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

the bright faces around him, he knew that the villagers had been given their own miracle: nothing he could say would persuade them to give it up.
    ‘Truly a tale of wonders,’ said Cluaran at last, and there was just the right tone of awe in his voice. ‘Mistress,’ he went on, ‘we too are travellers, though no heroes; hoping to take passage for the south. It’s a poor time of year for a voyage, I know . . . but your story has fired me with a wish to see this man for myself. I can see from my companions’ faces that they feel the same. To which port did your men take him?’
    The woman’s face glowed. ‘You’re right: not many people can say they have looked on a true hero! He went to Alebu, in the Danish kingdom.’
    ‘And,’ Cluaran went on smoothly, ‘you said you had a second boat?’
    The other boat was much older than the one saved from the fire: unwieldy and somewhat battered; but even so, the villagers were not entirely happy to let it go out in winter before the first had returned. But Cathbar pronounced the boat sound, and when Cluaran presented the village with the two horses as well as the hire of the boat in silver, the remaining boat-masters agreed to find another crew but explained that they would not be able to leave until the next morning. Cluaran passed himself and Cathbar off as enterprising cloth merchants looking for a new market in the far northern towns, and Eolande, Edmund and Elspeth as a widow with her children, now under his protection and returning to her family after her husband’s death. Eolande’s silence and abstraction made the tale easier to believe, and no one commented on how little Edmund looked as if he could be her son, or Elspeth’s brother. Edmund suspected the villagers were too absorbed in their own story to pay much heed to anyone else’s.
    They had little difficulty in finding a crew: the remaining young men of the village were eager for the chance to see their hero again, and the old boat was soon fitted. They set sail that same day, heading south on grey, choppy waters. The town of Alebu was a little way down the western coast of Daneland, the sailors said as they took up their oars. The journey should not take much longer than two days.
    In fact, it took three, in fierce winds which blew them off course for the first day. Edmund was disturbed to find how uncomfortable the motion made him at first. Every pitch of the boat reminded him of his first sea journey only a few weeks ago on the
Spearwa
, and the deadly storm that had ended that voyage. The shipwreck, and the attack of the dragon Torment, had set him on a path he still found hard to believe; given him a skill he had never wanted, which set him apart from his own people; and sent him on this endless round of travelling, from which it seemed he might never be free.
    But it had also given him Elspeth. He looked at his friend’s face as she stood in the boat’s prow. Elspeth was happier than he had seen her since their descent to Loki’s cave. She was still weak, and fretted that she could not be more than a passenger on the ship, but the colour had come back to her face, and the same motion that unsettled him seemed to calm her. She spent much of the voyage gazing over the waves, her hair whipping about her face; cradling her right hand with her left. She seemed glad of Edmund’s company when he came to stand beside her, but neither of them spoke aloud of Loki, or of what might lie ahead.
    The squally wind proved a friend to them in one way. For the first time in days the sky cleared, and the sight of the sun raised everyone’s spirits, though it did little to counter the cold. Cathbar and Cluaran took their share of the rowing, and even Eolande, sitting near the bow of the boat, seemed alittle more alert. As he grew more used to the swing of the waves and the close living on board, Edmund began to feel a sense of escape – as if they were leaving the nightmare behind, rather than following it.
    On the