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

and he was in enemy territory.

    ~~*~~

    True darkness fell over them long before Kalen could make out the flickering light of a torch through the trees. While he’d been offered a horse, he walked. Without a word, the Kelshites followed his lead. He held the reins of one of the beasts, but it wasn’t his horse.
    It was too docile and accepting. Even if he did like the animal, he refused to ride it in the dark in an area he didn’t know. It was a good way to get them both killed. If the Kelshites questioned his decision, they said nothing of it.
    They didn’t say anything at all, which suited Kalen.
    There were niches in the Rift more spacious than the clearing. Several buildings stood in a ring. The largest of the structures was the inn, which was marked by a sign. Light spilled out of a set of large double doors, and curious horses stared out at them.
    “I’ll get one of the hands,” Marist said, hurrying off to the building with his horse.
    Kalen stared at the structure and tried to puzzle out what it was. It reminded him of a miniature version of the stables within Blind Mare Run. But, from what he could tell, each stall was far too cramped to give the horses the space they both needed and deserved.
    “This is the Black Feather Inn. It’s best known for its large stables, as it is a major stop for traders heading west of Kelsh,” Derac said. “It’s quiet now, since most of the caravans have already made it past this way and won’t be back for another month or more.”
    Three boys hurried out of the stables and came to take their horses. Kalen handed the reins off and ignored the stares at his single arm, filthy garb, and bare feet. “Interesting.”
    “Within an hour’s ride there is a town where the trade road intersects with the way of cities.”
    Kalen nodded. That put him halfway between where the borders of the Rift, Kelsh, and Danar met and the city of Elenrune. On foot, it was several months of travel. It’d be several weeks to a month on a Rift horse riding hard.
    Why didn’t he remember a journey that long?
    “Why did you trust that Marist fellow so readily? You’ve only at my word of who I am. How do you know I spoke the truth?” Kalen asked while staring at Derac. The man’s lip twitched upright.
    “Sometimes something is so absurd that it can be nothing but the truth.”
    Kalen huffed a laugh. It was evasion at its best, and it told him more than he suspected the other man wanted him to learn. Marist had seen the sigil before, which put the young man in a role of power. As the Rift King, his role in the ongoing disputes between the Kingdoms was one that most didn’t like to think about.  
    Bully. Enforcer. Violent mediator. Monster needing to be caged.
    That meant that while people were aware that a Rift King existed, few could recognize the mark or what his real role was. He’d heard some of the rumors about himself. Some of them were even accurate, but he didn’t have a taste for human flesh, despite common belief. After seeing so many dead men, he didn’t even like meat all that much anymore, not that meat was plentiful within the Rift.
    He also didn’t share his bed with any of his horses, although he had to chase his stallion out of his study whenever the handlers didn’t manage to secure Ferethian’s stall door. It didn’t help that the small stallion was as clever as he was stubborn.
    A surge of loneliness tightened his chest. Ferethian, Honey, and the rest of his herd was fine. If any one of them died, he’d know, just as he had known when Tavener had died so many years before.
    Kalen stretched to hide the nature of his grimace.
    “What would happen if you died here in Kelsh?” Derac asked him in a whisper.
    Kalen pressed his lips together. It was an answer Derac wouldn’t like. He knew it, but gave it anyway. “They’d Ride.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “You don’t want to know.” That much was the truth. It made him glad that he couldn’t hear the song