The Blood Line Read Online Free PDF Page B

nightfall and the grassy plains of Mu were not a good place to be after dark. The danger was ever present but once the sun had set strange beasts stalked the land.
    At the edge of the village he found a large barn which, standing apart from the other buildings, had not been touched by the flames. Inside he found it had a high loft which looked like a sort of balcony at one end, accessible via a tall sturdy ladder. Praising his luck he climbed up to find a good quantity of hay. He pulled the ladder up after him, tucked himself down in the hay and settled down to wait for the dawn.
    The barn, already dim, darkened further as night fell and the sun’s light, which had sent golden, pink and then red lines across the floor through the cracks in the wooden planks of the walls, withdrew completely. Sam found one gap in the wood near him which was large enough for him to squint through and get a pretty good view of the world beyond the village. He looked out onto the grassy plains of Mu and distant mountains. Sam watched colour withdraw from the land.
    Sam wanted desperately to sleep but he hadn’t been able to switch off his brain since he had left Kya and Weewalk. He couldn’t be sure exactly how long ago that had been. It might have been three weeks ago. It might have been more. But those weeks had felt like the longest of his life. Sleep, whenever it did come, had been fitful and full of nightmares. He reckoned he never slept for more than an hour or two before waking in a cold sweat.
    In some ways he supposed it was to be expected. After all he had very recently had to deal with some terrible information. The knowledge that he was capable of using a telekinetic force called presence was difficult enough to wrap his head around but he had then taken a long journey to save a man called Tarak, who had turned out to be Kya’s father and a man whom Sam now considered to be an enemy, or at least not an ally. He was dangerous. Along the way Sam had watched his parents die after he had taken a line, one of the weird doorways which crossed time and space, to a night in the past when Sam was a baby. He had seen a powerful member of the Riven, Ferus, try to kill him in the apparently mistaken belief that Sam was in some way special. Ferus had tried to kill Sam because of a lie which Tarak had publicised about Sam’s potential and Sam’s parents had been killed in the process. All because Tarak had gambled that Ferus would destroy himself by attacking Sam. Sam had been a pawn in a game he hadn’t even known he was playing and even now did not fully understand. And in the madness that had ensued Sam had learned the most terrible truth of all. The world that he knew, that he had grown up in, was doomed to be torn apart. It was like Sam had seen the evidence of the end of the era of the dinosaurs but this time he was T-Rex. Mu, the world in which he now shivered in a barn would, in some unknowable number of years, be the product. And this world was horrible. The Riven King had ensured that. Sam had heard whispers of other lands, across strange seas. Perhaps these other places would be different. Perhaps they were not under the terrible rule of the mad King. But nobody seemed to know much, it was all rumour. Perhaps, if he kept moving, Sam would eventually find out.
    It was a lot to deal with. And with the trauma of it all Sam seemed to be losing his presence, the one thing which kept him safe in this cursed world. It came in fits and starts. Sometimes it worked fine and Sam felt strong and powerful, but more often than not he felt weak and fuzzy, like his head was full of cotton wool. He went for long periods where he couldn’t think clearly and he hadn’t been able to find his way to a line of any sort, let alone one back to his own world. He hoped it was just a symptom of him not having enough sleep. He was also not getting enough food or water.  It was no wonder he was not feeling well. He had become even skinnier and his untidy