The Book of Transformations Read Online Free PDF

pterodettes, and their reptilian squawks echoed across the bay. Out to sea, a few tiny boats were navigating the treacherous channels, gullies and tiny whirlpools around the reefs. The surf folded over itself, endlessly – and the repetitions were intoxicating. The landscape served to calm her mind and, if ever there was a place in which to recover from such painful surgical procedures, then this was it. If she could bring herself to believe in the Jorsalir tales, then this would be what she hoped the heavenly realms would be like.
    Am I dead?
    She stood upright, stretched tentatively, then more snaps of pain savaged her nerves. She grinned. No, most definitely alive . Lan bent her arms this way and that, trying to work out the pain.
    She turned back to face the city in the deep distance, a construct of wood and stone and metal. It blended in with the texture of the vegetation, yet towered above, dominating the panorama.
    Villarbor, the forest city.
    Cayce called it a treetop metropolis in which cultist magic flickered in and out of existence, but to her eyes Villarbor was a city of violent sorcery. She had been barely conscious when she entered the place, but there was plenty of the weird to alarm her. Nothing there seemed to make sense; it was a phenomenally different way of life. Magic charged through the skein of streets. Buildings were constructed from, and within, the trunks of titanic trees that seemed settlements in themselves.
    Each lightning-pulse of magic that now boomed in the distance sent a quiver through her body.
    With that in mind, she sauntered along the sand, a slow arc around the beachhead. Such beautiful heat , she thought . I don’t ever want to go back to Jokull, that freezing island.
    Further up the shore she spotted a lone figure. Cayce was sitting on a rock smoking a roll-up. He was wearing a cream-coloured outfit. She could smell his heady weed from a distance. As she approached, sand squelched between her toes.
    He looked her up and down, brushing his stubbled chin. He analyzed her anatomy, and she knew by now that there was nothing sexual in his examination. This was merely one of his inspections.
    ‘So you are enjoying the beaches, I see,’ Cayce said.
    ‘Something like that. The Cephs – they’re bizarre people, aren’t they? We don’t have anything like that where I’m from.’
    Cayce frowned, scanning the Cephs in the distance, but he didn’t acknowledge her words. Rubbing his arms, he said, ‘You look really good, Lan, and I mean that. You were already in impressive physical shape – there are a good many unhealthy people, with all that ice.’ Despite his slightly unusual accent, he spoke with utter confidence, as if he was always declaring something profound, and whether or not he knew it, his words were helping to rebuild her in places his science couldn’t quite reach.
    ‘When will I have to leave?’ she asked. ‘I’d love to hang around a little longer.’
    ‘We are all done, as far as I’m concerned,’ he replied. ‘Ysla, for its own sake, does not permit visitors. So, I’m afraid you will have to leave soon. You simply cannot stay – and it is not just for our good, but yours, too.’
    Lan thought as much. ‘In the morning?’
    ‘Indeed.’ Cayce jumped down from the rock, his cream cloak flailing around him in the breeze. Marram grass rippled along the edge of the dunes whilst a flock of gulls suddenly filled the sky before drifting in circles along the shore.
    ‘There are some festivities tonight – cultural celebrations for one of the orders. You may as well enjoy the night before you head back – just, if you please, try not to talk to too many of the others.’
    ‘For my own good?’ Lan asked.
    ‘You have, it seems, caught on well.’ Cayce turned and Lan moved to follow him across the sand.
    *
    The approach to Villarbor was contoured with surges of trees and plants that seemed alien to the Archipelago. Spiked structures and fat-leafed things and