Severed Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

about his work so as not to cause any of the living to bear a grudge against him, either.
    Gerald swiped some of his limp gray hair away from his eyes as he leaned toward the small window a bit more, listening as he squinted into the distance. He noticed that all the cows in the grass fields had stopped grazing. They had even stopped chewing their cud as they all looked off in the same direction, toward the same spot to the northeast.
    He found that unsettling. He stroked the stubble of his cheek as he considered it. There was not much to the northeast. The Dark Lands were desolate enough as it was with dangers not to be taken lightly, but to the northeast the Dark Lands were even less hospitable—mostly a trackless waste without any villages he knew of but one, Stroyza.
    It was said that for as long as anyone knew, it had always been a wilderness and it always would be because there was terrible evil living off in that direction and anyone with any sense at all stayed away. It was general, if vague, knowledge passed down from generation to generation that there were wicked things off that way, even witch women, it was said. Everyone knew that witch women were not to be trifled with.
    Most people didn’t question, or investigate. Who wanted to go poke at sleeping evil? Or witches. What was the point?
    Gerald had met a few traveling merchants who had been to the distant village of Stroyza, off in that direction beyond the looming range of mountains he could see to the northwest. He’d never met anyone from Stroyza, but he had talked to the few traders who had infrequently tried their luck off that way. There wasn’t much to trade there and since the merchants returned with little of any value for the effort, it wasn’t a draw for others. Stroyza was a small village of folks who lived in their remote, cliffside village, as he’d heard tell, and they kept to themselves. It was understandable that the people there would be aloof; strangers most usually meant trouble.
    It was said that some who went off to the northeast to find their fortune simply never returned. Those who did return told stories of encounters in the dark of night with beasts, cunning folk meaning them harm, and even witch women. It was not hard to imagine why some had never returned. The ones who did never went back, instead going off to other, more well known places to try to make a living.
    As he watched, Gerald spotted movement at the edge of the distant woods. It was hard to tell for sure, but it seemed like it might be one of the mists that would sometimes settle down out of the mountains and drift across the flatlands. He wondered if maybe he had been wrong and it really was some kind of strange mountain thunder he was hearing and what he was seeing was a mist leading the way down the mountains out ahead of a storm.
    He shook his head to himself. It wasn’t any kind of thunder he was hearing. He was just fooling himself to think it was. Whatever was making the low rumbling sound, he had never heard the likes of it before, that much was sure.
    As he watched the relentlessly advancing mist, he wondered if it could be riders, a lot of riders, like maybe cavalry troops. Like everyone else in Insley he had heard stories about the recent war from some of the young men who had gone off to fight for D’Hara and came back to tell about it. They told stories about the vast armies and the thousands upon thousands of cavalry troops charging into bloody battles. He wondered if the haze could be a great many horses that were raising dust. Or maybe it was vast numbers of marching soldiers.
    What such troops or cavalry would be doing this far out in the Dark Lands he couldn’t begin to guess. Horse hooves galloping across the flatlands, though, might explain the rumbling sound.
    He’d seen some of Bishop Hannis Arc’s guards come through Insley in the past, but they didn’t have large numbers of men. There had never been