Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons) Read Online Free PDF

on?”
    “You can call me Kara,” she said.
    She smiled at me again. I stood there grinning like a big
idiot with my green face. I wondered if she was going to kiss me again.
    She shook her head like she had fished the thoughts right
out of my head.
    “We have to get out of here,” she said. “I took something from
Gerard, something he stole from my people.” She paused, bit her lip. “After he
got rid of my father, and my mother. And I don’t think this time, if he finds
me, he will hesitate before getting rid of me. Or any witnesses.” She looked
around. “Why are you locked in here, anyway?”
    I shrugged. “It’s supposed to keep me safe and working. My
parents say it increases magical concentration, frees the mind from
distractions.”
    “I guess it didn’t work this time,” she said, smiling again
despite the danger we were in. “I’m a pretty big distraction, aren’t I?”
    “You can say that again,” I said, with a grin. “But really,
I wasn’t concentrated on anything. It was hard enough to forget about this clay
mask.”
    “But you felt me reach out for help.”
    “I don’t know what happened,” I said, honestly.
    “There must be some link between us. Maybe we’re distant
cousins, or born on the same day, or we ate the same food, or drank the same
tea. No connections, no gateway, not even a little one like we had.”
    “Are there bigger gateways?”
    “Some of my people can create gateways as big as a house.”
    “Your people?”
    “I’m Kriek.”
    “Kriek? The teleportation people? I thought they just
existed in books.”
    “I’m real, and I’ll prove it,” she said, pinching me on the
arm.
    “Okay,” I said. “I believe you.”
    “You must be Kriek too, or I couldn’t have connected with
you.” Kara stopped to look at me. “You really need to get that off your face.
It looks silly.”
    “I wasn’t expecting company.”
    “Sorry,” she said.
    “My face underneath this stuff doesn’t look much better,
either.”
    “Now I’m really sorry,” she said. “But you could try
the charcoal soap. Let me see…”
    Kara stared off into space. I had this feeling she was
thinking about how to treat my skin.
    “Look, forget about it,” I said.
    She bit her lip. “We really need to get out of here,” she
said. “But let me see your hands.”
    I held out my fists, thinking she was still interested in my
skin.
    “Your palms, silly.”
    Kara shook her head, examining them. “Your lines are very
faint. Maybe your great grandfather. But you have our blood.”
    “How can you tell?” I asked.
    “Only our people have this line on their palms.”
    She ran her fingers down lines on my left and right palms. A
buzzing warmth in my hands stretched up all the way to my itchy face and down
to the rest of my body.
    It was almost like she had kissed me. Wow.
    She nodded.
    “You feel it now, don’t you?”
    I nodded. Did I ever. “And Gerard, is he Kriek too?” I
asked.
    She shook her head violently. “It would take too long right
now to explain what Gerard is. We need to get out of here. Think, boy, think.”
    “I’m not a boy. And my name is Anders.”
    “Think, then, Anders. We can’t get out the window. We Kriek
don’t transform ourselves. You really can’t open the door? Is the lock
magical?”
    I nodded. “Magical and mechanical. The locks of this castle
can’t be broken by spell or lockpick. I’ve heard that even professional
lockbreakers have wasted whole days blasting away at these doors. When I was
little they got a 4th level breaker from Siena when the Baron lost one of the
keys. It took several days, and it cost us a fortune.”
    “The Baron?”
    “The Baron Luigi, lord of Firenze.”
    “Who has the key to this door, then?”
    “Mom and Dad. The castle keymaster, maybe. No one else.”
    “Can you contact them?”
    I shook my head, again. “They’re gone. My father locks me in
when they leave, and when they come back, they check to see if my work is