The Avengers of Carrig Read Online Free PDF

tower, he found all in order—robed acolytes, servers, sages, and his kinfolk, who wore the proud symbol of the senior clan, the stylized two-winged shape of the parradile their king. He greeted them stiffly as he went by.
    At last he came to the western battlements and stared toward the twin furnaces of the sunset and the SmokingHills. Already the reddish disc of the sun was misshapen by the hot air rising over the volcanic range. And the wind must be from that quarter, for he could smell—
    No. The scent of burning was from close at hand. Glancing down over the city, he could make out a smear of smoke indicating the site of a house afire. Fortunately it was not far from the river, which meant plenty of water was available to protect nearby buildings. From the volume and density of the smoke it was clear there was small chance of saving the house itself.
    Out of curiosity he called to one of the young servers standing near him, a boy noted for the keenness of his eyesight “See you there!” he said, gesturing. “Can you discern whose house it is that’s burning?”
    The boy hesitated. “It might be Trader Heron’s,” he said doubtfully. “But there’s too much smoke to be sure.”
    Trader Heron’s! Why, what a disaster to befall him on the very day of his return to—
    Sir Bavis glanced up, and realized that while he was distracted the evening star had come out like a water-white jewel on the dying-coal color of the sky. All else was instantly forgotten except the ritual words; he raised his staff and pointed toward the star.
    “Tomorrow it is lawful that the king be killed!”

CHAPTER FOUR
    Saikmar son of Corrie moved as in a dream to take his place among the other members of Clan Twywit in the hall of audience. In his veins the blood seemed to rush like a mountain torrent; he felt he was watching his own actions from a distance, as a man does when drunkenness severs the body from the mind’s control without blurring the mind’s awareness. Yet this was in no other way like being drunk, as far as he could tell from his limited experience of that state. It was closer to ecstasy.
    Those about him—his mother, his uncle who had stoodguardian to him since his father’s death, his sisters, his aunts, and cousins to the third degree—were proud of him, and as he passed by on the way to his seat in the front rank they clapped him on the shoulder or called encouragement to him. But he was not proud of himself. His ecstasy was beyond pride. He was not completely here in the hall. Part of him was out there above the Smoking Hills, riding the turbulent air in a flimsy glider—already lost in tomorrow.
    The huge semicircular audience hall was filled with benches arranged in wedge-shaped groups, widening from short ones at the front, where three might without comfort cram side by side, to long ones against the wall adequate for twenty. The order in which the clans sat was determined by lot. As it had fallen out Clan Twywit this year claimed the central wedge, and so when he took his place Saikmar found himself directly facing the throne on which Sir Bavis would preside.
    He was dimly aware that most eyes were upon him, but took no notice. Those eyes were seeing a youth as tall as a man, but curiously slim, all his bones even to those of his skull being narrow and light—birdlike, people said. A few years ago none would have foreseen him as his clan’s best contender, for he spent his time studying, dancing, singing, and climbing trees by himself away from the rough-and-tumble of his fellows. Now, though, at eighteen, he had learned to express his dancer’s grace through the medium of a glider, to finger its controls with the same delicacy as a musical instrument, and his light build and nervously quick reactions had marked him out far above the rest.
    Limping a little (he had been thrown by a spirited graat and broken a leg which healed short) his uncle, Sir Malan Corrie, chief of the clan, took his place on one