The Elves of Cintra Read Online Free PDF

their voices and their laughter. She could see herself tucking Squirrel and Candle in for the night, their faces sleepy and peaceful as she wrapped their blankets around them. She remembered the quiet moments she had shared with Hawk, neither of them speaking, both of them knowing without having to say so what the other was thinking.
    No, nothing would ever be the same. She glanced around, looking at each of them in turn. The best she could hope for was that they would be able to stay together and stay safe…
    She stopped herself suddenly, aware that something was wrong. She counted heads quickly, certain that she must be mistaken, that she had simply missed him.
    But there was no mistake. Cheney was missing. The big wolf dog, there only a moment earlier it seemed, was nowhere in sight.
    Where was he?
    She started to ask the others, and then stopped. In the shadows of the broken-down vehicles ahead, dark shapes were emerging into the light, crawling out of the wrecks.
    Not just a few, but dozens.

 
    THREE
    T IME STOPPED, an intransigent presence.
    But at the same time, it seemed that it fled in the wake of their pounding footsteps on the city concrete, another frightened child.
    Panther was ahead when they reached the T-intersection at the end of the alleyway Sparrow had sent them down, and he drew up short, uncertain which way to go.
    “Go left,” she ordered as she came up behind him, her breathing quick and uneven.
    He did what he was told, unwilling to argue the matter. He could tell she was beginning to fail, her strength depleted from their struggle with the Croaks and her own physical limitations. She was younger than him, and her endurance was limited. She would never admit it, not to him and probably not to anyone else. Sparrow, with her dead warrior mother and her legacy of self-expectations, he sneered to himself. Frickin’ bull.
    But he held back anyway, just enough to let her keep pace. He didn’t look around, didn’t do anything to indicate he knew she was tiring, just slowed so that she could stay close. Say what you wanted to about that girl, she was a tough little bird. She gave him a hard time, but she was a Ghost and no Ghost ever abandoned another. Didn’t matter how much she bugged him; he would never leave her behind.
    They reached the end of the alley and emerged onto a street filled with swarming forms that had come up from the docks and the waterfront and maybe the square, as well. Spiders and Lizards and Croaks and some others Panther had never seen before in his short life—things dark and misshapen—all of them massed together as they ascended the hill to get away from the battle being fought below.
    “Must be bad down there for this to happen!” he declared, catching Sparrow by the arm as she almost raced past him into the surging throng.
    He had never seen anything like it. Normally these creatures, their strange neighbors, kept carefully apart from one another. Some, like the Lizards and the Croaks, were natural enemies, fighting each other for food and territory. Not today. Today the only thought, it seemed, was to escape a common enemy.
    “What now?” he demanded.
    Wordlessly, Sparrow turned back into the alleyway, and they retreated down the darkened corridor to a pair of metal-clad doors. Panther didn’t ask what she was doing. Sparrow never did anything unknowingly. He watched as she climbed a short set of steps to the doors and wrenched on the handles. The doors opened with a groan, but only several inches. Sparrow pulled harder, but the doors held.
    From deeper inside the alleyway, a handful of shadowy figures lumbered into view, coming out of the T-intersection and turning toward them.
    Panther went up the steps in a rush. “Let me try,” he said, all but elbowing her aside. He heaved against the recalcitrant doors, and they moved another few inches. Rust had done its work. “What’s in here, anyway?”
    “Hotel,” she answered, shoving him back to let him know she