Storm Without End (Requiem for the Rift King Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

Marist. Marist nodded acceptance of Kalen’s words.
    Kalen shifted his weight from foot to foot and winced at the pain. His toes were stiff and cold and moving them made them hurt even more. “Hellfires, it is cold here. We’re all filthy and wet. We can go our separate ways. I’m fine with that. I can accept traveling as far together as the road, but I’ve no intention of freezing to death in this forest.”
    “It isn’t cold,” Luca growled.
    “It isn’t for you,” Kalen said. “Where I come from, not even the winter is this ruddy miserable.”
    “Where do you come from?” asked Derac.
    Kalen looked over at Marist and nodded.
    The deepening darkness did not hide Marist’s flush. “He’s from the Rift.”
    Luca’s sword hit the ground with a thud and Derac’s mouth dropped open. The others drew back several steps. Kalen clenched his teeth together and kept his expression as neutral as possible just to stop himself from scowling at their reaction.
    “I’ve seen that mark before,” Marist said, pointing at the mud and blood-covered sigil that crossed Kalen’s chest. “You’ll find it in one place and one place alone in Kelsh.”
    Derac let out a huff. “Stop talking in riddles, Marist. Just say it, already!”
    “He’s trying to tell you that the only place you’ll find this mark is on missives from the Rift King,” Kalen said, taking pity on the floundering young man. The seal was one of the few embellishments added to each missive deemed important enough to warrant it. Every now and again, the archivists let him draw the symbol in gold, black, and silver inks. “You’re someone of knowledge and power, and you’re observant, too. I might have a position for someone with your intelligence.”
    “I know a little of your people,” Marist mumbled. The young man tried to hide behind Derac, but the other man didn’t let him and stepped to the side. “You’re the only one who can wear that mark.”
    “Many men have died trying to take it,” Kalen acknowledged.
    “He’s the—you mean, wait— you’re the Rift King?” Derac’s voice rose in pitch until it cracked.
    “Only in my study and whenever I can’t avoid it,” Kalen muttered. “I have a question.”
    “What is it?” Derac asked.
    “Since I’ve come all of this way anyway, I thought I might acquire some tea. Might you gentlemen know where I might find some?” For a long moment, he was stared at in stunned silence. Kalen stepped gingerly around the dead bodies of the two men and approached where Derac and Marist stood. He offered the filthy sword out hilt first.
    Derac waved a hand. “I’m not foolish enough to think that disarming you would make us any safer, Your Majesty.”
    “I was more thinking of freeing my hand so I could help deal with the bodies. For some reason, I do not expect to find nibblers here,” he replied in a rueful tone. “What do you do with the bodies?”
    “We bury them when it’s too wet to burn them,” Derac replied. “The vultures can take them for their stupidity.”
    “What’s a nibbler?” Marist asked.
    Kalen tossed the sword down at Hareth’s side. “Serpent.”
    “Serpent?”
    “Ah. There is a word for it in your language.” Kalen snapped his fingers as he remembered. “Snake.”
    The Kelshites stared at the bodies.
    “If you would come with us, Your Majesty,” Derac said with a nervous titter in his voice, “I think we can make arrangements for tea and a room at an inn for the night.”
    Kalen masked his smile behind a cough he didn’t have to force. He’d let them think they had won this round. But, he had plans of his own, as soon as he figured out where he was and how exactly he’d gotten into Kelsh. “Very well. The serpents take them, then.”
    Waiting until the men were distracted by their plans to travel on, Kalen lifted up Hareth’s dagger and wiped the blade off on his torn trousers. A knife in the dark was often a more potent weapon than a sword in the day,