Rythe Falls Read Online Free PDF Page B

He scrambled back from the Red Wizard once more, now on cold stone, his naked arse, back, elbows, all burning with friction.
                  A bolt of memory made him curl into a ball upon the flagstones. He clutched his pounding head again, screamed.
                  The Red Wizard's birth - born from the carcass of the terrible beast, the Revenant, born in fire and blood and pain. The death of the hero Roth...his sacrifice.
                  The stench of the Rahken's flesh as he burned.
                  Renir's stomach was empty, but he heaved.
                  His memory would not free him. Clawing at his face, his head through his hair, he knelt on the cold, cold stones of this borrowed room and tried to make his memories fit back inside his head.
                  The Red Wizard pursed his tight, thin lips and watched the man's agony.
                 
    *
     
    He's breaking now, just with the memories of his own tiny life. What will he do when the Crown of Kings is on his head and he sees the history of this land in a moment? Will his head blow apart, showering me with skull and blood and hair? Will blood run from his ears? Will the first King in a thousand years be nothing more than a dribbling imbecile in a circlet of gold?
                  Caeus watched Renir's agony and listened to his cries with no more expression than a rock. His was a stern face that fitted well on his sharp, long bones. Yet, for a creature of such ability, so long lived, he was not entirely unmoved. He could understand the man's pain, empathise, even...as far as one of his kind was able.
                  He'd taught himself to do as much, long ago.
                  But he was detached, too...almost as though he watched the man's agonies through a glass, stained with many colours, or at a remove, like the reflection of pain in nothing more than a grimy mirror.
                  Caeus closed his eyes for one moment, thinking about the nature of pain, about the nature of mortals. He could hear the King-to-be growling in agony, but it was a mere trick of his will to make it...distant. A Jemandril's roar through river water, nothing more. He closed his ears against the man's torment and sat, patiently and purposely deaf to the mortal's cries.
                  Perhaps the reason he didn't see or hear Renir's fist whistling through the air.
     
    *
     
    Renir's pain turned to fury, and he lashed out at the only thing he could - the wizard, sitting so  calmly...so...damn...calm.
                  He damn near broke his fist on the thing's face.
                  Caeus, he remembered... his name is Caeus.
                  The most powerful being on Rythe.
                  I just punched him in the face.
                  Renir glanced to his axe, the opposite side of the bed. Figured it wasn't the greatest idea.
                  Caeus noted the glance, just as he'd noted the punch. Nothing more.
                  The wizard only grinned.
                  'Fight in you yet, young King! Good. Now, we eat.'
                  Eat? How could a man eat when the world was ending?
                  Renir's fury was passing quick as it came, though thoughts were still flooding through his mind. Perhaps words might have soothed him, settled him, but when Caeus waved his hand a little, the wizard's magic did more than any words could.
                  Between Renir and the wizard, a fine feast appeared. Instantly. No fanfare, or strange pops or bangs or pretty lights.
                  One moment, cold stone. The next?
                  Renir caught a line of drool that snaked its way through the beard on his chin, the drool, he guessed, his body's way of telling him it was hungry, despite his rage and