

    "Elyon ..."
    Darsal wrapped her arms around her knees, pressing them against her chest. Then flinched back when her hand touched an open wound on her right arm.
    But the pain cleared her head. She bit her lip.
    Had Johnis and Silvie made it? If not, this had all been for nothing.
    Darsal hadn't fought her way out of a storage closet to wind up as Scab target practice.
    She jumped up, slamming her head against the back corner of the cage, and grabbed the bars. Darsal winced, then ran her fingers along the lock and tried to pick it with her fingernail.
    "I don't imagine that will aid you."
    Darsal turned. "Who's there?"
    An itch. She scratched the back of her head.
    Past hers, rows of large iron cages lay mostly empty, desolate save the occasional bone or scrap of clothing. In the cell next to her own lay a gray-bearded man with an eye patch and a lined face. The remaining eye regarded her with a piercing gaze-the kind difficult to break free of.
    In the cell on his other side was a youth-a blond boy of about sixteen or seventeen whose bare back was scarred from old whiplashes and raw and bleeding from a fresh scoring, his body burned and beaten.

    And in a cell beyond him a woman lay shrouded in shadows. Her face wasn't visible, only her outline and long hair.
    All three were