Parabolis Read Online Free PDF

me.”
    Sparrow smiled. He ran his hand across the cover of the book and slipped it into his pocket. Then his smile faded and his gaze slowly fell.
    “So I guess I won’t be seeing you around anymore, huh?”
    Dale felt guilty, as if he were abandoning his friend to weather the world alone. Like him, he knew Sparrow had few friends. And he had no reliable family. Other than a mother he seldom saw and a strict taskmaster of a blacksmith, Sparrow had no one.
    “I don’t know. I mean, I’ll come home on leave and stuff so I’ll probably see you then,” Dale tried. “And you can always come visit me too. Pharundelle isn’t
that
far. Only like two days by train if you take the express.”
    Sparrow knew he could never afford a train ticket. And new cadets weren’t permitted to take leave for the first three years. As they spoke these last few wishful words, the two boys had no idea that by Dale’s first visit home, his Goseonite friend would no longer be there, swept away in the wake of tragedy. They could not imagine that more than a decade would pass before fate would reunite them.
    Sparrow looked up with a glimmer of hope in his eyes contrasted against an otherwise expressionless face.
    “That’d be neat,” he replied.
    And for the moment, they stood beside each other with their backs up against the bakery glass window, watching in silence as people passed by, trying to enjoy their fleeting hours of friendship. The sun was low. The shadows were tall. Everything was saturated in gold.

NO 02

CH 05
     

WAR MACHINES
     
    The first light of day was filtering through an icy haze. It was a cold Balean morning, colder than the starless night before. Thawing inside Castle Verona’s War Room were two bearded men with fair, rosy skin and long braided hair—Duke Merrick Thalian and his advisor, Eli Sorensen. They sat waiting at a table with a map of Groveland spread out between them and a great fire blazing in the hearth behind.
    “The people love you, Your Highness,” said Eli, the firelight dancing in his eyes. “You are a just ruler. A reflection of our late king.”
    The duke smiled. “Is that what your Ciphers told you?”
    Eli Sorensen was both advisor to the throne and the director of the Royal Intelligence Brigade, commonly referred to as the
Ciphers
. As the head of Balean intelligence, it was his job to oversee the collection of sensitive information. He was constantly analyzing and re-analyzing, sifting through countless documents and sources of information. The duke knew what he was getting when he appointed Eli. He wanted someone cold and calculating in his political corner, someone who could navigate that treacherous terrain of “snakes and thespians,” as he would refer to politicians, without turning into one himself.
    Following the untimely death of the late king, Aegis Leawen, the duke was elected regent. As a man who despised politics, it was a position he had accepted reluctantly.
    “It’s not their love that I desire, Eli.” He looked down at the map. “It’s the preservation of the oldest monarchy in all of Parabolis. To see it handed down to its rightful successor in its rightful condition.”
    Groveland was separated into two global powers: the Republic of Meredine to the south and the Kingdom of Bale to the north. The kingdom’s borders were marked on the map with a red outline stretching from the Hesperian Highlands to the Lecidian Mountains of Silverland.
    “And its rightful condition will be the glory into which you will lead it,” Eli replied.
    The duke looked at his advisor from below his brows. He was about to say something, cast some doubt on their undertaking, when General Arun Kilbremmer entered. His eyes still had sleep in them.
    “It’s colder than a spurned lover,” he said, cinching his collar. He was clothed in a fur-lined, leather uniform. He had platinum hair and was older than both the duke and Eli. His face wore many years of hard decisions but his body was fitter