Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

through the world—no one else could have traced their movements. Yet whenever someone spoke of another course, Rigg dismissed it. In the long run, they’d get caught; inside the wallfold they couldn’t hide for long. Yet people did hide. So why didn’t anyone argue with Rigg? Why didn’t I ?
    Not that Rigg bossed people around or even argued much. He just kept bringing up the Wall again and again, making it all seem so rational. And eventually everyone just took it for granted they were heading for the Wall.
    Even at the last minute, the very methods they used to get through the Wall might have taken them away from it just as easily. But they went through because Rigg wanted to.
    Who put him in charge? Why did everybody listen to him?
    Like Vadesh. He made it clear that Rigg was the person he would obey. But they had all passed through the Wall. In fact, Umbo and Param had passed through it first. And Umbo had done all the time-shifting. First Umbo had pushed Rigg and Loaf and Olivenko into the past—to the time that Rigg determined by finding and following the barbfeather. Then, when they were nearly across, Param had grabbed Umbo by the hand, leapt off the high rock they had been perched on, and then vivisected time the way she did, slowing them down. And once again, Umbohad pushed back in time, dragging himself and Param to a point a couple of weeks before they had arrived at the Wall. That’s how Umbo and Param ended up on the far side of the Wall even before the other three set out.
    Ultimately it all depended on Umbo. Yes, Rigg could carry the time-jump much farther into the past than Umbo could; yes, Rigg made it precise, by linking with some ancient path. And Param could section the flow of time—they were both talented. But the actual time travel, that was Umbo alone.
    So why didn’t Vadesh defer to him ? Why did Vadesh say Rigg was the “actual time traveler,” when Rigg had never learned to time-shift on his own, as Umbo had? Why was Umbo nothing , when he could do things no one else could do?
    Right from the start, Umbo had come to Rigg as a supplicant. Please let me travel with you, please! Remembering his own groveling begging attitude now made Umbo feel humiliated and angry. They both had compelling reasons to leave the village of Fall Ford; why did Umbo put himself in a subordinate position?
    It couldn’t be because Rigg was a Sessamid, born to be a prince; none of them knew it until he was arrested in O. Besides, Sessamids had been out of power ever since the People’s Revolutionary Council took over, and if they had been in power, they would have killed Rigg as a baby because Queen Hagia’s grandmother had decreed that no male could inherit and that all male Sessamids must be killed upon birth.
    So how did Rigg end up making all the important decisions and getting them into this terrible place on the wrong side of the Wall?
    Be rational, Umbo told himself. Rigg is in charge because that’s how Ram, the Golden Man, the Wandering Man, our copy of Vadesh, raised him.
    Ram had given Umbo some training in the way to control his power over time, and by disguising himself as a gardener had helped train Param, all the way downriver in Aressa Sessamo. But Ram had taken Rigg from babyhood and raised him as his son, teaching him constantly. Ram trained Rigg to be a ruler. Ram decided everything, and Rigg and all the rest of them were just following his script.
    And now here they were with Ram’s identical twin, Vadesh, lying to them and controlling them. They couldn’t even get water without Vadesh’s help or some terrible parasite would get them. They were completely at the mercy of this machine shaped like a human. A machine created in such a form as to deceive everyone about its very nature. Ancient humans made these immortal machines and now they rule over us because they know everything and we know nothing.
    Now Umbo lay there in a grove of trees not far from the empty ruins of a city, staring up