The Broken World Read Online Free PDF Page B

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say anything more than that this important man had a declaration that had to be made to the whole village. A few of the younger men tried to argue with the village elder, but he obviously still ruled the roost, and they backed down soon enough.
    About fifty people had assembled by the time Melyn decided to speak. They ranged in age from a babe still suckling at its dirty-faced mother’s breast to a bald-headed woman with a wall eye who must have been eighty if she was a day. They had a look about them, surly-faced and with eyebrows that met in the middle, which spoke of long years of inbreeding. For the first time, viewing the thin children and haggard women, Melyn began to wonder whether his plan was a good one. Nobody would ever miss these people. Nobody would notice them gone.
    ‘Thank you all for gathering to hear me. Is anyone not here?’
    There was a general shuffling, a refusal to make eye contact, some mumbling. Then the village elder admitted that there might be one or two men panning a stream a couple of miles out.
    ‘To the west of here? A narrow gully with scrubby trees on the north bank?’
    The old man nodded.
    ‘That’s all right. I’ve already spoken to them. We can proceed. Now, as I’ve already told your chief here, my name is Melyn. I am Inquisitor of the Order of the High Ffrydd. Does anyone here know what that means?’
    No answer. He’d expected none, but it might have been more fun if at least one of them had known who he was.
    ‘Never mind. I really only gathered you here to make my life easier. Captain, if you please.’
    There was a shimmering in the Grym that Melyn felt through his bones, and a dozen warrior priests led by Captain Osgal appeared out of thin air. They had the villagers surrounded, and without a further word conjured up their blades of light.
    ‘What’s this? What’re you—’ The village elder was cut short by a ball of conjured flame thrown straight at him by Melyn. As it exploded in the old man’s face, setting his clothes and hair alight, the women in the crowd screamed. Soon the men joined in as the silent warrior priests set about them with their blades.
    It was over in less than a minute. Only the bleating of goats and the clucking of chickens broke the silence that descended on the village green. Melyn got up, folded his travelling stool and strapped it back on to his saddle.
    ‘Pile them all up there.’ He indicated a clear patch of grass and waited while the warrior priests did as they were ordered. Melyn was pleased to see that there was little blood; most of the sword cuts had been surgically precise. It made cleaning up easier.
    ‘Stand back now.’ He waited until the last body was in place and the warrior priests had retreated, then he reached out for the lines all around him. It was a difficult working, like conjuring a blade of light as big as a horse. And he had to deflect all that power away from himself or risk turning into a very brief and very bright star. It was magic he had performed before, magic he was confident he could perform now, but still he had to gauge the exact moment to release all that pent-up energy.
    The fire started in the middle of the pile of bodies. No ordinary flame this, it consumed totally, eating away the substance as it absorbed the dead back into the Grym. A pyre would have left a pall of greasy black smoke hanging in the air like an epitaph, a heap of dirty grey ash to mix with the soil and flow down the slope with the next rains, but this fire took everything into itself, reaching out like a living thing. Melyn watched as his warrior priests retreated, feeling the magical flame grasping for them. He smiled to himself; he knew exactly how far it could go and stood just beyond its limit. The heat washed over his face, warmed his skin for a few brief moments and then began to fade away, pulling in on itself until there was nothing but a tiny glowing orb a few feet above the ground. Then, with a
pop
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