The Dark City Read Online Free PDF

back.”
    Galen stirred. He reached into the pack and tugged out the stub of candle, clearing a place in the dust for it. Then he fumbled for the tinderbox.
    The blue flame crackled, flared up. When it was steady and yellow, Galen lifted a cup of water and drank thirstily. “Maybe. Maybe not. The spirit of the Makers is in the box. It won’t rest with Alberic. It will want to come back to us.”
    “Then we needn’t bother about this Sekoi?”
    Galen put down the cup and picked at the food. He had a strange, intent look. “I think I want to bother.”
    Raffi stopped picking up crumbs with his finger and stared. “You want to run Alberic’s errands?”
    “My errands.”
    “But you heard him! We’d have to go to Tasceron!”
    Galen smiled then, a wolfish, secret smile. “Sometimes, Raffi, the Makers send their messages through the people you’d least expect. I knew I had to come here; now I know why. I can’t hear them any other way, so they speak through Alberic. I knew, as soon as he said it.”
    Appalled, Raffi ate the rest of the crumbs without tasting anything. Tasceron! Galen was mad.
    All his life Raffi had heard about the burning city, the city of the Makers, far to the west. It was vast, a web of a million streets, alleys, bridges, ruins. No one knew half of Tasceron; no one was sure who had built it or when, or what most of the structures were for, the immense marble halls, the squares with their dry fountains. Under the city were said to be tunnels, buried rooms, untold secrets. It was where the palace of the Emperor had been, and the temples of the great relics, and most secret of all, the House of Trees. All lost now, leaving only stories and rumors. The Emperor was dead, the temples destroyed. And the Watch guarded Tasceron, their tall black towers rising among the smoke and stench.
    “Suicide,” he muttered.
    Galen was eating calmly. “No,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of it for some time. In Tasceron something may have survived. Maybe even others of the Order.”
    Raffi scrambled up and paced about. Then he kicked the wall. “We’d be caught! There must be Watchmen everywhere; how long do you think we’d last? You can’t see there, can’t even breathe . . .”
    Galen looked up sharply. “I’m not mad.”
    They stared at each other. Slowly, Raffi sat down. “I didn’t say that.”
    “You thought it. You’ve been thinking it for months. Since the explosion.”
    Raffi was silent.
    Galen gripped his strong fingers together and tapped them against his lips. Then he said steadily, “Since I lost all my power.”
    There, it was spoken, as it hadn’t been spoken in the long summer, since the relic-tube had blown up as Galen was examining it, breaking his leg and his mind, leaving him lying silent for a week, eyes open, unspeaking. He had never said how it felt; Raffi had never dared ask. Now, picking up the empty cup and rolling it in his hands, Raffi knew it was coming.
    “For a moment,” Galen said, “in that room, I thought Alberic had guessed. But you reassured him.” He leaned back against the dim wall, tugging the long hair out of his collar. “I’m empty inside, Raffi. Since the explosion, my mind has been silent. No echoes, no colors, no spirits. I can’t move out of myself. I’ve lost the power and I have to find it again.” His voice was raw with pain, with the pent-up agony of months. “I can’t . . . exist like this! The trees, the stones, I can’t feel them. They speak and I can’t hear. Even the relics, the gifts of the Makers themselves—even when I hold those, Raffi, I feel nothing. Nothing!”
    Embarrassed, hot with pity that was almost anger, Raffi rocked the cup. He had known this would come out, all Galen’s torment. For the last few months the keeper had been a tangle of rage and bewilderment: trying trances, starving himself, storming off into the forest for days, punishing them both with prayers and chants and penances. And never talking about it.