(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch Read Online Free PDF Page B

leap to his feet and run, he lay as still as he could, clutching Opal so tightly that he could feel her silently struggling to break his painful grip.
    At last the hooded figure turned away. One of its fellows lifted something from the back of its saddle and dropped it to the ground. The riders lingered for a moment longer, staring across the valley at the distant towers of Southmarch Castle. Then, without a sound, they wheeled and rode their ghostwhite horses back into the ragged wall of mist.
    Chert still waited a dozen frightened heartbeats before he let go of his wife.
    “You’ve crushed my innards, you old fool,” she moaned, climbing up onto hands and knees. “Who was it? I couldn’t see.”
    “I . . . I don’t know.” It had happened so quickly that it almost seemed a dream. He got up, feeling the ache of their clumsy, panicked flight begin to throb in all his joints. “They just rode out, then turned around and rode back . . .” He stopped, staring at the dark bundle the riders had dropped. It was moving.
    “Chert, where are you going?”
    He didn’t intend to touch it, of course—no Funderling was such a fool, to snatch up something that even those beyond the Shadowline did not want. As he moved closer, he could not help noticing that the large sack was making small, frightened noises.
    “There’s something in it,” he called to Opal.
    “There’s something in lots of things,” she said, coming grimly after him. “But not much between your ears. Leave it alone and come away, you. No good can come of it.”
    “It’s . . . it’s alive.” A thought had come into his head. It was a goblin, or some other magical creature banished from the lands beyond. Goblins were wish-granters, that was what the old tales said. And if he freed it, would it not give those wishes to him? A new shawl . . . ? Opal could have a queen’s closet full of clothes if she wished. Or the goblin might lead him to a vein of firegold and the masters of the Funderling guilds would soon be coming to Chert’s house with caps in hands, begging his assistance. Even his own so-proud brother . . .
    The sack thrashed and tipped over. Something inside it snarled.
    Of course, he thought, there could be a reason they took it across the Shadowline and tossed it away like bones on a midden. It could be something extremely unpleasant.
    An even stranger sound came from the sack.
    “Oh, Chert.” His wife’s voice was now quite different. “There’s a child in there! Listen—it’s crying!”
    He still did not move. Everyone knew there were sprites and bogles even on this side of the Shadowline that could mimic the voices of loved ones in order to lure travelers off the path to certain doom. Why expect better of something that actually came from inside the twilight country?
    “Aren’t you going to do anything?”
    “Do what? Any kind of demon could be in there, woman.”
    “That’s no demon, that’s a child—and if you’re too frightened to let it out, Chert of the Blue Quartz, I will.”
    He knew that tone all too well. He muttered a prayer to the gods of deep places, then advanced on the sack as though it were a coiled viper, stepping carefully so that in its thrashing it would not roll against him and, perhaps, bite. The sack was held shut with a knot of some gray rope. He touched it carefully and found the cord slippery as polished soapstone.
    “Hurry up, old man!”
    He glared at her, then began cautiously to unpick the knot, wishing he had brought something with him sharper than his old knife, dulled by digging out stones. Despite the cool, foggy air, sweat had beaded on his forehead by the time he was able to tease the knot apart. The sack had lain still and silent for some time. He wondered, half hoping it was so, whether the thing inside might have suffocated.
    “What’s in there?” his wife called, but before he had time to explain that he hadn’t even opened the cursed thing, something shot out of the heavy sack