The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) Read Online Free PDF

but every one of us escaped.’ She smiled at them, her eyes shining. ‘We were saved.’
    The village had scant hospitality to offer, but the prospect of telling strangers about their miraculous escape broughtmost of them out of their homes with small gifts of food. The travellers were seated around the fire in the chief’s hut and given mugs of sour beer, while the chief’s wife told them the tale and a dozen other villagers crowded in the doorway to add their own details.
    The burned buildings, the woman told them, were their boathouse and drying-sheds. Two nights before, one of the sheds was struck by lightning out of a clear sky: they heard a thunderclap, saw a bolt of white light and ran out of their houses to see the blaze already taking hold. They fought it as best they could with buckets of sea-water, but to no avail: long before dawn the fire was raging through both sheds (‘fiercer than a storm,’ said the chief’s wife, with gloomy relish), and had caught the boathouse where they kept one of the two passenger boats that the men used to ferry travellers to the mainland.
    ‘Everyone was crying!’ put in a young boy. They knew that the dried fish that was to feed the village for the rest of the winter must have gone up in smoke, and with it all the fishing nets, their livelihood. The boat, their finest, gave them all their contact with the outside world, as well as extra income in the summer months; now it, too, would be gone. And then the wind had changed, and a corner-post from the shed had crashed down on the other side, carrying the fire towards their homes.
    ‘Such screaming and running there was!’ cried one of the listeners.
    ‘I thought us all dead and buried for sure.’
    ‘But then . . .
he
came.’
    There was a man, a stranger, appearing out of nowhere. One moment they had been running for their homes, desperate to save young children and treasured possessions. Then there was a voice behind them, loud and commanding, and the man was there, fire burning all around him, with a sack of fish over his shoulder and his arms full of nets.
    ‘Beautiful as an angel he was,’ a young woman sighed.
    Some said he walked through the fire without being burned; others, that he moved too quickly for the fire to touch him. It was certain that he had saved their livelihood. He led them in extinguishing the burning beam that had threatened their homes, stamping out the straying flames himself. (‘And those fires, they vanished as if they were scared of him,’ said a man.) Then he helped them to rescue their boat from the burning boathouse, taking one rope himself with the strength of a dozen men. He did not rest until the fire was contained; their homes and possessions safe. Then he joined them in their celebrations while it burned itself out behind them.
    He would give no name, the chief’s wife said, and would take no reward. He said he was a traveller, come here to find passage south to the mainland. They did not often make the journey in winter, but this time . . . The chief himself, her husband, had gone as boat-master, and young men had fought to be allowed to row. They had left this morning on the very boat that the hero had saved from the flames.
    There was silence after the woman finished her story. Edmund did not dare to catch Elspeth’s eye. The image was all too clear in his mind: the fire ball crashing down, straight from the devastation of the ice caves; and Loki, the deceiver, taking on the form of a handsome hero, striding forth to resolve a disaster of his own making. What mortal man could have so much power over fire? For an instant he saw the same realisation on the faces of Cathbar and Cluaran – then Cluaran shot him a warning glance, fractionally shaking his head.
    Edmund wanted to shout these credulous people out of their delusion.
It was Loki! Loki – the monster who started your fire, who has murdered hundreds like you. How could you be so blind?
But he knew exactly how. Looking at