Sorcerer's Vendetta (The Secret of Zanalon) Read Online Free PDF

had not returned there, either.
    She looked at the tree, looming in shadowy menace before her. Maybe she should wait until morning after all ...
    Rachel licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. She had to see what Rollin had seen.  Something could be in there that would tell her more about what had happened to him. She did not believe that he had simply dropped everything and disappeared. Before, she had just been excited about the possibilities should this be a genuine find. It would be the highlight of their work together, the springboard that would have taken the book they had planned to a wider audience.  Now ...
    She felt a sudden mixture of emotions: a sense of loss at the missed banter, the possibilities she had found herself considering. She had actually lost the twenty-five pounds that she had been carrying around, waiting to hear from him again. It was foolish, she knew, but she had felt a bond with him based on their shared interests. Once she pinned down the fact that she was getting slightly infatuated with a man she had never met, then she had responded to his sudden silence by waiting perhaps too long to contact the University and ask after him. Once she processed that, another emotion reared its ugly head. Fear ... What could have happened to him?
    She looked at the mouth, open in a sideways scream, in the base of the huge tree.
    Will it happen to me?
    Flipping her hair back, she marched toward it. Don't be silly!
    Before she could think about it, she swung the flashlight ahead of her and thrust her head into the hole.
    Oh, my God – She backed out in a rush, stifling a yelp. Then she kicked herself mentally, patting her chest to keep her heart from leaping out, realizing what she had let scare her so. It was only the statue, so lifelike it was threatening.
    Rachel poked her head in again, started to raise the harsh beam of the flashlight, then paused. Moonlight arced in from a wide split high in the side of the tree trunk, a soft, shimmering spotlight bathing the swordsman. Instead, she turned off the flashlight and approached the statue, moving as if she walked in a cathedral. The swordsman waited in ambush in the moonlight, poised with deadly sword raised. He stood dead center in the cleared dirt floor, which the crew planned to cover with meticulous brushing, anticipating the presence of artifacts around him. Her assistant had informed her that the floor around the statue had been clear and dry to begin with, although around the inner edges of the trunk there was a covering of leaves. There was faint evidence of a quaint dwelling, but the only thing substantial that had been found, so far, were pieces of a clock not of the period.
    This is it. This is really it. Making mental notes, she examined him.
    Corrosion: minimal. Intricate detail: engraved cloak clasp, boot lacing. Unusual pose.
    Roman sculptors of that era were normally restricted to immortalizing their wealthy subjects in nothing more than stone portraiture. No one but the Celts would ever have dreamed of such an active pose, and yet, it did not have the abstract flair of Celtic artwork. This swordsman was strange, also, for his lack of armor. Perhaps a Tuscan artist, but then –
    She started to reach up to touch the chiseled face. My God, are those eyelashes? No way!
    Rachel stopped, eyes caught by the twisted snarl.
    Whoever you were, I doubt you were very nice. But maybe you were just bitter. Most meanness I've seen in my life simply comes from loneliness. Shame, a good-looking man like that. Maybe the sculptor exaggerated. Not that good looks are any guarantee against loneliness. 
    Retreating from that hate-filled face, Rachel knelt, brushed a palm across the pedestal. She turned on the flashlight, aimed it at the writing there. It was totally unfamiliar, a shock to her. Archaic languages were her specialty.
    She sighed, leaned on the stone. Her hand brushed the statue's boot.
    " ...WIIIIIIIITCH!!!"
    Rachel went rigid. Every nerve in her